November 06, 2005

Iraqi Money

As regular readers of this blog know, I've been writing for a long time about this issue: billions of Iraq's money that has been squandered. For the first time, an auditing board has suggested a few hundred million of those billions be paid back.

An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.

The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not, however, give examples of poor work.

Some of the work involved postwar fuel imports carried out by K.B.R. that previous audits had criticized as grossly overpriced. But this is the first time that an international auditing group has suggested that the United States repay some of that money to Iraq. The group, known as the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, compiled reports from an array of Pentagon, United States government and private auditors to carry out its analysis.

A good start, but tip of the iceberg.

Posted by zeynep at 05:23 PM | Comments (1)

April 04, 2005

Dear MoveOn, Please Get Your Facts Straight. Hard As It May be To Believe, That's Iraqi Money.

Here's an excerpt from the last MoveOn action alert:

From: "Tom Matzzie, MoveOn PAC"
Date: April 4, 2005 6:16:49 PM CDT
Subject: $82 billion more for Iraq: Demand an exit strategy.

Dear MoveOn member,

Congress has barely debated the war in Iraq or its aftermath since it voted to authorize the use of force in October 2002. Now, the Bush administration is skipping the normal budget process to ask for an additional $82 billion to fund the American presence in Iraq. Among the big-ticket items, a $600 million embassy and some 14 "enduring" bases.[1] Those bases, and the absence of an exit strategy, will worsen, not improve the situation in Iraq.

And, remember the last $87 billion Congress authorized for the war: a whopping $9 billion of it is missing because of corrupt contracting.[2] We must root out the corporate corruption that has undercut the rebuilding efforts and lost billions of taxpayers' money.

Yes, among other things, it's certainly outrageous that a "whopping $9 billion" is missing. Except that's Iraqi money the occupation authorities "lost" to American companies -- not American taxpayer money as MoveOn implies. What's even more outrageous is that the story Moveon cites in its action alert gets it right. Other reports on the same issue, such as this Newseek story, also get it right. Why can't MoveOn?

Let's try this again. THOSE BILLIONS WERE IRAQI MONEY. Readers of this blog know that I've been following this story closely for some time now (some examples here, and here), and it never ceases to amaze me how Democrats, starting with John Kerry, can't seem to stop pushing a story of American victimhood -- even when it's not true. Last year, just as it was becoming scandalously clear that billions of dollars in Iraqi money had been turned over to American corporations without accountability, transparency, or results, while the money Congress actually allocated to rebuild the country we helped destroy sat unspent, John Kerry's applause line was "we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America."

So, I ask my readers to join Pat Youngblood, who brought this matter to my attention, in asking MoveOn to correct their error:

Dear MoveOn PAC,

In your last message on Iraq you repeat an error that is becoming
common. You say that $9 billion of U.S. money (part of the famous $87 billion) has been lost. But this is not American taxpayer money. These funds came from the sale of Iraqi oil. This is the old Oil-For-Food fund, now called the Development Fund for Iraq. So, the correct story is that the US has presided over the theft of $9 billion of Iraqi resources that were supposed to be spent on the welfare of ordinary Iraqis. Even the CNN story you cite as a source gets this important fact correct. An organization with the reach of MoveOn could do a lot to correct this common misperception. It seems, however, that you're more comfortable seeing Americans as the victims, rather than Iraqis.

Please respond.
Respectfully,

Pat Youngblood
Austin, TX

(Pat's the editor of Austin's indispensable Third Coast Activist Resource Center. As well as having a sharp eye for falsehoods whatever their source, he does a great job compiling the most interesting and relevant news and analysis of the day. A highly recommended bookmark against the infoglut out there.)

Posted by zeynep at 10:10 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 16, 2004

How Propaganda Works

Let me follow up on the last post with a small example of one method by which propaganda works: through journalists' use of the "objective voice" to describe the very motives which they should be questioning. This from the Post:

The Bush administration's effort to build a system for defending the country against ballistic missile attack suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when an interceptor missile failed to launch during the first flight test of the system in two years.

Certainly, there is more to be said on why "missile defense" is a first strike weapon. And, certainly, there is more to be considered in terms of the role of corporate profiteering in such project. But note how the above graph cuts the discussion: the Bush administration's effort to build a system for defending the country.

Once that framework is presented and accepted, all criticisms look silly. What's a few billion in an effort to defend the country? So a few tests fail. So a few well-connected corporations make a buck. It's an effort to defend the country. A piece that starts like that mainly reinforces the propaganda system, no matter how critical the rest of the contents.

Posted by zeynep at 12:28 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 15, 2004

"Missile" "Defense" "Shield": Who's Kidding Who?

Here's a great example of how the administration is furthering its belligerent capacities under the pretext of concern for the safety of Americans: the so-called "missile defense shield" project.

If you had any questions about what this is all about, here's the kicker -- they don't even test this system in bad weather. In other words, it's guaranteed not to work in bad weather so they don't even try.

An attempt to launch an interceptor missile as part of the U.S. missile defence shield failed early Wednesday in the first test of the system in nearly two years.

The Missile Defense Agency said the ground-based interceptor automatically shutdown "due to an unknown anomaly" shortly before it was to be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean.

...
In earlier tests, missile interceptors had a record of five-for-eight in hitting target missiles.

Wednesday's test had been put off several times because of bad weather, and a malfunction of a recovery vessel not directly related to the equipment being tested, The Associated Press reported.

What on earth could there be use for a system that only works sporadically, and only under conditions of your of own choosing? Offense, of course, because you choose when to attack -- and, unlike defense, it's okay if only one out of your four offensive moves succeeed.

You see, we are developing the capacity to threaten strikes from space. That way, less worries about armies, occupations, foreign bases, military recruiting, etc. All those headaches that may potentially limit the scope their imperial ambitions.

I think this is a great example of the success of the propaganda system. Journalists keep repeating a "defense shield" is being developed, tested and somehow not performing well when a four year old child can figure out that this is clearly an offensive system.

The progressive critique has usually concentrated on the corporate boondoggle nature of such projects but I think that's also missing the mark. Not to say the money being made isn't a factor in these decisions, but the real issue is something much more serious and much more dangerous for the very existence of the planet.

Posted by zeynep at 12:02 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

October 28, 2004

My Calculator Ran Out of Zeroes

New Audit Critical of Halliburton Work in Kuwait:

The audit by the Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said a random sample of 3,032 records of items valued at more than $3.7 million, projected KBR could not account for 42.8 percent, or 1,297, of these goods.

Missing weapons, missing prisoners, missing goods... What's the big deal. The weapons we claimed were there didn't exist and the ones that did exist we don't care about. Missing prisoners, they're all terrorists anyway. And missing goods. It's not like we don't have money to burn: check out the latest $260 million plane, "designed to fight a potential Soviet enemy that no longer exists, and a Third World War that - if it ever happens - will be very different from what could have been imagined in 1981." We apparently have 277 orders on these, my calculator ran out of zeros. Done by hand, the total cost looks like $72,020,000,000 unless I missed a zero or two.

Some years ago there was a serious attempt in the Congress to scrap the whole project, especially as the revised cost exceeded four times the original estimate.

It failed largely because of pressure from military contractors and labour unions in states that will directly benefit from this multi-billion dollar programme.

The introduction of the new fighter jet comes in the same week that its manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin, announced a 40% rise in profits as it processes orders for its next generation of fighter aircraft, the F-35.


Posted by zeynep at 06:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 24, 2004

What's a Few Billion Between Friends?

Time magazine has an insider account of how cronyism works in day-to-day practice:

Then several representatives from Halliburton entered. Greenhouse, a top contracting specialist for the Army Corps of Engineers, grew increasingly concerned that they were privy to internal discussions of the contract's terms, so she whispered to the presiding general, insisting that he ask the Halliburton employees to leave the room.

Once they had gone, Greenhouse raised other concerns. She argued that the five-year term for the contract, which had not been put out for competitive bid, was not justified, that it should be for one year only and then be opened to competition. But when the contract-approval document arrived the next day for Greenhouse's signature, the term was five years. With war imminent, she had little choice but to sign. But she added a handwritten reservation that extending a no-bid contract beyond one year could send a message that "there is not strong intent for a limited competition."

Greenhouse seems to have got nothing but trouble for questioning the deal. Warned to stop interfering and threatened with a demotion, the career Corps employee decided to act on her conscience ... [and] last week sent a letter—obtained by TIME from congressional sources—on her behalf to the acting Secretary of the Army. In it Kohn recounts Greenhouse's Pentagon meeting and demands an investigation of alleged violations of Army regulations in the contract's awarding. (The Pentagon justified the contract procedures as necessary in a time of war, saying KBR was the only choice because of security clearances that it had received earlier.) Kohn charges that Greenhouse's superiors have tried to silence her; he says she has agreed to be interviewed, pending approval from her employer, but the Army failed to make her available despite repeated requests from TIME.

You know the rest, Halliburton makes big bucks but fails to deliver the services, the deliverables -- or even the receipts at times. But what's a a few billion between friends. We'll forget about it this time, just don't do it so visibly again, okay?

According to the report, Kellogg Brown & Root so far has billed about $12 billion in Iraq, and about $3 billion of that remains disputed by government officials.

The U.S. Army is laying the groundwork to let Halliburton Co. keep several billion dollars paid for work in Iraq that Pentagon auditors say is questionable or unsupported by proper documentation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

...

The Journal also cited Pentagon records showing that $650 million in Halliburton billings are deemed questionable. An additional $2 billion is considered to have insufficient paperwork to justify the billing, the report said.

Also, last week, the L.A. Times had a very good piece about Halliburton in specific but well worth reading as an example of how the myriads of decisions taken by the government each day distribute wealth and power to the few and the chosen. Frankly, I should also say that I think Halliburton is but one highly visible example due to its connection to Dick Cheney, and that it's role in the war is a bit overblown by most antiwar analysts -- although one could argue that this is justifiable since it is the most recognizable face of corporate cronyism in the U.S. today. The Halliburton case is also worth looking at detail because we have more data about it than almost any other such example.

Posted by zeynep at 02:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack