For the first time in three and a half years, with more than $30 billion already spent, the chief watchdog body of the Republican-controlled House held a hearing yesterday on the reconstruction of Iraq. Now that's oversight!
What the Committee on Government Reform found wasn't pretty. In fact, it was downright disgusting.
Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq, released two audits: one showed that Pasadena-based Parsons had built a police academy so badly that raw sewage coursed down the walls. That's gotta send a positive message to the Iraqi police recruits we're training to take the place of U.S. soldiers. The second showed that Iraq had lost $16 billion in oil sales because of America's problems in rebuilding the oil infrastructure.
I explain both those failures--and plenty more--in Blood Money, my new book on the disaster called the rebuilding of Iraq. Yesterday's hearing was just a peek. If anyone ever dares to take a close look, i.e., the Democrats gain control of a chamber, Iraq's reconstruction will almost certainly go down as one of the most colossal boondoggles in this country's history.
Iraq's oil money was supposed to pay for the reconstruction. A few weeks after the invasion, Paul Wolfowitz predicted that Iraq would pump $50 to 100 billion dollars of oil: "There's a lot of money to pay for this," he told Congress. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." Bet Wolfowitz wishes he had a do-over on that call.
What did the U.S. do to make sure that this all important resource was repaired? They hired Halliburton to do the job under a no-bid contract worth $7 billion. The U.S. Army Corps' top contracting official, Bunny Greenhouse, called it the "worst the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." Greenhouse was later demoted for her trouble.
Halliburton promptly failed to fix some of the most important pieces of Iraq's oil system. They screwed up a pipeline under a bridge needed to repair a key oil connection. They bungled water lines needed to keep the southern oil fields from being damaged. They refused to clean up oil wells that could have vastly improved output.
And yet, the U.S. Army Corps awarded Halliburton almost a full bonus for their work. Now that's oversight!
On Parsons, the company repeatedly failed to deliver on its construction tasks. Border forts were built with shoddy concrete. Only eight of 150 planned health clinics were completed. How is it a surprise that the police academy was also a disaster?
Once again, we are seeing the utter negligence of the Bush administration in the use of American money to rebuild Iraq. The evidence is building up: the new Robert Greenwald documentary Iraq for Sale. Bob Woodward's new book State of Denial. Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life. Nobody was paying attention. Nobody cared. Nobody has been held accountable.
Three years later, whatever chance we had to win Iraqi hearts and mind has vanished--just like the billions of dollars.
Now that's oversight!