Here's an interesting article (posted in two parts) from today's L.A. Times. I'd give a link but it wouldn't do most folks any good. You have to be an online subscriber. But note, it's a decent paper and subscribing is free.
jwm
May 2, 2004
Still on the Take
The U.S. has not ended Iraq's culture of corruption
By Adam Davidson
NEW YORK — I first heard a description of how corruption works in Iraq through an unexpected friendship with one of the country's richest men, a tribal sheik from the troubled Anbar region. We met shortly after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled and got together a few times a month for the next year in his office — a converted mansion, gone a bit to seed — in Baghdad's wealthy Mansour neighborhood. The sheik is a large man, overflowing with humor and self-confidence. We'd sit in his office, chain-smoking and drinking sweet Iraqi tea. He seemed to delight in shocking me with tales of backroom deals.
At first it was all history: He explained how Hussein's regime worked, but he wouldn't talk about the present, afraid of angering the new American overseers of Iraq. He told me that Hussein's cronies would invite him to their offices, offer him multimillion-dollar contracts for constructing a new bridge, say, or importing a few million dollars' worth of medical supplies. The contract was his as long as he kicked back half the money to Hussein's people.
Over time, my sheik friend told me how he saw things working these days. He said it was hard to figure the Americans out. On the one hand, they seemed fiercely opposed to corruption. Contracting officers at the U.S. government agencies would never accept a bribe, kickback or gift. Not even a wristwatch, he said. But he insisted that wasn't the case when it came to the U.S. government's surrogates: the private contractors who do much of the actual rebuilding and the Iraqi officials put in charge of the ministries. They, he said, seemed eager to engage in corruption.
It's hard to verify my Iraqi friend's stories. He doesn't give the kind of details a reporter can track down. But the sorts of things he describes don't seem outlandish given some of the stories that have been documented. KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, for example, has admitted that two of its employees accepted $6 million in bribes. Halliburton is also under investigation for allegedly overcharging for fuel and food. Many other companies — including Custer Battles, a security company that runs Baghdad International Airport, and BearingPoint, a consulting firm reconfiguring Iraq's economy — are under investigation for alleged billing irregularities.And a Pentagon official is being investigated for allegedly attempting to alter a cellular phone contract in ways that would have benefited a consortium that included his friends and colleagues.
The inspector general at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr. Adel Mohsen Abdullah, explained to me the difficulties he's had staunching corruption within the health system, how nurses demand bribes before treating patients and how hospital administrators sell much-needed medicine on the black market. At one mental hospital, the patients were forced to work, full time, under harsh conditions at a factory owned by an administrator.
While reporting in recent months for the Public Radio program Marketplace, I came face to face with corruption myself. While trying to arrange an interview about police bribery, a senior Iraqi police official said he'd take care of me — but only if I paid him a bribe.
Iraq is a difficult country to report in. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is extremely stingy with information, while Iraqis are all too generous. Nearly every Iraqi has elaborate and sometimes fantastical stories about all sorts of horrific crimes and corruption. Rumor is presented as incontrovertible fact. Before Hussein was captured, for example, several Iraqis insisted to me that he was living in the White House. It is quite difficult to weed out the truth from simple anti-American rumor-mongering. But the stories about corruption were so consistent and detailed that it seems probable that many are true. U.S. administration officials would not confirm any specific instance but repeatedly confirmed that corruption was widespread throughout Iraq.
The big money in Iraq these days is in the massive reconstruction contracts. More than $20 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds is going to rebuild the country's infrastructure: electricity, water, roads, bridges, buildings. The money is being funneled through huge private U.S. companies — Bechtel, Halliburton and the like.
jwm
May 2, 2004
Still on the Take
The U.S. has not ended Iraq's culture of corruption
By Adam Davidson
NEW YORK — I first heard a description of how corruption works in Iraq through an unexpected friendship with one of the country's richest men, a tribal sheik from the troubled Anbar region. We met shortly after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled and got together a few times a month for the next year in his office — a converted mansion, gone a bit to seed — in Baghdad's wealthy Mansour neighborhood. The sheik is a large man, overflowing with humor and self-confidence. We'd sit in his office, chain-smoking and drinking sweet Iraqi tea. He seemed to delight in shocking me with tales of backroom deals.
At first it was all history: He explained how Hussein's regime worked, but he wouldn't talk about the present, afraid of angering the new American overseers of Iraq. He told me that Hussein's cronies would invite him to their offices, offer him multimillion-dollar contracts for constructing a new bridge, say, or importing a few million dollars' worth of medical supplies. The contract was his as long as he kicked back half the money to Hussein's people.
Over time, my sheik friend told me how he saw things working these days. He said it was hard to figure the Americans out. On the one hand, they seemed fiercely opposed to corruption. Contracting officers at the U.S. government agencies would never accept a bribe, kickback or gift. Not even a wristwatch, he said. But he insisted that wasn't the case when it came to the U.S. government's surrogates: the private contractors who do much of the actual rebuilding and the Iraqi officials put in charge of the ministries. They, he said, seemed eager to engage in corruption.
It's hard to verify my Iraqi friend's stories. He doesn't give the kind of details a reporter can track down. But the sorts of things he describes don't seem outlandish given some of the stories that have been documented. KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, for example, has admitted that two of its employees accepted $6 million in bribes. Halliburton is also under investigation for allegedly overcharging for fuel and food. Many other companies — including Custer Battles, a security company that runs Baghdad International Airport, and BearingPoint, a consulting firm reconfiguring Iraq's economy — are under investigation for alleged billing irregularities.And a Pentagon official is being investigated for allegedly attempting to alter a cellular phone contract in ways that would have benefited a consortium that included his friends and colleagues.
The inspector general at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr. Adel Mohsen Abdullah, explained to me the difficulties he's had staunching corruption within the health system, how nurses demand bribes before treating patients and how hospital administrators sell much-needed medicine on the black market. At one mental hospital, the patients were forced to work, full time, under harsh conditions at a factory owned by an administrator.
While reporting in recent months for the Public Radio program Marketplace, I came face to face with corruption myself. While trying to arrange an interview about police bribery, a senior Iraqi police official said he'd take care of me — but only if I paid him a bribe.
Iraq is a difficult country to report in. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is extremely stingy with information, while Iraqis are all too generous. Nearly every Iraqi has elaborate and sometimes fantastical stories about all sorts of horrific crimes and corruption. Rumor is presented as incontrovertible fact. Before Hussein was captured, for example, several Iraqis insisted to me that he was living in the White House. It is quite difficult to weed out the truth from simple anti-American rumor-mongering. But the stories about corruption were so consistent and detailed that it seems probable that many are true. U.S. administration officials would not confirm any specific instance but repeatedly confirmed that corruption was widespread throughout Iraq.
The big money in Iraq these days is in the massive reconstruction contracts. More than $20 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds is going to rebuild the country's infrastructure: electricity, water, roads, bridges, buildings. The money is being funneled through huge private U.S. companies — Bechtel, Halliburton and the like.
