83^rd in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. The White House continues to try to shift emphasis away from its prior claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the administration continues to safeguard U.S. control of Iraqi oil.
April 28-30, 2003:

Apr. 28, 2003 – Bush discusses Iraq in a speech at a defense factory in Dearborn, Michigan:

“Right now, engineers are on the ground working with Iraqi experts to restore power, and fix broken water pipes in Baghdad and other cities. We're working with the International Red Cross, the Red Crescent Societies, the International Medical Corps and other aid agencies to help Iraqi hospitals get safe water and medical supplies and reliable electricity. Our coalition is cooperating with the United Nations to help restart the ration distribution system that provides food at thousands of sites in Iraq. And coalition medical facilities have treated Iraqis from everything from fractures and burns to symptoms of stroke.”

Apr. 29, 2003 – The White House issues a paper, “Saddam Hussein’s Development of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” The paper, which recycles the material published above by Judith Miller in the New York Times, is a substitute for new news that the administration had hoped to be able to put out–caches of WMD discovered in Iraq:
 

* “In 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Mr. Saeed, a civil engineer, supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contracts, complete with technical specifications. Mr. Saeed said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the United Nations - and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs.

* Iraq admitted to producing biological agents, and after the 1995 defection of a senior Iraqi official, Iraq admitted to the weaponization of thousands of liters of anthrax, botulinim toxin, and aflatoxin for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs and aircraft.

* United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) experts concluded that Iraq's declarations on biological agents vastly understated the extent of its program, and that Iraq actually produced two to four times the amount of most agents, including anthrax and botulinim toxin, than it had declared.” [etc.]

Apr. 30, 2003 – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on a trip to Iraq, says America has a special responsibility to rebuild Iraq:
 

“We have to help Iraqis restore their basic services. And we have to help provide conditions of stability and security so that the Iraqi people can form an interim authority, an interim government, and then ultimately a free Iraqi government based on political freedom, individual liberty, and the rule of law.”

Unfortunately, Rumsfeld’s public statement coincides with orders to Iraqi oil ministers, see below, from unnamed U.S. officials not to do anything about oil without an okay from the U.S. Thus it appears that the main focus on Iraqi infrastructure is the petroleum industry.

Apr. 30, 2003 – U.S. officials order Iraqi oil ministers not to act without American permission. To its credit, the New York Times reports this directive promptly:

“An American official met today with Iraq's two most senior deputy oil ministers for the first time and warned them not to make any changes in their hierarchy without the approval of the allied forces in control of the country.

The meeting between Gary Vogler, an officer on the coalition forces' reconstruction team, and the Iraqi deputy ministers, Mazen Muhammad Ali Jumaa and Hussain Suliman al-Hadithy, occurred in the still-darkened halls of the Iraqi Oil Ministry -- one of the very few government buildings to have survived the looting of Baghdad intact -- and came as American planners continue to assemble a team that will oversee the reconstruction of Iraq's vast but worn oil industry.”

The Times, under heavy fire for aiding and abetting the administration push to war, sometimes makes amends.

Apr. 30, 2003 – Gwen Ifill on PBS reports that huge contracts for Iraq reconstruction are being awarded by federal agencies to Bush-connected corporations:

“The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is charged with leading the effort to rebuild Iraq.

So far, USAID has awarded six contracts, all to American companies. The largest by far went to California's Bechtel Corporation -- $680 million to build and repair Iraq's infrastructure. Bechtel, one of the world's largest engineering and construction companies, put out fires and helped clean up Kuwait's oil fields after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. USAID invited just six firms to compete for the contract, a process USAID head Andrew Natsios defended.

ANDREW NATSIOS, Administrator, USAID: The federal law requires us to source our contracts through American companies. That's a federal statute, congressional law. There is a provision in the law that allows us to waive the provisions in the national security interests of the United States.

So in January, we decided to waive the law, particularly for subcontracts, because more than 50 percent of the money that goes to the contracts will in fact go through subcontracts, . . .

GWEN IFILL: But the selection of Bechtel, which has close ties to the Bush administration, has stirred some criticism. On Capitol Hill, democrats called for an investigation by the General Accounting Office. Natsios, in response, asked the agency's inspector general to review the awards.”

The project of Iraq reconstruction is looking less and less like a disinterested humanitarian enterprise—already, one month after the invasion. The profiteering will continue, at the expense of the American and Iraqi peoples, for years.