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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (103517)	6/29/2003 11:19:26 PM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 281500

Bechtel was mentioned somewhat in Nation Builders for Hire , nytimes.com , quoted in #reply-19070966 . This bit may explain why they're not getting much done. Bechtel, another hydra-headed American giant, won what's often called the ''mother contract'' from the U.S. Agency for International Development to revive Iraq's water, power and electricity and the port of Umm Qasr. Unlike KBR, which fills the Crowne Plaza with a huge regiment of Texans who actually turn wrenches, Bechtel keeps fewer than 50 engineers and managers quartered at the Kuwait Sheraton. Bechtel's client is USAID, not the military, so none of its work is classified, and that makes it easer to hire its muscle locally. So while the lobby of the Crowne Plaza feels like a particularly high-rent sergeants' club -- noisy and smoky, men clumping in work boots across the faux-Persian carpets -- the cool marble lobby of the Sheraton plays the role of officers' billet to the reconstruction campaign. On the Sheraton's black leather sofas, British businessmen perch primly in no-wrinkle blazers, sample cases ready, watching for the company golf shirt of a Bechtel executive to emerge from the elevators.