US predicted an Iraqi invasion failure in 1999

^11/3/06: As Bechtel Goes

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission --
to rebuild power, water and sewage plants - wasn't accomplished: Baghdad
received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much
of Iraq's population lives with untreated sewage and without clean
water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers' money and
having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last
government contract.

As Bechtel goes, so goes the whole reconstruction effort. Whatever our
leaders may say about their determination to stay the course complete
the mission, when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they've already cut and
run. The $21 billion allocated for reconstruction over the last three
years has been spent, much of it on security rather than its intended
purpose, and there's no more money in the pipeline.

The failure of reconstruction in Iraq raises three questions. First, how
much did that failure contribute to the overall failure of the war?
Second, how was it that America, the great can-do nation, in this case
couldn't and didn't? Finally, if we've given up on rebuilding Iraq, what
are our troops dying for?

There's no definitive way to answer the first question. You can make a
good case that the invasion of Iraq was doomed no matter what, because
we never had enough military manpower to provide security. But the lack
of electricity and clean water did a lot to dissipate any initial good
will the Iraqis may have felt toward the occupation. And Iraqis are well
aware that the billions squandered by American contractors included a
lot of Iraqi oil revenue as well as U.S. taxpayers' dollars.

Consider the symbolism of Iraq's new police academy, which Stuart Bowen,
the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, has called "the
most essential civil security project in the country." It was built at a
cost of $75 million by Parsons Corporation, which received a total of
about $1 billion for Iraq reconstruction projects. But the academy was
so badly built that feces and urine leak from the ceilings in the
student barracks.

Think about it. We want the Iraqis to stand up so we can stand down. But
if they do stand up, we'll dump excrement on their heads.

As for how this could have happened, that's easy: major contractors
believed, correctly, that their political connections insulated them
from accountability. Halliburton and other companies with huge Iraq
contracts were basically in the same position as Donald Rumsfeld: they
were so closely identified with President Bush and, especially, Vice
President Cheney that firing or even disciplining them would have been
seen as an admission of personal failure on the part of top elected
officials.

As a result, the administration and its allies in Congress fought
account-ability all the way. Administration officials have made repeated
backdoor efforts to close the office of Mr. Bowen, whose job is to
oversee the use of reconstruction money. Just this past May, with the
failed reconstruction already winding down, the White House arranged for
the last $1.5 billion of reconstruction money to be placed outside Mr.
Bowen's jurisdiction. And now, finally, Congress has passed a bill whose
provisions include the complete elimination of his agency next October.

The bottom line is that those charged with rebuilding Iraq had no
incentive to do the job right, so they didn't.

You can see, by the way, why a Democratic takeover of the House, if it
happens next week, would be such a pivotal event: suddenly, committee
chairmen with subpoena power would be in a position to investigate where
all the Iraq money went.

But that's all in the past. What about the future?

Back in June, after a photo-op trip to Iraq, Mr. Bush said something I
agree with. "You can measure progress in megawatts of electricity
delivered," he declared. "You can measure progress in terms of oil sold
on the market on behalf of the Iraqi people." But what those measures
actually show is the absence of progress. By any material measure,
Iraqis are worse off than they were under Saddam.

And we're not planning to do anything about it: the U.S.-led
reconstruction effort in Iraq is basically over. I don't know whether
the administration is afraid to ask U.S. voters for more money, or
simply considers the situation hopeless. Either way, the United States
has accepted defeat on reconstruction.

Yet Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq. For what?

this is what happens when you try to fight an ideaology and not an enemy