A far more important problem, which I've made repeatedly in mumbled comments to myself and in blogs, is that the large contractor model of which Halliburton is the embodiment simply doesn't work. It wastes money on overhead and security while not allowing Iraqis to participate and share in the benefits of rebuilding their country. Iraqis don't need gold-plated toilets--they need jobs and electricity, now. If that means they have to put their country back together with duck tape, spit, and glue, so what? At least it will be their duck tape, spit, and glue. Consider me mystified that the Bush administration talks on the one hand about giving the Iraqis a stake in their own security, but hasn't connected the dots when it comes to reconstruction.
That's why I'm gratified to see that the State Department, which has taken the lead from the Pentagon, seems to understand this:
But administration officials, lawmakers and think tanks say major changes are needed not only in what the reconstruction money is spent on but also how it is spent. Too much money has been filtered through major American businesses such as Halliburton Co. and Bechtel Corp. on large-scale electricity, water and oil infrastructure projects, and not nearly enough has gone to smaller, more decentralized reconstruction efforts that could be handled by Iraqis, they say.Finally.
"When you're doing these large-scale programs, these design-and-build contracts and mega-program projects, you eat up a lot of money in administration and management costs," said a senior U.S. official familiar with the reconstruction effort. "What we've learned is that we have to use Iraqis, provide more employment, lower our costs and deliver a project that would be close enough to what they want, even if it's not perfect by American standards. We're moving in that direction -- finally."
The first afoe European weblog awards