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Pentagon to Oversee Most Spending in Iraq
After a power struggle with the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon has won control over most of a $18.4 billion aid package for Iraq, and rebuilding delayed for a month will start this week, U.S. officials in Baghdad said Sunday. Much of the enormous aid package - funded by U.S. taxpayers - will go toward 2,300 construction projects over the next four years. Of these, the State Department will oversee as little as 10 percent. But $4 billion of the aid package has been set aside, and spending authority for those funds is still in discussion.
| Sorry State, but this is what happens when you forgot for whom you work. |
Congress approved the aid in November, but the bickering delayed contracts expected to be approved Feb. 2. The State Department had pushed for control, because it will become the top U.S. agency here after Iraqis are handed sovereignty June 30. Officials were so frustrated by the delay that the U.S. head of reconstruction in Iraq, retired Rear Admiral David J. Nash, reportedly threatened to resign in December. Now, the resolution means the U.S. military will have chief control over rebuilding in Iraq, even after its command of the U.S.-led occupation ends, officials said. Starting this week, about $5 billion worth of contracts are to be awarded to 17 companies for projects in seven various sectors, said Steven Susens, a spokesman for the Program Management Office, which is overseeing the funds for the Pentagon-run U.S.-led coalition authority. He said 10 more big construction projects will be handed out later this month, and that his office expects to complete 2,300 projects over the next four years.
| Expect a slew of stories about e-v-i-i-i-i-l-l-l-l Halliburton to coincide. |
The decision gives the Defense Department a much larger role in shaping the reconstruction of Iraq. Previously, the CPA's portfolio was expected to be handed to the State Department and run by staff of a future U.S. Embassy here, restricting the U.S. military's role mainly to operating a peacekeeping force. But now, U.S. officials said, the CPA's Program Management Office will probably stay on after Iraqis take power, and will answer to the U.S. Army's offices in Washington - not Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We needed an agency that could manage this at the Washington, D.C., level so it was decided that the Army would do this there," a CPA official told reporters in a Sunday briefing. He also said that - despite rock-bottom wages for Iraqi construction workers - the cost of construction in Iraq is expected to be higher than comparable building work in the United States. Ten percent of the construction funds will be eaten up by safeguarding building sites and workers from attacks by anti-U.S. guerrillas, the official said. Companies will also have to pay to house and feed workers.
| Low wages plus housing, food and security. |
By summer, the flow of dollars is expected to turn Iraq into one of the world's largest construction sites. U.S. officials hope the revitalized infrastructure forms the bedrock for the Middle East's most freewheeling economy. The aid package amounts to nearly two-thirds of Iraq's annual economic output in 2002, estimated by the World Bank at $28 billion. But only an estimated 20 percent of the funds will be spent inside Iraq - just under $2 billion each in 2004 and 2005. The rest will go to foreign contractors and suppliers.
| Expect some whining from the Weasels when they don't get their contracts and sub-contracts. |
Already, almost $2 billion has been released for priority projects. More than $800 million is now being spent by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on refurbishing Iraq's tattered oil infrastructure; another $900 million is going to renovate Iraqi military bases and supply new security forces with weapons, uniforms and training. About $2.2 billion will be handed to U.S. AID, most of which is earmarked for Bechtel, the construction firm that handles most of its rebuilding work, Susens said. The additional funds for Iraq have essentially doubled U.S. AID's 2004 worldwide budget.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-03-08 |
