Bechtel, having spent $2.3b and 52 employees' lives on impossible projects, leaves Iraq

[BurtWorm]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/01/BECHTEL.TMP


San Francisco Chronicle
Bechtel ends Iraq rebuilding after a rough 3 years

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

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.

...

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.

...


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.