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Iraqi Moneypit   (December 27, 2006)


Frequent contributor Michael Goodfellow sent in this link to yet another Iraqi Moneypit story, along with a succinct commentary he titled "Good enough for government work":

U.S. to pay $4.6 billion for translators in Iraq.

The army has awarded a contract for management of translation and interpretation services in Iraq to Global Linguistic Solutions. GLS, a joint venture of DynCorp International and McNeil Technologies, has received a five-year contract, with a maximum value of $4.645 billion.

Executives said this would include supplying translators for embedding with U.S. forces. They said GLS would employ up to 6,000 Iraqi translators and up to 1,000 U.S. citizens. The Americans, with native ability to speak the Iraqi dialect, would acquire security clearances.
Michael's commentary:
$4.64 billion / 7000 people = $662,857 per person. Isn't this a lot? Especially for the Iraqis? I seem to remember the GDP of Iraq is something like $20 billion...

Of course, the overall force expenditures are similarly ridiculous. The 150,000 troops plus 100,000 contractors are costing something like $90 billion a year, or $360,000 a year per person.

Why don't reporters ever ask these questions? Not to mention the question of why wait this long to hire translators! I'd also like to know why they aren't training soldiers there in native languages whenever they have any off time.

Michael

Excellent questions, Michael. And I'll add a few more. Why hasn't there been more major media skepticism of the entire "reconstruction" model of contracts being awarded to giant U.S. firms? Was there an alternative model, i.e. awarding small contracts with U.S. oversight to small, local Iraqi firms? Were Germany and Japan rebuilt after World War II via huge contracts to U.S. contractors? Though I am not an expert on this topic, I believe the answer is a firm "no."

The template of Iraqi "reconstruction" is Vietnam, where Lyndon Johnson's Texas pals, contractors Brown and Root (since absorbed by Halliburton) were awarded stupendously profitable contracts to build infrastructure which in World War II had been constructed by the SeeBees or the Army Corps of Engineers. Even a losing war can be hugely profitable, as the Iraqi "reconstruction" is so ably proving.


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