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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (7628)	9/11/2003 2:55:56 PM
From: MSI	Respond to of 793782

You're joking, Nadine -- if the Iraqis say they can fix it, let them fix it, fer cryin' out loud. What the hell are we, the World's Contractors? Next thing will be OSHA down there. This 100X difference between $500,000 and $50 million means the profit margin is, shall we say, GOP-like. From that profit comes many, many billions in payoffs and campaign donations to the defense contractors favorite causes Fine, but YOU pay for it, and Halliburton's multibillion dollar bribe machine. Instead, all Americans are extorted to pay for $50 million bridges, and the overall $200 billion war. This is a sick use of the blood and treasure of Americans.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (7628)	9/11/2003 8:07:13 PM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793782

are you seriously touting some local Iraqis as better experts on large infrastructure construction projects than Halliburton? Yes Nadine. I am saying precisely that. After the 1991 war, which targeted the Iraqi infrastructure heavily (unlike this one), the Iraqis fixed their infrastructure in no time and at very low monetary cost. Why not fix the current infrastructure and let modernization wait for when they have the money, and, more importantly, time to do it? I heard Bremer talk about at least $2 billion needed to buy an extra 2,000 MW of electric generation capacity and I was flabbergasted. In Iraq natural gas is free -- they burn it off cause they don't know what to do with it. You can buy used, inefficient, Natural gas generation plants from Europe or NA (who cares about efficiency when your fuel is free?) for practically NOTHING today. And even in the US 2,000 MW of highly efficient NG baseload generating plants go for around $1.2 billion. So, who is Bremer kidding??? This is just one small example, where I happen to have some engineering knowledge. Given that Saddam was keeping up the infrastructure on practically a shoestring, and was salting away billions and building plenty of palaces to boot, it seems to me that the Iraqi reconstruction aid is a pork barrel project of enormous proportions. Kyros