Responses to this message:
Looks like the Coalition of the Willing gives way to the Coalition of the Billing (careful of the spaces):
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=6&u=/nm/20030921/pl_nm/iraq_co
ntracts_dc
Soaring Iraqi Costs Mean More U.S. Business Sun Sep 21,11:09 AM ET
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sabotage, looting and a more fragile infrastructure than anticipated are driving up costs in Iraq, where U.S. companies will likely reap billions of dollars in the next round of reconstruction contracts.
The U.S. Agency for International Development this week rolled out a $1.5 billion draft tender to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure when money runs dry for a contract it gave to San Francisco construction firm Bechtel.
* * *
Yount said funds were possibly being eaten up more quickly than expected. "It's fair to say the level of sabotage, the economic looting and the state at which we found the infrastructure was even more dire than we had anticipated."
Another cost guzzler is Iraq's oil industry, a target of saboteurs.
So far, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has obligated more than $2 billion in two contracts with Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services firm once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.
With postwar Iraqi revenue lower than anticipated and expenses higher, the administration is seeking significant outside help, especially from a donor conference set for Madrid next month.
Several analysts were pessimistic about whether the president's estimates would cover costs, especially if foreign nations did not offer assistance.
___________________________
Golly, what are the odds that the major benefactors of the war in Iraq should be Bechtel and Halliburton? But it looks like Lil George is going to pass the hat so that other countries can funnel their treasuries into their corporate coffers, so we U.S. taxpayers should be off the hook! Whew!
I'm sure those chocolate makers and cheese-eating surrender monkeys will just leap at the chance to bail out Lil George's overprivileged ass!
Responses to this message:
Post a response to this discussion thread