Friday, February 27, 2004
Reconstructing Iraq without the Iraqis.
With nearly 40 years of civil engineering service under his belt, Sabah Al-Ani is among Iraq's top experts in water treatment. He kept the country's systems up and running through countless floods and droughts, years of economic sanctions and three wars.
After bombings and looting sprees left the water network in worse shape than ever, Al-Ani prepared to help out once again. But a directive from the U.S.-led occupation authority locked him out of the reconstruction process.
Al-Ani is an employee of the General Co. for Water Projects, one of 200-odd ventures in Iraq that are owned wholly or in part by the state and have been told they are ineligible for contracts being issued by the occupation. The company's 187 workers still collect their government salaries but they now spend their days on floors two and three of a downtown building here playing video games, reading books and chitchatting to pass the time.
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The decision to ban state-owned companies from reconstruction contracts funded by U.S. taxpayers was made for both legal and philosophical reasons. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was unclear how U.S. regulations apply to a company that was owned by a rogue state that no longer exists. And it was hoping to redistribute wealth and power in a country that for decades was dominated by Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party loyalists.
For example, the CPA put Bechtel National Inc. in charge of managing the reconstruction of Iraq's water supply system, including a project the General Co. used to run, the expansion of the Sharkh Dijlah, or East Tigris River, Water Treatment Plant.
Bechtel, which estimates the project will cost $16 million, spent four months studying the General Co. plans, concluded they were adequate, modified them slightly, city officials said, reissued orders for parts from the same supplier, and basically did what was being done before.
The American company began construction in October, according to city engineers, and has stationed two foreign engineers at the plant, who visit when the security situation allows, in two white SUVs filled with four armed guards. The rest of the work is being done by Iraqi subcontractors. So far, the Bechtel workers have driven in some concrete pillars for a foundation in what was once an empty field, but additional work has been held up by delays in the shipment of parts.
Incompetence at work. (viaBody and Soul).
posted by chris at 5:06 PM
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004
A more sensible solution
A good op-ed in Saturday's New York Times on poverty in America:
About 35 million Americans live below the federal poverty line. Their opportunities are defined by forces that may look unrelated, but decades of research have mapped the web of connections. A 1987 study of 215 children attributed differences in I.Q. in part to "social risk factors" like maternal anxiety and stress, which are common features of impoverished households. Research in the 1990's demonstrated how the paint and pipes of slum housing — major sources of lead — damage the developing brains of children. Youngsters with elevated lead levels have lower I.Q.'s and attention deficits, and — according to a 1990 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine — were seven times more likely to drop out of school.
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Government is especially bad at connecting the dots. Health is over here, housing over there; budgets are separate and are protected by officials with entrenched interests. Practically every program has its own eligibility requirements and forms, and many working people simply can't take time off the clock to trek from waiting room to waiting room. One-third of those eligible don't get food stamps, according to the Census Bureau, and about 30 percent of the poor who are entitled to Medicaid are not enrolled.
One remedy, tried by community action centers created by the War on Poverty, put a variety of specialists under one roof. Their effectiveness unsettled politicians. "Mayors didn't like them because they were doing something that was very good," recalls Frances Fox Piven, a professor of political science and sociology at City University of New York. "They were badgering municipal agencies to provide services." The money for the centers eventually dried up.
Decades later we are still testing this idea, now called "one-stop shopping," as if it were some dubious proposition. Since last July in five California school districts, applications for subsidized lunches have been used as applications for Medicaid as well. What has to be proven for the rest of the state to follow? In Chicago, schools get computerized lists of children who are enrolled in the lunch program but not in Medicaid. Why not in all of America's schools? Job placement is done at a few public housing sites; why not at every one?
We need more than patchwork projects. We need a sweeping national program to create what could be called gateways. At private and public institutions that are frequented every day — clinics, schools, food banks, housing projects, police precincts and the like — a person should be able to find easy referrals to child-rearing instruction, drug treatment and other assistance.
posted by chris at 5:24 PM
Make that June 30, 2030
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the former interim administrator of post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Iraq, said Thursday that a U.S. military presence in Iraq should last "the next few decades," but questioned the mix of forces already there and current plans to reconfigure the armed forces as a whole.
Echoing concerns raised by lawmakers at this week's defense budget hearings, Garner said in an interview with National Journal Group reporters and editors that the size of the Army and Marine Corps should be increased by enlarging the infantry or ground forces. And he warned that the current strain on National Guard and Reserve forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan could cripple efforts to retain experienced soldiers.
Garner, who previously served as commanding general of the Army's V Corps in Germany and as an Army assistant vice chief of staff for force development, said he does not subscribe to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision of a future Army, in which smaller units of soldiers rely heavily on high-tech weapons and communications systems.
More.
posted by chris at 11:26 AM
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Bush endorses ban on homosexual marriage
A few choice comments from Bush's speech [and a few choice comments of my own]:
Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. [Except, of course, the people who would be forbidden from marriage . . .]
America's a free society which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens. This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefinition of one of our most basic social institutions. [Does it require the first Constitutional Amendment ever that would limit the rights of our nation's citizens??]
Our government should respect every person and protect the institution of marriage. There is no contradiction between these responsibilities. [What?!?!]
We should also conduct this difficult debate in a matter worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger. [Except the anger of the religious right, of course.]
In all that lies ahead, let us match strong convictions with kindness and good will and decency. [Kindness, goodwill and deceny as we tell a group of people that they deserve less than we do. Right.]
Here's the article.
posted by chris at 3:27 PM
A reoccuring pattern
President Bush last week caused a stir when he declined to endorse a projection, made by his own Council of Economic Advisers, that the economy would add 2.6 million jobs this year. But that forecast, derided as wildly optimistic, was one of the more modest predictions the administration has made about the economy over the past three years.
Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.
These are not isolated cases. Over three years, the administration has repeatedly and significantly overstated the government's fiscal health and the number of jobs the economy would create, but economists and politicians disagree about why.
Because the first announcement gets the press, while the backtracking or "clarification" usually doesn't. And by then, the American public has moved on, confident in the rosy outlook offered by the White House.
posted by chris at 3:12 PM
Are we safer now than before Iraq?
CIA Director George Tenet said Tuesday that the al-Qaida terror group is seriously damaged but has spread its radical anti-American agenda to other Islamic extremist groups that now pose the greatest threat to the United States.
"The steady growth of Osama bin Laden's anti-U.S. sentiment through the wider Sunni (Islamic) extremist movement, and the broad dissemination of al Qaida's destructive expertise, ensure that a serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future -- with or without al Qaida in the picture,'' Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee in his annual assessment of global threats.
The leadership of the original al-Qaida terror group, which the United States targeted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is seriously damaged, Tenet said. Beyond al-Qaida however, Tenet said, there is a continuing threat to the United States from a "global movement infected by al-Qaida's radical agenda.''
And you don't think attacking Iraq on false pretenses had anything to do with inflaming the terrorist movement?
posted by chris at 2:53 PM
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Monday, February 23, 2004
More lies come out
The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons.
The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials.
Both George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the United States had briefed United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and moderate value" in the weapons hunt.
The contradiction is significant because Congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the United Nations inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies began the invasion. The White House, bolstered by Mr. Tenet, insisted that it was fully cooperating with the inspectors, and at daily briefings the White House issued assurances that the administration was providing the inspectors with the best information possible.
Yeah, yeah, sure. The UN has all the information. Can we bomb Iraq now??
posted by chris at 4:55 PM
"We don't support that"
Ever call up tech support for a problem with your computer and they were no help whatsoever? You might have been talking to these people.
And after reading this, remember, outsourcing is a good thing.
posted by chris at 1:36 PM
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Sunday, February 22, 2004
What the hell?!??
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
Story. And Billmon has an excellent commentary on the issue.
posted by chris at 5:22 PM
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