H
Harry Hope
Guest
What did America's contractors give us for that money?
They built big steaming **** piles, set brand-new trucks on fire,
drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped
bags of nails in ditches.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle/print
Aug 23, 2007
The Great Iraq Swindle
How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S.
Treasury
How is it done?
How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then
ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other
wrapped around a chilled martini?
Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful
contractor in Iraq.
You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat:
in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which
Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and
contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion.
You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a
military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill
to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003,
when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private
construction company looking to do work in Iraq.
Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on
Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been
promising her all these years.
The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good
-- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter
home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and
ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless
careers.
On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start
living that private-sector good life.
A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a
contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design
and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to
house and train at least 4,000 police recruits.
But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning
police academy but one of the great engineering cluster****s of all
time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that
its walls and ceilings are literally caked in **** and piss, a result
of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.
You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in
the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of
the Saw movies:
"We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that
it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so
pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that
"during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an
assessment team member's shirt."
The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch
on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.
When Congress gets wind of the fiasco, a few members on the House
Oversight Committee demand a hearing.
To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill -- after
all, you're a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this
kind of contracting operation for the government.
So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down
before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked
by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen
how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of ****.
You blink.
**** if you know.
"I have some conjecture, but that's all it would be" is your deadpan
answer.
The room twitters in amazement.
It's hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress
short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all
might have gone.
Next thing you know, the congressman is asking you about your
company's compensation.
Touchy subject -- you've got a "cost-plus" contract, which means
you're guaranteed a base-line profit of three percent of your total
costs on the deal.
The more you spend, the more you make -- and you certainly spent a
hell of a lot.
But before this milk-faced congressman can even think about suggesting
that you give these millions back, you've got to cut him off.
"So you won't voluntarily look at this," Van Hollen is mumbling, "and
say, given what has happened in this project . . . "
"No, sir, I will not," you snap.
". . . 'We will return the profits.' . . ."
"No, sir, I will not," you repeat.
Your testimony over, you wait out the rest of the hearing, go home,
take a bath in one of your four bathrooms, jump into bed with the
little woman. . . .
A year later, Iraq is still in flames, and your president's
administration is safely focused on reclaiming $485 million in aid
money from a bunch of toothless black survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
But the house you bought for $775K is now
They built big steaming **** piles, set brand-new trucks on fire,
drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped
bags of nails in ditches.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle/print
Aug 23, 2007
The Great Iraq Swindle
How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S.
Treasury
How is it done?
How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then
ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other
wrapped around a chilled martini?
Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful
contractor in Iraq.
You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat:
in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which
Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and
contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion.
You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a
military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill
to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003,
when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private
construction company looking to do work in Iraq.
Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on
Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been
promising her all these years.
The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good
-- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter
home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and
ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless
careers.
On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start
living that private-sector good life.
A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a
contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design
and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to
house and train at least 4,000 police recruits.
But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning
police academy but one of the great engineering cluster****s of all
time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that
its walls and ceilings are literally caked in **** and piss, a result
of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.
You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in
the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of
the Saw movies:
"We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that
it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so
pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that
"during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an
assessment team member's shirt."
The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch
on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.
When Congress gets wind of the fiasco, a few members on the House
Oversight Committee demand a hearing.
To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill -- after
all, you're a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this
kind of contracting operation for the government.
So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down
before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked
by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen
how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of ****.
You blink.
**** if you know.
"I have some conjecture, but that's all it would be" is your deadpan
answer.
The room twitters in amazement.
It's hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress
short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all
might have gone.
Next thing you know, the congressman is asking you about your
company's compensation.
Touchy subject -- you've got a "cost-plus" contract, which means
you're guaranteed a base-line profit of three percent of your total
costs on the deal.
The more you spend, the more you make -- and you certainly spent a
hell of a lot.
But before this milk-faced congressman can even think about suggesting
that you give these millions back, you've got to cut him off.
"So you won't voluntarily look at this," Van Hollen is mumbling, "and
say, given what has happened in this project . . . "
"No, sir, I will not," you snap.
". . . 'We will return the profits.' . . ."
"No, sir, I will not," you repeat.
Your testimony over, you wait out the rest of the hearing, go home,
take a bath in one of your four bathrooms, jump into bed with the
little woman. . . .
A year later, Iraq is still in flames, and your president's
administration is safely focused on reclaiming $485 million in aid
money from a bunch of toothless black survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
But the house you bought for $775K is now