Originally posted by: lupy
You think Halliburton won fair and square? They won because of a secret bidding, British firms were not allowed to bid even though the Brits are also part of coalition to free Iraq.
Before you ask me for proof, here it is:
Secret bidding
ABCNEWS has obtained a copy of a 99-page contract worth $600 million.
This is less than 1% of the cost of the war. Pretty cheap.
The USAID contract is filled with details about plans to construct Iraqi schools, airports, roads, bridges, hospitals, power plants and more.
This sounds like good stuff that Iraq SHOULD spend some of their oil money on.
But other details are being shielded by the USAID, which chose to conduct the bidding in secret.
"It's the scope and breadth that, I think, has made people take a second look at this in terms of the secrecy and the limitations of competition," said Steven Schooner, a law professor at George Washington University.
Oooh, a conspiracy!
Normally, USAID puts out contracts on the Internet, and any company can bid. But to move this through quickly, the agency said it went to firms with track records and security clearances. It asked seven ? about half the number that normally would have sought the business ? to bid.
What, did they want to get this done faster than the usual 3 year government process? Can't those lazy Iraqi's wait just 3 years?!?
Among the companies believed to be bidding are Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, the Washington Group and Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm.
All are experienced. But in addition, all are generous political donors ? principally to Republicans.
Can you name even ONE successful company that isn't conservative? Any company smart enough to get rich, is also smart enough to be conservative.
The secret bidding is legal, but controversial.
Those dem's need something to bitch about. Everything is going too well.
"If you don't have an open process, the odds are you may not get the best price, you may not get the best contractor, you may not have the best quality control, which may impact your mission success," Schooner said.
You also might have to wait the usual 3 years...
British troops are serving alongside U.S. troops in Iraq. But the closed process blocked British companies, as well as any foreign firm, from bidding.
The U.S. has paid for the Lion's share of this and all other recent world (UN) spending. Let's try and have some of our tax money come back home once in a while... Although we could at least let the French in on this...
"We have a very keen diplomatic interest in ensuring that others not only are involved, not only will be involved, but feel as though they are part of this post-conflict exercise," said Eric Schwartz of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank.
We need to "buy" our friends by giving them lots of money. Clinton understood this concept.
Also left out were international development groups, which historically have been essential to nation rebuilding because they emphasize the involvement of local people.
Yeah, several African countries could probably give some pointers on how to conduct a good civil war.
"They must have ownership over this full development process," said Mary McClymont, chief executive officer of InterAction, an alliance of dozens of U.S.-based nongovernmental relief organizations. "Otherwise, it's a recipe for failure."
Yeah, let's just leave and see how well anarchy really works.
USAID denies politics are involved in any of this.
It's a shame that they want to use common sense and try to do the best thing possible, when they could have been political and tried to buy some ignorant liberal votes.
The agency says within a year, Iraqis will have better lives because of the rebuilding. But the secret bidding process makes it impossible to know how much better, or possibly worse, things might have turned out.
Yeah, I don't really care if we do good things for the Iraqi's, I just wish we could have given some of this money to Greenpeace.