Múrinn fjallar í dag um uppbyggingu Írak og þá staðreynd að auður Íraka virðist eiga að flæða beint í sjóði fyrirtækja sem eru hliðholl Bandarískum stjórnvöldum.

Um daginn vísaði ég á Bagdad burning sem er blogg frá Bagdad. Þar bendir hún á áhugaverðan flöt á þessu máli. Samkvæmt henni er ekki hægt að sjá annað en að kostnaður við enduruppbyggingu Írak muni rjúka upp úr öllu valdi að ástæðulausu.

The Promise and the Threat

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

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So instead of bringing in thousands of foreign companies that are going to want billions of dollars, why aren’t the Iraqi engineers, electricians and laborers being taken advantage of? Thousands of people who have no work would love to be able to rebuild Iraq… no one is being given a chance.

Það verður eflaust leitað til Íraka varðandi uppbyggingu eftir að búið er úthluta verkefnum til Bandarískra aðila. Ég efast þó um að Írakar fái hærri laun þegar þeir vinna sem undirverktakar hjá Bandarískum stórfyrirtækjum.