DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA The reconstruction of New
Oraq By Tom Engelhardt and Nick
Turse
"At times it is hard to ignore
the comparisons between Baghdad (where I was less
than a month ago and have spent more of the last
two years) and New Orleans: the anarchy, the
looting, some of it purely for survival, some of
it purely opportunistic. We watched a flatbed
truck drive by, a man on the back with an M-16
looking up on the roofs for snipers, as is common
in Iraq. Private security contractors were
stationed outside the Royal St Charles Hotel; when
asked if things were getting pretty wild around
the area, one of them replied, 'Nope. It's pretty
Green Zone here'." - (David
Enders, Surviving New Orleans, Mother
Jones online)
In
the decade before September 11, 2001,
"globalization", a word
now largely missing in
action, was on everyone's lips and we constantly
heard about what a small, small world this really
was. In the aftermath of Katrina, that global
smallness has grown positively claustrophobic and
particularly predatory.
Iraq and New
Orleans now seem to be morphing into a single
entity, New Oraq, to be
devoured by the same limited set of corporations,
let loose and overseen by the same small set of
Bush administration officials. In President George
W Bush's new world of globalization, first comes
the destruction, and only then does one sit down
at the planetary table to sup.
In recent
weeks, news has been seeping out of Iraq that the
"reconstruction" of that country is petering out,
because the money is largely gone. According to
American officials, reported T Christian Miller of
the Los Angeles Times last week, "The US will halt
construction work on some water and power plants
in Iraq because it is running out of money for
projects." A variety of such reconstruction
projects crucial to the everyday lives of Iraqis,
the British Guardian informs us, are now "grinding
to a halt" as "plans to overhaul the country's
infrastructure have been downsized, postponed or
abandoned because the $24 billion budget approved
by Congress has been dwarfed by the scale of the
task."
Water and sanitation projects have
been particularly hard hit; while staggering sums,
once earmarked for reconstruction, are being
shunted to private security firms whose hired guns
are assigned to guard the projects that can't be
done. With funds growing scarce, various
corporations closely connected to the Bush
administration, having worked the Iraqi disaster
for all it was worth (largely under no-bid,
cost-plus contracts), are now looking New
Orleans-ward.
Ground Zero Iraq
The American occupation of Iraq began in
April 2003 with a prolonged moment of chaos that
set the stage for everything to follow. In the
first days after Baghdad fell, the occupying army
stood by idly (guarding only the Oil Ministry and
the intelligence services) while Iraqi looters
swept away the institutional, administrative and
cultural underpinnings of the country. The newly
installed Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA),
soon to be led by American viceroy L Paul Bremer,
followed up by promptly disbanding the only
institution that remained half-standing, the Iraqi
military. At the same time, a new American
administration was set up inside the increasingly
well-fortified and isolated Green Zone in Baghdad,
staffed largely by Bush cronies. ("Neo-con
kindergarten" was the way some insiders derisively
referred to the young Bush supporters sent out
from Washington to staff the lower levels of the
CPA for months at a time.)
The CPA then
instituted a flat tax, abolished tariffs, swept
away laws that might have prevented the foreign
ownership of Iraqi companies, allowed the full
repatriation of profits abroad and threatened to
reduce state-sponsored food and fuel subsidies.
For Iraqis, this was more than just "shock and
awe"; it was to be caught in the whirlwind. Call
it Year Zero for Iraq or Ground Zero for the new
Bush order. Iraq, stripped for action, was ready
to be strip-mined - and it was then that
Washington called in its crony corporations to
"reconstruct" the land.
Leading the list
was Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary
of the energy firm Halliburton, the
mega-corporation over which Vice President Dick
Cheney once presided. From providing fuel to
building bases, doing KP to supplying laundry
soap, it supported the newly privatized,
stripped-down American military - and for that it
"received more money from the US involvement in
Iraq than any other contractor", a sum that has
already crested US$10 billion with no end in
sight.
The Bechtel Corporation, the San
Francisco-based engineering firm, known at home
for its staggering cost overruns on Boston's "Big
Dig" (Central Artery/Tunnel Project) and its
especially close ties to the Republican Party,
raked in almost $3 billion in Iraq reconstruction
contracts just in the nine months after the fall
of Saddam Hussein. Fluor Corporation, an Orange
County, California-based firm that inked a joint
$1.1 billion deal with a London company in 2004
for "construction services for water distribution
and treatment systems in Iraq" was a winner; as
was the Shaw Group Inc, which in early 2004 opened
a Baghdad office to support "an approximately $47
million task order in Iraq for facility upgrades,
installation of utilities and other infrastructure
improvements" and was also awarded a separate
$88.7 million construction deal, among other
contracts.
Another successful bidder in
the Iraqi lottery was CH2M Hill, a Colorado-based
company that, in a joint venture, took in a $28.5
million reconstruction contract in 2004 and teamed
up with other contractors for a $12.7 million
electrical power generation deal. These firms were
joined at the table by other heavy-hitters and a
dizzying array of smaller-fry American
sub-contractors, from the KBR-connected food
service company Event Source to Bechtel's marine
survey sub-contractor, Titan Maritime.
More than two years after the American
superpower occupied Iraq and called in its
reconstructors, however, the scorecard for
"reconstruction" looked remarkably like one for
deconstruction. The country was essentially looted
and no one was left on guard, not even at the Oil
Ministry. Money was spent profligately, and
sometimes evidently simply pilfered. Bremer
himself reputedly had a slush fund of $600 million
in cash for which, according to Ed Harriman (who
did a superb study of the various reports by US
auditors on the ensuing mayhem in the London
Review of Books), there was "no paperwork".
When Bremer left Baghdad in June of last
year, the CPA had already run through $20 billion
in Iraqi funds, mostly generated by oil revenues
and earmarked for "the benefit of the Iraqi
people" (though only $300 million in US funds).
Much of it seems to have gone to American
companies for their various reconstruction tasks.
US auditors, Harriman reports, "Have so far
referred more than a hundred contracts, involving
billions of dollars paid to American personnel and
corporations, for investigation and possible
criminal prosecution." It was evidently a field
day of malfeasance and - a particular signature of
the Bush administration - lack of accountability.
In the meantime, KBR was massively overcharging
the Pentagon for all those privatized tasks the
military no longer cared to do, while its
officials were living the good life. (Typically,
KBR's "tiger team" of accountants, sent out to
Kuwait to check on company overcharges, stayed in
a five-star hotel to the tune of $1 million in
taxpayers' money.)
The results we now know
well. Electricity and oil production, for
instance, still remain at or below the figures for
the worst days of Saddam's embattled regime; and
on that cleared land at Ground Zero Iraq, a fierce
resistance movement rages, while, from Basra to
Mosul, disappointment with and disapproval of the
American occupiers only grows.
Now, these
same corporations are being loosed on the
southeastern United States on the same no-bid,
cost-plus basis. Like Baghdad and much of Iraq,
New Orleans and the Mississippi coast have just
experienced "shock and awe" - Katrina's winds and
waters, not US cruise missiles. With troops
occupying New Orleans, the Bush
administration-allied corporations of the
whirlwind that feed off chaos and destruction are
already moving in. In this sense, the next wave of
chaos has, from their point of view, arrived like
the proverbial cavalry, just in the nick of time.
Bringing the post-war home As
Reuters reported recently: "A slowing of
reconstruction work in Iraq has freed up people
for Fluor Corp to begin rebuilding in the US Gulf
Coast region after Hurricane Katrina, the big
engineering and construction company's chairman
and chief executive said on Friday. 'Our
rebuilding work in Iraq is slowing down and this
has made some people available to respond to our
work in Louisiana,' Fluor chief Alan Boeckmann
said in a telephone interview." And Fluor
responded in a thoroughly reasonable way - they
put an experienced man on the job, sending their
"senior project manager" in Iraq to Louisiana.
In fact, with Congress already making a
$62 billion initial down payment on post-Katrina
reconstruction work, the Bush administration has
just given out its first six reconstruction
contracts, five of them - could anyone be
surprised - to Iraqi reconstructors, including
Fluor. Small world indeed. The Bush version of
crony capitalism should perhaps be termed
predatory capitalism, following as it does so
closely in the wake of war and natural disaster,
much as camp followers used to trail armies,
ready, in case of victory, to loot the baggage
train of the enemy.
But let's pull back
for a moment and try to reconstruct, however
briefly, at least a modest picture of the
massively interconnected world of the
reconstructors. A good place to start is with
Bush's pal Joseph Allbaugh, a member of his
"so-called iron triangle of trusted Texas
cohorts". Allbaugh seems to display in his recent
biography just about every linkage that makes New
Oraq what it is clearly becoming. He ran the Bush
presidential campaign of 2000; and subsequently
was installed as the director of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) which, in
congressional testimony, he characterized as "an
overstuffed entitlement program", counseling (as
Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect pointed
out recently) "states and cities to rely instead
on faith-based organizations ... like the
Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster
Service".
As at the CPA in Baghdad, so at
FEMA in Washington, the larder of administrators
would soon be stocked with second- and third-rate
Bush supporters and cronies. Five of FEMA's top
eight managers would, according to Spencer S Hsu
of the Washington Post, arrive with "virtually no
experience in handling disasters", three of them
"with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to
the White House advance operation". A "brain
drain" of competent administrators followed as - a
la the Pentagon - FEMA's focus turned to the "war
on terror", money was drained from
natural-disaster work, and the agency was
"privatized" with previously crucial activities
outsourced to Bush-friendly corporations.
In March 2003, Allbaugh departed FEMA,
putting the increasingly starved and down-sized
operation in the hands of Michael Brown, an old
college buddy whose previous job had been
overseeing the International Arabian Horse
Association. He then made his faith-based career
choice - no, not to join the Salvation Army or the
Mennonite Disaster Service. Instead, he opted for
what the Bush administration really believed in -
both in Iraq and at home. He became a high-priced
consultant/lobbyist, founding in the ensuing years
three consulting firms. At Blackwell Fairbanks,
LLC, he teamed up with Andrew Lundquist, who led
the Cheney task force that produced the
administration's National Energy Policy, to
"successfully represent clients before the
executive and legislative branches of the United
States government".
Then there was the
Allbaugh Company through which he represents
Halliburton's KBR as well as military-industrial
powerhouse Northrop Grumman. Finally, there was
New Bridge Strategies, LLC, where he serves as
chairman and director. New Bridge Strategies bills
itself as "a unique company that was created
specifically with the aim of assisting clients to
evaluate and take advantage of business
opportunities in the Middle East following the
conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq".
Not
surprisingly, the firm's vice chairman and
director, Ed Rogers (who, during the "2004
campaign cycle ... made over 150 live TV news
appearances defending and promoting the Bush
administration"), also serves as vice chairman of
the consulting firm Barbour, Griffith &
Rogers, Inc (which he founded with Haley Barbour,
now the governor of storm-battered Mississippi);
New Bridge's director, Lanny Griffith, who serves
as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Barbour,
Griffith & Rogers, "was national chairman for
the Bush/Cheney entertainment task force and
coordinated entertainment for the 2001 Bush
Inaugural".
He was, typically enough, one
of the 2004 Bush campaign's "Rangers" - an elite
group of fundraisers, each of whom was responsible
for gathering up more than $200,000 for the
president; while New Bridge Strategies' advisory
board member Jamal Daniel is "a principal with
Crest Investment Company" - a firm co-chaired by
the president's younger brother Neil.
In
answer to critics who claimed he and others were
cashing in on their service to Bush and Cheney,
Allbaugh responded, "I don't buy the 'revolving
door' argument. This is America. We all have a
right to make a living." As president and CEO at
Allbaugh Co and assumedly as a former head of
FEMA, not to say as close friend and mentor to
FEMA's (now departed) head and as a presidential
pal, he found himself at the front of the Katrina
disaster line, apparently pushing hard (although
he denied it) for such companies as - you guessed
it - KBR and the Shaw Group. By September 7 at the
latest, unlike the administration, he was down in
Louisiana surveying the damage in the Gulf Coast
and the wreckage of the agency over which he once
presided, while directing his clients to the
lucrative world of American disaster, now that the
lucrative world of Iraqi disaster had been sucked
reasonably dry.
Ground Zero New Orleans
On September 12, the Wall Street Journal
reported, "FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers
have awarded six contracts, most for as much as
$100 million, for recovery and rebuilding work."
It should be of little surprise that the Shaw
Group landed two of these $100 million deals (a
FEMA contract to refurbish existing buildings and
for other emergency housing tasks as well as an
Army Corps of Engineers contract to aid recovery
efforts, including pumping water from New
Orleans).
Others on the list included a
who's who of favorite Bush administration
contractors from Iraq: Bechtel, Fluor and CH2M
Hill (all signed on to construct temporary
housing). In fact, of the companies on the
Journal's list, only one (Dewberry, LLC) was not,
apparently, involved in Iraq. Halliburton was, of
course, not left out in the cold. In the immediate
aftermath of the hurricane, its KBR subsidiary
reaped "$29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to
begin rebuilding navy bases in Louisiana and
Mississippi".
These companies, however,
aren't the only ones returning from Iraq, like so
many predator drones, to pick up lucrative deals.
In the wake of Katrina, Intelsat, a global
satellite services provider that, in Iraq, had
teamed up with Bechtel on a big US Agency for
International Development reconstruction program,
agreed to new post-Katrina contracts with the
Defense Department and FEMA. Similarly, just two
days after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, the Air
National Guard contracted with another satellite
services provider, Segovia, which, according to a
2004 company news release, had "emerged as a key
telecommunications provider for the Iraqi
reconstruction efforts".
Along with their
service in Iraq, the Katrina reconstruction
companies are tied together in another important
way. They tend to be particularly well linked to
the Bush administration and the Republican Party.
As former Oklahoma Republican governor Frank
Keating said of Allbaugh, "Joe ... knows how
elected officials and appointed officials like me
think and work, and that culture is a fraternity."
Halliburton, for instance, picked off "another
high-level Bush appointee, Kirk Van Tine, earlier
this year to work as a lobbyist. Similarly, in
2001, Bush appointed Robert G Card, then a senior
vice president at CH2M Hill, under secretary at
the US Department of Energy, a position he held
until 2004. Today, Card is the president and group
chief executive of the International Group at CH2M
Hill.
Not surprisingly, during the 2004
election season, CH2M Hill was the top
"construction services" contributor to political
campaigns, sending nearly 70% of its $476,800 in
contributions to Republican candidates. In fact,
14 people on the CH2M payroll contributed to
Bush's 2004 campaign, including the company's
chairman and CEO, president, senior vice president
and president of regional operations, each of whom
gave between $1,000 and $2,000. Meanwhile,
Bechtel's political action committee contributed
68% of its funds to Republican candidates and
causes; while Halliburton, which ranks among the
top 20 "oil and gas" contributors to political
campaigns, handed out 87% of its money to
Republicans.
Theoretically, there should
be nothing more glorious than the job of healing
the war-torn or rebuilding the lives of those
devastated by natural disaster, nor anything more
relevant to government. Unfortunately, in the case
of KBR World, there's nothing glorious about it,
except the five-star hotels for the
reconstructors. Prediction is usually a dismal
science for any writer. In this case, however,
it's already easy to imagine - as some Democrats
in Congress are beginning to do - the consequences
of Bush-style "reconstruction" in the United
States.
Those no-bid, cost-plus contracts
already being dealt out to the usual suspects tell
you what you need to know about future cost
overruns, klepto-reconstruction activities, and
the like, which are practically guaranteed to
deconstruct the bulk of the Gulf Coast and leave
New Orleans, the destroyed parts of Mississippi,
and the hundreds of thousands of evacuees, not to
speak of Congress, gasping for breath amid a
landscape largely sucked dry, not of water, but of
cash and sustenance.
Bush's version of
capitalism is of a predatory, parasitical kind. It
feeds on death, eats money, goes home when the
cash stops flowing and leaves further devastation
in its wake. New Orleans, like a rotting corpse,
naturally attracts all sorts of flies. Reports
have been trickling in that the private security
firms - call them mercenary corporations like
Blackwater USA - which have flooded Iraq with an
estimated 20,000 to 25,000 hired guns (some paid
up to $1,000 a day), have been taking the same
route back to New Orleans and the Mississippi
coast as KBR, Bechtel and the Shaw Group.
They first arrived in the employ of
private corporations and local millionaires who
wanted their property protected. A week or so into
September, however, Jeremy Scahill and Daniela
Crespo of Democracy Now! found the hired guns of
Blackwater cruising the streets of New Orleans,
carrying assault weapons, claiming to have been
deputized, insisting that they were working for
the Homeland Security Department and that they
were sleeping in camps the department had
organized. ("When they told me New Orleans, I
said, 'What country is that in'?", said one of the
Blackwater men.) Then, on September 13, the
Washington Post reported that "Blackwater USA,
known for its work supporting military operations
in Iraq, said it would provide 164 armed guards to
help provide security at FEMA sites in Louisiana."
Today, New Orleans' streets are under
military occupation; its property is guarded by
hired guns; and the corporations of the whirlwind
are pouring into town. All that's missing is the
insurgency.
Tom Engelhardt, who
runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is
the co-founder of the American Empire Project and
the author of The End of Victory Culture, a
history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.
Nick Turse works in the
Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University
and is associate editor and research director of
TomDispatch. He writes for the Los Angeles Times,
the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice and
regularly for Tomdispatch on the
military-corporate complex and the homeland
security state.
(Copyright 2005 Tom
Engelhardt and Nick Turse. Used by permission of
Tomdispatch.)
