Just what sorts of issues from the Iraqi invasion will reappear as political issues in the 04 election? Josh Marshall is looking into the Halliburton stories (consider Halliburton both factual and metaphorical).
talkingpointsmemo.com
(September 17th, 2003 -- 1:42 PM EDT // link)
In the last month I've become increasingly convinced that the effort to use Iraq to pad the pockets of friendly companies in the US is a real story. In the past I always sort of shied away from the Halliburton contracts storyline. After all, Halliburton and its subsidiary Brown & Root didn't get big into the government contracting biz because of Dick Cheney. They bought Dick Cheney because they were already so big in the government contracting business.
In any case, when this much money is flying around, you inevitably get a lot of it steered into friendly hands, even without systemtic crony-ization of the whole process. And one hears more and more examples of contracts getting very inexpensive bids from local Iraqi companies, only to end up in the hands of American companies whose bids are an order of magnitude higher. I don't think you have to figure wholesale corruption or even favoritism is taking place, at least not only that. The people who award the contracts are likely acting under provisions which (understandably and rightly) give preferential treatment to American companies. And many of the people making the calls probably have little knowledge of Iraqi society or business practices and thus little way of evaluating the trustworthiness and reliability of local operators.
I don't put that forward as an excuse, just possible, partial explanations that may be figuring into the mix. The whole situation over there is so complicated and multi-faceted (and we're just talking about the contracting issue) that I don't pretend to have a handle on it yet. I'm starting to do more poking around. But I think there's enough information out there to seriously question whether American taxpayers are spending much, much more than they need to be spending in Iraq.
Today Juan Cole notes how Halliburton was given early contracts on a no-bid, emergency basis. But under government guidelines they now have 'experience' in the region and thus a big leg up on future contracts. Cole says "most other large contractors have given up even trying for those contracts." He also notes this article about how we've nixed a local provider of cell phone coverage in favor of MCI Worldcom, which of course did such a band up job here in the USA.
There is, moreover, a serious question about how much this issue of contracts is a hang-up in our efforts to get other countries involved in getting Iraq back on its feet.
-- Josh Marshall |
