The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone

[Big D]

Interesting article:


In Iraq, private contractors are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they **** things up.

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering cluster****s of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in **** and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: "We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that "during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member's shirt." The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.

When Congress gets wind of the fiasco, a few members on the House Oversight Committee demand a hearing. To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill -- after all, you're a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this kind of contracting operation for the government. So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of ****.

Continued here http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/60950

[Firetxmi]

Aside from the racial undertones, very interesting article! Discover magazine has an extremely interesting article on the poor health care in Iraq. The Bush admin. would even love it because they compare it to the health care in Vietnam during the Vietnam war.

Here is a similar quote:

U.S. efforts to construct medical facilities in Iraq have been a miserable failure. The most egregious example is that of Basra Children’s Hospital, a stalled project supported by first lady Laura Bush. In late 2003, Congress allocated an initial $50 million. Three years later, construction had more or less ceased halfway through the project, and completion costs were estimated at $120 million. (The contract was recently transferred from a U.S. construction company to a Jordanian firm.)

Here is the thread: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?p=2738314#post2738314

[retrobob]

Interesting,thanks.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

How exactly does poorly constructed plumbing = "war profiteering"?

We are a capitalist society. Therefore, every last individual involved with the war is "profiting" from it, from the lowest E-1 to contractors, to corporations. It's what we do, and how we do it.

There are problems with every construction project. There is shoddy construction in every city in every nation on the planet. Is that war profiteering?

Did the author show a connection between the plumbing problem and extra profits for Robbins? If so, I must have missed it. Is a $775k house in VA supposed to = war profiteering? If so, my boss at AT&T must be a war profiteer to, since her house was well over a million.

I suspect that since engineering and blueprints are peer reviewed, that the fault here lies with the actual construction. So far as I know, we do our best to employ locals to do that work. You know, hearts and minds and all that. Now we all know that if we imported Americans to do that work that the histrionic douchebags writing articles like this would simply shift gears and write hit pieces about how we've shut the locals out of the economy - more "war profiteering".

It's sad that even this late in the game, it seems impossible to engage in a serious debate on the subject. This article is little more than a delightful mélange of anti-establishment boilerplate and good old fashioned class warfare.

[Big D]

yea, this article mentions the Basra facility as well, and how much of a colossal waste that ended up being. the final price tag from my article differs by $49 million; but who's counting, right?


For all the creative ways that contractors came up with to waste, mismanage and steal public money in Iraq, the standard remained good old-fashioned ****ing up. Take the case of the Basra Children's Hospital, a much-ballyhooed "do-gooder" project championed by Laura Bush and Condi Rice. This was exactly the sort of grandstanding, self-serving, indulgent and ultimately useless project that tended to get the go-ahead under reconstruction. Like the expensive telephone-based disease-notification database approved for use in hospitals without telephones, or the natural-gas-powered electricity turbines greenlighted for installation in a country without ready sources of natural gas, the Basra Children's Hospital was a state-of-the-art medical facility set to be built in a town without safe drinking water. "Why build a hospital for kids, when the kids have no clean water?" said Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona.

Bechtel was given $50 million to build the hospital -- but a year later, with the price tag soaring to $169 million, the company was pulled off the project without a single bed being ready for use. The government was unfazed: Bechtel, explained USAID spokesman David Snider, was "under a 'term contract,' which means their job is over when their money ends."

[2Sheds_Jackson]

This is a masturbatory exercise. It takes exactly no insight to stand with hands on hips and bitch about things costing too much, secret motivations etc. It's useless. How about some alternatives? How about a constructive environment in which government officials don't get exactly the same criticism for not doing something that they face for doing something?

Want things to go smoothly and cheaply? Wait until the situation is 100% secure in Iraq. Lay off all those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi construction workers, engineers, and officials - send them home to play the X-box for a couple of years. Anybody think that's a good idea?

This ain't Indianapolis we're talking about here. We're up to our armpits in "the Iraqi way" - payoffs, graft, theft, influence pedaling, fake credentials, subsidized incompetence, palm greasing - these guys make the Mob look like amateurs. We're getting a taste of how they do business - and it ain't pretty. I'm sure they're are plenty of things to complain about - but only an idiot does so irrespective of the alternatives.

[PaulClift]

Your right, I probably wont believe it.

[Rictor]

First off, this is hardly an isolated incident which the evil anti-American MSM has blown out of proportion - all indications point to an institutionalized system of corruption. I've heard stories of the CPA torching $100,000 trucks rather than replacing a $100 tire.

I can't believe that corruption on so massive a scale, especially when it so directly harms both Iraqis and US soldiers, has defenders. What's the alternative? Oh, I don't know - holding US contractors who behave in such ways accountable to their agreements. Treat them as criminals who have, and continue to, defraud billions in taxpayer money. There are few services which could not be performed by someone else, so any individual contractor is dispensable. Isn't that the whole point of a market economy - competition? And isn't competition supposed to take the profit out of corruption?

It's a different story with Iraqis, because you can't exactly bring Masoud Barzani, to pick a name at random, to court in the US and reasonably expect him to show up. But the same is not true to the many contractors which have grown fat off of DOD largess. They can be made to behave by hitting them in the pocketbook.

[Noble713]

This ain't Indianapolis we're talking about here. We're up to our armpits in "the Iraqi way" - payoffs, graft, theft, influence pedaling, fake credentials, subsidized incompetence, palm greasing - these guys make the Mob look like amateurs. We're getting a taste of how they do business - and it ain't pretty. I'm sure they're are plenty of things to complain about - but only an idiot does so irrespective of the alternatives.


The majority of the examples in the article have nothing to do with Iraqis, they are of Americans screwing over America. How can you possibly defend:
1) repainting used Iraqi forklifts and billing them as new equipment
2) running convoys with phantom goods just to drive up costs
3) creating fake invoices to dummy subsidiaries
4) overcharging 600% for fuel
5) obligating hundreds of millions of dollars to NOBODY just to not "lose" the money

And the countless other examples? Our choices shouldn't be "corrupt Americans" or "corrupt Iraqis". Where's the option for "HONEST Americans"? The Chinese have the right idea, we need to start executing people for corruption. Having proper oversight/auditing personnel in place would at least be a step in the right direction. What's gone on under this administration's watch is almost as bad as Yeltsin selling the whole of Russia at bargain basement rates.

[Big D]

The majority of the examples in the article have nothing to do with Iraqis, they are of Americans screwing over America. How can you possibly defend:
1) repainting used Iraqi forklifts and billing them as new equipment
2) running convoys with phantom goods just to drive up costs
3) creating fake invoices to dummy subsidiaries
4) overcharging 600% for fuel
5) obligating hundreds of millions of dollars to NOBODY just to not "lose" the money

And the countless other examples? Our choices shouldn't be "corrupt Americans" or "corrupt Iraqis". Where's the option for "HONEST Americans"? The Chinese have the right idea, we need to start executing people for corruption. Having proper oversight/auditing personnel in place would at least be a step in the right direction. What's gone on under this administration's watch is almost as bad as Yeltsin selling the whole of Russia at bargain basement rates.

Thank you. It's just mind-boggling how the gov't pretty much handed them blank checks and told them to go wild with little to no oversight.

And it's not about things costing too much, 2sheds, it's about blatant, uncontrolled thievery which keeps being ignored.

it's criminal.

[kongman]

some of the stuff that goes on over there is a big eye opener......

[deagle]

i can't say i'm surprised, but hopefully word will get out and cause a firestorm. its dispicalble and they should be held accountable. isn't it a breach of contract if they don't construct an OPERATING facility ?

[Con-man]

The author had a point to address, I respect that, but it was completely tasteless and quite amatuer the way in which he tried to get said point across.
And I'll bring up a point of my own, say you had honest workers over there constructing the hospital, just how much more able would they be to do their jobs whilst they are quite a large target of an insurgency which has been running for years now? Furthermore if they were quite succesful how likely do you think it would be that it we would hear it in the news?
I say that we should criticise those who are taking advantage of the Iraq war in ill-mannered ways, but not hold them completely accountable for things like this when if they were doing their job properly, there'd be other stuff getting in the way just as bad.

[bugkill]

Wow, who would have thought that there would be rip-offs going on iraq? Dude, people get ripped off all over the world every single day, what made anyone think that Iraq reconstruction would be any different. Do anyone remember how often we catch frauds in the US, but we want to talk s**t about Iraq as if we don't have these clowns back home?

Why is it that people want to point at this stuff and act shocked at typical human behaviour which is found all over the world? I keep laughing at the fact that people keep bringing up these problems and act like this is some new phenomenom, which it is not. Whenever there is a war and reconstruction is being conducted, you are gonna have seedy companies operating in the country, it is completely unavoidable. You have some good workers and then you have some bad ones trying to cut costs and make more profit, it has always been that way and it will never change.

[BLUE THOR]

The author had a point to address, I respect that, but it was completely tasteless and quite amatuer the way in which he tried to get said point across.
Im with you on that one
the title gives it away, its tabloid rubbish.
it read like an article you would find in a protest group publication. written with too much anger for me to take it seriously, although it does somewhat address a serious problem, its still a whinge..
im actually not suprised by what i read, i dont doubt for a second that pofiteering is rampant over in Iraq, but it exists everywhere, just tune into your local "investagatory Journalist TV show" and they will catch them in the act for you. like our lovely Niomi Robson used to do... i miss her p-)

[Litti]

The majority of the examples in the article have nothing to do with Iraqis, they are of Americans screwing over America. How can you possibly defend:
1) repainting used Iraqi forklifts and billing them as new equipment
2) running convoys with phantom goods just to drive up costs
3) creating fake invoices to dummy subsidiaries
4) overcharging 600% for fuel
5) obligating hundreds of millions of dollars to NOBODY just to not "lose" the money

And the countless other examples? Our choices shouldn't be "corrupt Americans" or "corrupt Iraqis". Where's the option for "HONEST Americans"? The Chinese have the right idea, we need to start executing people for corruption. Having proper oversight/auditing personnel in place would at least be a step in the right direction. What's gone on under this administration's watch is almost as bad as Yeltsin selling the whole of Russia at bargain basement rates.Agreed. Altough I would change the capital punishment to life without parole. And the cost for upkeep (in jail) would come from their own pockets.