Corporate Welfare Queens

Yglesias posts this shocker via Marshall:

The Bush administration’s audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war’s end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies.

The Bush plan, as detailed in more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents, would sideline United Nations (news – web sites) development agencies and other multilateral organizations that have long directed reconstruction efforts in places such as Afghanistan (news – web sites) and Kosovo. The plan also would leave big nongovernmental organizations largely in the lurch: With more than $1.5 billion in Iraq work being offered to private U.S. companies under the plan, just $50 million is so far earmarked for a small number of groups such as CARE and Save the Children.

[…]

European officials, and even some prominent Iraqi dissidents, have reacted to the current U.S. plans with disbelief. They charge that efforts to keep the U.N. and non-U.S. contractors on the sidelines will delay reconstruction in Iraq and stir deeper ill will toward Washington. Some U.S. humanitarian groups charge the Bush administration has downplayed the difficulty of the postwar work in the hopes of scoring some quick public-relations points.

[…]

Much of the heaviest work will fall to U.S. companies through a growing web of contracts with the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID is expected this week to pick the prime contractor for a $900 million job rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, including highways, bridges, airports and government buildings. The agency is also contracting for five other large jobs, worth a total of between $300 million and $500 million, administering Iraq’s seaport and international airports, revamping its schools and health-care system, and handling large scale logistics such as water transport. The Army Corps of Engineers is also taking bids for work worth up to $500 million for building projects such as roadways and military barracks. Additional contracts to refurbish Iraq’s neglected oil industry would likely be handled through the U.N., which currently administers Iraq’s oil exports.

Four groups of U.S. companies are competing for the $900 million contract, which was put out for bids in secret last month. The companies were picked under rules that allow U.S. agencies to skirt open and competitive bidding procedures to meet emergency needs. All have done government work for years and have deep political ties to Washington. Vice President Dick Cheney once served as head of Halliburton Co., whose subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is part of one bidding consortium.

Other big bidders are Bechtel Group Inc.; Parsons Corp., which has allied with Brown & Root; and Louis Berger Group and Fluor Corp., which are bidding as a team. These companies made political contributions of a combined $2.8 million between 1999 and 2002, more than two-thirds of which went to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. Bechtel was the largest single donor, having given $1.3 million in political contributions.

[…]

The U.S. postwar plans for Iraq, being directed by the new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in the Pentagon, are striking in their scope and intended speed. The administration’s plan to rehabilitate the Iraqi school system, for example, envisions the chosen contractor sending in teams to obtain payroll lists and assess teacher salaries just as U.S. military forces secure parts of Iraq, according to a 10-page USAID contract proposal that went out to companies last month. The contract, officials say, could total $100 million, and will cover five pilot programs for “accelerated learning” to be launched within three months, and then rolled out nationwide within 10 months. Only a third of Iraqi children now enroll in secondary school, but within a year the contractor will have “all children back in school.

I see. Sure. Piece of cake.

I hear there are quite a few former Enron executives who are “at liberty.” They should be brought in immediately to show some of that good ole Murikan know-how. Lord knows we have oodles of Americans who have the requisite knowledge of Iraqi culture. We should be able to bring this one in under budget and ahead of schedule, no problema.

I’m awfully relieved, though, that President GI Joe is eradicating evil and terror because it sure seems like it would be a teensy weensy bit dangerous for all those American targets there in Iraq if he doesn’t. It’s damned lucky that he has the whole world on our side so we won’t have to keep hundreds of thousands of troops there to protect the corporate welfare queens from those pesky suicide bombers.

Jesus. This just keeps getting better and better…