It was all about electricity and basic services! Iraq/Secret CPA Memo!

[KoKo]

APRIL 29, 2004
Fables of the reconstruction
BY JASON VEST


Despite repeated assurances over the past year from CPA chief L. Paul Bremer that Iraq's electricity situation has vastly improved, the memo says otherwise, reporting that there is "no consistency" in power flows. "Street lights function irregularly and traffic lights not at all.... Electricity in Baghdad fluctuating between three hours, on and off, in rotation, and four hours on and off."

"I continue to get very upset about the electricity issue," Gardiner said last week after reviewing the memo. "I said in my briefing that the electrical system was going to be damaged, and damaged for a long time, and that we had to find a way to keep key people at their posts and give them what they need so there wouldn't be unnatural surges that cause systems to burn out. Frankly, if we had just given the Iraqis some baling wire and a little bit of space to keep things running, it would have been better. But instead we've let big U.S. companies go in with plans for major overhauls."

Indeed, as journalists Pratap Chatterjee and Herbert Docena noted in a report from Iraq in Southern Exposure, published by the Durham, N.C.-based Institute for Southern Studies, the steam turbines at Iraq's Najibiya power plant have been dormant since last fall. As Yaruub Jasim, the plant's manager, explained, "Normally we have power 23 hours a day. We should have done maintenance on these turbines in October, but we had no spare parts and money." And why not? According to Jasim, the necessary replacement parts were supposed to come from Bechtel, but they hadn't arrived yet -- in part because Bechtel's priority was a months-long independent examination of power plants with an eye towards total reconstruction. And while parts could have been cheaply and quickly obtained from Russian, German, or French contractors -- the contractors who built most of Iraq's power stations -- "unfortunately," Jasim told Chatterjee and Docena, "Mr. Bush prevented the French, Russian, and German companies from Iraq." (In an interview last year with the San Francisco Chronicle, Bechtel's Iraq operations chief held that "to just walk in and start fixing Iraq" was "an unrealistic expectation.")

The CPA memo also validates key points of the exceptionally perceptive February 2003 U.S. Army War College report, "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario." Critical of the U.S. government's insufficient post-war planning, the War College report asserted that "the possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious." It also cautioned that insufficient attention had been given to the political complexities likely to crop up in post-Saddam Iraq, a scene in which religious and ethnic blocs supported by militias would further complicate a transition to functional democracy in a nation bereft of any pluralistic history.

According to a Washington, D.C.-based senior military official whose responsibilities include Iraq, CPA now estimates there are at least 30 separate militias active in Iraq, and "essentially, doesn't know what to do with regard to them -- which is frightening, because CPA's authority essentially ends on June 30, and any Iraqi incentive to get rid of the militias is likely to go away after that date, as sending U.S. troops around Iraq against Iraqis isn't likely to endear the new Iraqi government to its citizens."

And then there is the problem of Iran. According to the memo, "Iranian money is pouring in" to occupied Iraq -- particularly the area under British control -- and it asserts it is "a mistake" to stick to a policy of "not rock the boat" with the Iranians, as "the Iranian actors with which the State Department likes to do business . . . lack the power to deliver on promises" to exercise restraint in Iraq. According to senior U.S. intelligence and military officials queried on this point, the Iranian influence in Iraq is both real and formidable, and the U.S. is, as one put it, at best "catching up" in the battle for influence. But the officials also added that pushing the point with Iran too hard -- either through diplomatic channels or on the ground in Iraq -- would likely be more troubled than the current course of action, possibly resulting in armed conflict with Iran or a proxy war in Iraq that the U.S. isn't ready to fight.
http://www.illinoistimes.com/gbase/Gyrosite/Content?oid=oid%3A3078

[eridani]

1. Can't have them rebuild their own country, now, can we?

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=481

Bechtel Corporation was awarded a no-bid, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract on April 17, 2003 worth $680 million. The controversial contract made Bechtel and its subcontractors responsible for the rehabilitation of the Sharkh Dijlah water treatment plant in Baghdad, as well as the Kerkh Waste Water Treatment Plant.

Work on the plant, Bechtel’s number two priority in Baghdad since June 2003, is expected to increase potable water by 225 million liters per day. The work was due to be completed by this month.
According to the Washington Post, however, Baghdad officials said Bechtel spent four months studying plans for the expansion made by Iraq’s state-run water company, finally concluding they were acceptable. They then reissued the same orders for the same parts from the same supplier Iraqi engineers had tried to acquire them from. Bechtel estimates it will spend $16 billion on the project, carrying out the work essentially as had previously been done by Iraqi engineers no longer permitted to participate.