[Organize] A request of the group (Was [profiteers] Bechtel pulling out of Iraq!)

Wed Nov 8 17:51:17 EST 2006

Hello all,

  I'm always interested in expanding coalitions and working relationships, so in answer to Jacqui's question, I'd definitely like to know more about those on the list and what we each bring to the table, or bulletin board.

  Eileen

jacqui <j1_cunliffe at yahoo.com> wrote:
    Hello everyone.

  I understand this is a new list serve that I recently joined and I am wondering if there is any interest in expanding our dialogue by sharing some personal/professional/academic information about ourselves so that we might become more familiar with each other and gain a better understanding about the composition of our group.  It is my impression that many of you may already know each other and that I am akin to the new kid on the block.  At any rate, it might prove useful to us all to introduce ourselves.

  If there is a positive response to this query, I would be happy to begin.  I look to this list serve as a way to become reconnected to my previous efforts in social/anti-war activism and would like to use it as a vehicle to share knowledge regarding the creative ways we have come to gather insight, inspiration, and energy as e work to gather information regarding the marketing of American power and politics.  I am resurfacing after a hiatus taken to complete my doctoral dissertation and feel this list serve could be an important way to reclaim my former enthusiasm and also to redefine my areas of interest.

  Hope to get to know you!

  Jacqui Cunliffe
  Speaker for War Resisters League (Carlyle Group)

Eileen Olsen <eileen_mccabe_olsen at yahoo.com> wrote:
    One of the interesting things about this article is how it lavishly covers the challenges to Bechtel, and largely ignores its lapses of judgement and its derision of its Iraqi employees.  When Iraqi managers of plants submitted lists of power generation plant parts to be replaced, Bechtel responded by buying air conditioners.  It imported its own workers instead of providing employment to Iraqis, exacerbating local security conditions.  By focusing on its own goals and punch list, it helped create the problems that impeded their own success, and prevented the timely repair of critical infrastructure for Iraqis. Somehow, it's difficult to have any sympathy for Bechtel.  And what about this undisclosed profit?  As a taxpayer, paying this profit, I demand a right to know what it is!

  Eileen

david meieran <david at heartofdarkness.org> wrote:
  Bechtel pulling out after 3 rough years of rebuilding work
- David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 1, 2006

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/01/ 
MNGMIM3RAG1.DTL
Bechtel Corp. went to Iraq three years ago to help rebuild a nation 
torn by war. Since then, 52 of its people have been killed and much 
of its work sabotaged as Iraq dissolved into insurgency and sectarian 
violence.

Now Bechtel is leaving.

The San Francisco engineering company's last government contract to 
rebuild power, water and sewage plants across Iraq expired on 
Tuesday. Some employees remain to finish the paperwork, but 
essentially, the company's job is done.

Bechtel's contracts were part of an enormous U.S. effort to put Iraq 
back on its feet after decades of wars and sanctions. That rebuilding 
campaign, once touted as the Marshall Plan of modern times, was 
supposed to win the hearts of skeptical Iraqis by giving them clean 
water, dependable power, telephones that worked and modern 
sanitation. President Bush said he wanted the country's 
infrastructure to be the very best in the Middle East.

But Bechtel -- which charged into Iraq with American "can-do" fervor 
-- found it tough to keep its engineers and workers alive, much less 
make progress in piecing Iraq back together.

"Did Iraq come out the way you hoped it would?" asked Cliff Mumm, 
Bechtel's president for infrastructure work. "I would say, 
emphatically, no. And it's heartbreaking."

The violence that has gripped Iraq drove up costs and hamstrung the 
engineers who poured into the country after the U.S.-led invasion.

Bechtel's first reconstruction contract, awarded shortly after Saddam 
Hussein's overthrow in April 2003, assured the company that it would 
have a safe environment for its workers. But, by the end, dozens of 
Bechtel's employees and subcontractors had been killed, some of them 
kidnapped, others marched out of their office and shot. Forty-nine 
others were wounded.

Bechtel responded by hiring more guards, driving armored cars and 
fortifying its camps. Those steps ate up money that otherwise would 
have brought electricity and clean water to Iraqis.

The size of Bechtel's contracts also shrank over time, as U.S. 
officials diverted money from reconstruction and toward security. 
Instead of the nearly $3 billion originally budgeted, Bechtel finally 
received about $2.3 billion, a figure that includes money the company 
spent on projects as well as its undisclosed profit.

Mumm directed Bechtel's work from a bare-bones trailer in Baghdad. He 
is proud of his people for finding ways to work despite the threat of 
imminent death. Of 99 projects that the U.S. government directed 
Bechtel to complete, the company finished 97, abandoning only two for 
security reasons, the company says.

But Mumm's pride is mixed with frustration. Many of those completed 
projects later fell victim to collapsing security, which made 
maintenance dangerous and, in some cases, resulting in damage to 
plants and equipment.

He once hoped the new Iraqi government would turn into a steady 
Bechtel client, bringing the company lucrative new contracts in a 
country where virtually every road, power plant and waterworks needs 
repair.

"Had Iraq been a calmer place while we were there, amazing things 
could have been done," he said.

The U.S reconstruction push in Iraq is winding down. About $18 
billion in funding that Congress approved three years ago was 
supposed to be spent or committed to specific projects by the end of 
September. Two of the U.S. government agencies that have overseen the 
work are scheduled to close shop early next year. The United States 
and other countries are discussing another round of aid, but if it 
comes, Iraqi ministries are supposed to take the lead on rebuilding.

"That's really an under-told story -- we've stopped the 
reconstruction," said Frederick Barton, co-director of the Post- 
Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic & 
International Studies think tank. "There are some things we're still 
finishing up, but we're wrapping up, and we're stepping back. It's 
really a tragedy."

What exactly did Bechtel accomplish in its three years in Iraq?

-- The company helped repair 14 electrical generation units, built 
four new ones and created 25 substations around Baghdad.

-- It restored eight sewage plants and built one.

-- A canal bringing drinking water to Basra, Iraq's second-largest 
city, was dredged and its pumps restored. Seventy small water 
treatment plants were installed in rural areas.

-- Airports in Baghdad and Basra were repaired to handle civilian 
flights. The country's international shipping port -- Umm Qasr -- was 
dredged and its grain elevator refurbished.

-- Baghdad telephone switching stations knocked out during the war 
were restored, and the country's phone network was reconnected to the 
outside world.

-- War-damaged bridges on key highways were rebuilt.

-- Almost 1,240 schools were refurbished with new paint, fans and in 
many cases new windows and doors to replace those looters had stolen.

But many of these accomplishments were undone as security evaporated.

For example, Bechtel added 1,280 megawatts to the nation's power grid 
and improved the reliability of another 480 megawatts. In the United 
States, that much energy could light more than 1.3 million homes.

But Iraq's entire power system this summer produced 4,400 megawatts, 
just 442 megawatts more than before the invasion. The country needs 
about 9,000 megawatts to satisfy demand.

In some cases, the power plants have had trouble getting stable fuel 
supplies. In others, repaired plants were cut off from the national 
grid by sabotaged power lines. A series of coordinated attacks Oct. 
20, for example, severed Baghdad from power generated in the rest of 
the country, leaving the city's 7 million residents with only a few 
hours of electricity each day.

"Infrastructure is assumed by the terrorists, correctly, to be a 
target," said Michael Izady, a professor at Pace University who has 
trained U.S. forces in Iraq. "They're not stupid. You just hit the 
power grid, and you have 120 degrees outside. Ask any American what 
they'd do after two days of that. Tempers run really high."

Making matters worse, Iraqi workers haven't maintained some of the 
repaired electrical plants.

U.S. government auditors blame the problem on a lack of funding and 
the attitudes of Iraqi workers, who in the past rarely did 
maintenance unless something broke. Auditors visited one plant where 
new control systems had been bypassed, the blades of new turbines 
already had oil residue building up on them, and a fire had broken 
out -- a problem, since the fire extinguishing system was missing key 
parts.

Similar problems plagued water and sewage projects.

At Baghdad's Kerkh sewage plant, Bechtel spent $5.7 million repairing 
equipment that hadn't worked in months, maybe years. But the plant's 
location, on the edge of the city, became increasingly dangerous -- 
turf for Hussein loyalists and criminal gangs. In November 2004, 
insurgents issued flyers telling the plant's Iraqi workers to stay 
home or die, according to Bechtel. Not long after, a power failure 
hit the plant, and the staff didn't turn on the backup generator. The 
plant stopped working.

"We'd get it completed, and then the Iraqis would all flee, and it'd 
get mortared," Mumm said. "It would operate for a while, then the 
same thing would happen. ... As we sit here today, I don't know if 
Kerkh is running or not."

Some places became too dangerous for Western and Iraqi employees 
alike. One of the projects Bechtel couldn't complete was a water 
treatment plant in Baghdad's Sadr City, a poor, crowded neighborhood 
dominated by Shiite militias. Bechtel's top project supervisors and 
the project's subcontractor fled to avoid assassination.

Violent intimidation also stopped another project -- a state-of-the- 
art children's hospital in which first lady Laura Bush had taken a 
personal interest.

The project, in Basra, was supposed to cost $50 million. The U.S. 
Agency for International Development assigned Bechtel the job in 
August 2004, with a completion date of Dec. 31, 2005. But Bechtel 
later warned its government supervisors that the hospital would take 
far more money and time to complete. The project was suspended this 
summer. Bechtel says the hospital now would cost $98 million. Federal 
auditors, who blamed USAID for not reporting the project delays and 
costs to Congress, say the figure is probably higher.

Basra had been quiet immediately after Hussein's fall. Its Shiite 
population suffered greatly under Hussein and was happy to be rid of 
him. But the calm was short-lived, as Shiite militias started to 
exert more and more control over the city.

Bechtel's hospital site security manager was murdered. The site 
manager received death threats and resigned. Bechtel's senior Iraqi 
engineer quit after his daughter was kidnapped. Twelve employees of a 
subcontractor in charge of the hospital's electricity and plumbing 
were killed in their offices. Eleven workers of another company 
supplying the project's concrete also died.

As the human cost of reconstruction rose, why didn't Bechtel pull out?

Mumm said the company constantly reviewed security and was convinced 
that it could keep its people safe.

"We didn't stay under duress," he said. "I think all of our people 
got in it, got involved in it, and no one wants to leave a job half- 
done."

He says the work hasn't been for naught. Even electrical or sewage 
plants that have broken down after Bechtel left can be revived if the 
country finds a way to quell the violence. If Iraq eventually 
stabilizes, the people Bechtel worked with may provide another 
opportunity to work in the country.

"Those people will be there, and I think they'll think favorably of 
us," Mumm said.

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker at sfchronicle.com.

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Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. 

--Anais Nin

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. 

--Anais Nin
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