The UN, US and Iraq IV

By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the most wanted men on earth. A leading member of Osama bin Laden's brain trust, he is thought to have been in operational control of al-Qaeda's millennium bomb plots as well as the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000. Seventeen months ago, the U.S. finally grabbed Zubaydah in Pakistan and has kept him locked up in a secret location ever since.

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When questioning stalled, according to Posner, CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions. Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002.

Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis."

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The last eight paragraphs of the book set up a final startling development. Those three Saudi princes all perished within days of one another. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack at age 43. One day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, 41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident. The last member of the trio, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, officially "died of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh one week later. And seven months after that, Mushaf Ali Mir, by then Pakistan's Air Marshal, perished in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly North-West Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants.

US To Boost Bechtel's Iraq
Reconstruction ContractQuicken.com
8-29-03


"San Francisco-based Bechtel was originally awarded an 18 month, $680 million contract for Iraqi reconstruction work... Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, promised that no additional taxpayer money would go into the Bechtel contract beyond the $680 million ceiling."

"According to a funding document from the U.S.-led Iraqi provisional authority, however, U.S. officials recently decided that Bechtel requires the additional $350 million "to maintain momentum in high-priority infrastructure projects.""

Faced with escalating costs and continued instability in Iraq, U.S. officials in Baghdad have decided to boost Bechtel Group Inc.'s postwar reconstruction contract by $350 million, or more than 50%, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The decision to steer additional funds to Bechtel is the latest sign that the Bush administration has seriously underestimated the cost and complexity of rebuilding Iraq. Although the U.S. plans a dramatic push for new reconstruction funds -- part of what one U.S. official said will be a $2.75 billion emergency budget request for Iraq next month -- the administration remains vague on what the overall project is likely to cost.

The new Bechtel money, which could be turned over within days, is part of at least $1 billion the U.S. hopes to pour into Iraqi power generation alone over the next year. U.S. officials and Bechtel assessment teams now estimate Iraqi reconstruction will cost at least $16 billion and likely much more. L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, has said that the costs of rebuilding Iraq and revitalizing its economy could top $100 billion.

San Francisco-based Bechtel was originally awarded an 18 month, $680 million contract for Iraqi reconstruction work on airports, water, power, schools, roads and government buildings. After business rivals and some legislators criticized the limited competition involved in that award, Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, promised that no additional taxpayer money would go into the Bechtel contract beyond the $680 million ceiling.

[BUT!!]...

According to a funding document from the U.S.-led Iraqi provisional authority, however, U.S. officials recently decided that Bechtel requires the additional $ 350 million "to maintain momentum in high-priority infrastructure projects." Mr. Bremer approved the new projects on Aug. 20, according to the document.

Yesterday, an AID spokeswoman said that "security conditions" had evidently led Mr. Bremer to lift the limit and give more work to Bechtel. The additional $ 350 million will come from what's left of a $2.5 billion Iraq reconstruction fund Congress approved early this year.

U.S. officials also said they are willing to consider sharing responsibility for security with a United Nations-backed multinational force as long as it was under American command.

Possibly within weeks, the Bush administration plans to put out for bids a new contract for follow-on work in Iraq that could be valued at well over $2 billion, according to administration and congressional sources. The contract would focus mainly on power and water work.

Congress has pressured the administration to open any additional Iraq work to competition and not simply to stick with the same contractors.

Michael Kidder, a Bechtel spokesman, said there have been "informal discussions" in Baghdad on the need for new funding but added that "we have not received any formal notification of additional work in Iraq."

Wall Street Journal staff reporters Neil King, Jr. and Simeon Kerr contributed to this article.

Copyright 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

NOT TOO LATE TO FAIL. Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek articles -- among the most important policy journalism published anywhere these days -- are always worth reading. And the newest one is no exception. After reviewing the long history of turmoil, coups, bloodshed and mayhem in modern Iraq, he writes:

Keeping peace in a country like this cannot be easy. That is why the Bush administration's attempts to do so unilaterally and on the cheap have been such a disaster. In a remarkable interview last week, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the Central Command, told The New York Times that he needed more troops. This seems to contradict what Donald Rumsfeld said two days earlier, which could be a sign of more internal wrangling, or could mark the beginning of a turnaround. Abizaid attempted to disguise the shift by saying that critics were wrong; he needed no more American troops and instead only wanted foreign forces. But almost no one urging a buildup has been suggesting American troops. For one thing, there are no more American troops available. We would have to move divisions out of Europe or East Asia or mobilize the National Guard. Other than a few neoconservatives, who cannot bear to utter the words "United Nations," everyone understands that more troops can only come in the form of a multinational force under U.N. mandate.

Abizaid's explanation for why we need foreign forces is even more remarkable. American troops, he explained, were fueling Iraqi nationalism that was morphing into anti-Americanism: "You can't underestimate the public perception, both within Iraq and within the Arab world, about the percentage of forces being so heavily American." But who underestimated this problem of Iraqi nationalism? Certainly not those of us who argued from the day the war ended that the operation should be multinational, with full U.N. authorization. It was the administration itself that argued that American troops were going to be welcomed as liberators; that the postwar period would require few forces; that Iraqis disliked the Europeans and the United Nations, and that America would have absolutely no legitimacy problem.

Abizaid's interview is a powerful admission that on the two most important postwar issues -- the number of forces and the nature of the occupation -- the Bush administration got it badly wrong. The only question now is, will the administration finally recognize its errors? It might already be too late to achieve a great success in Iraq. But it is not too late to avoid a humiliating failure.

Zakaria is correct. Tapped notes with great sadness how many conservatives continue to exist in a fictional land where people like Zakaria want the United States to fail. In fact, most people, including most liberals, want America to succeed in Iraq, if by succeed you mean building a stable, free, prosperous nation from the ruins of Saddam Hussein's regime. But our success depends on conservatives throwing off the blinders of their own petulant ideology, recognizing the mistakes that have been made by this administration, and throwing their weight behind rectifying those errors. We'll see if that actually happens.