THE CALAMITY HOWLER #167
 
Resent-Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 09:07:16 -0500 (CDT)


THE CALAMITY HOWLER

August 2, 2007 Issue #167

Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage in
the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas Times one finds the
way Populists not only accepted the label `calamity howler but
insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue to
howl until their objectives had been attained. --- THE POPULIST
MIND, edited by Norman Pollack

EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs E-MAIL: avkrebs@comcast.net TO RECEIVE:
Send name and address to avkrebs@comcast.net

OVERVIEW:

* COMMENTARY: "UNITING" A COMMUNITY IN A COMMON BOND * SAUDIS' ROLE
IN IRAQ FRUSTRATES U.S. OFFICIALS By Helene Cooper * U.S. SET TO
OFFER HUGE ARMS DEAL TO SAUDI ARABIA By David S. Cloud * APATHY
PLAGUES IRAQI PARLIAMENT By Molly Hennessy-Fiske * BECHTEL MEETS
GOALS ON FEWER THAN HALF OF ITS IRAQ REBUILDING PROJECTS By James
Glanz * FORT LEWIS WON"T SWITCH TO MONTHLY MEMORIALS By The Associated
Press * KIDS FACE MORE NEGLECT WHEN PARENTS AT WAR By Internet
Broacasting

COMMENTARY:

"UNITING" A COMMUNITY IN A COMMON BOND

Living in Washington, D.C in the 1980s and the early 90s I had the
thrill of watching the hometown team Redskins win three Super Bowl
championships and unfortunately miss out on a fourth.

One of my most vivid memories of that era was getting on the
Pennsylvania Avenue after each exciting victory by the Skins and
becoming part of a joyous celebrating community. At the time my
flat was in an area of Capitol Hill which had yet to become thoroughly
gentrified so the bus was usually a mixture of the nations capital
population, yet there was no racial barriers on that bus.

Witnessing this display of fellowship I couldnt help feeling a
certain degree of dissatisfaction for here was a city still marked
by discrimination and class and yet being brought together by a
sports team. Why does it have to been a sports team, I would ask
myself, to unite a community in a common bond ?

Reading the reports recently concerning that Iraqi soccer team had
won their first Asian Cup by scoring an upset overtime 1-0 victory
over the Saudi Arabia team, I felt that same sense of frustration
come over me, particularly concerning its joyous aftermath,

As the Los Angeles Times Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported concerning
the celebration in the war ravaged country: Fans took to the streets
to celebrate across Iraq --- in Kurdish areas to the north, Shiite
holy cities to the south and several neighborhoods in the capital.

Revelers took to the streets on foot, painting their faces with the
tri-color Iraqi flag, throwing candy or shooting fireworks in
triumph. Iraqi soldiers waved from passing vehicles. Honking cars
clogged the main route into Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, home
to the U.S. Embassy and U.S. military posts.

Sporadic gunfire, much of it deemed to be celebratory, still could
be heard hours after the game ended.

"It's a triumph and unity for Iraqis, a glorious day. Why not
celebrate?" said Khadim Lafta Alwan, 37, a government worker in the
southern city of Basra

Various leaders from divergent sects, including Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, Vice President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd,
plus members of the largest Sunni Arab bloc congratulated the team
on their win as did Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military
commander in Iraq.

"This is a gift to the united Iraqi people, to the different spectrums
of the Iraqi people," said mid-fielder Nashaat Akram as he stood
drenched in sweat on the field in Jakarta, Indonesia.

As Hennessy-Fiske reports in Baghdad, the victory by the team fans
call `The Lions of the Two Rivers, after the Tigris and Euphrates,
reminded Shiite Muslim laborer Muhammed Hussein of Iraq's potential
"

`These players helped us keep our faces up, Hussein, 43, said. `They
showed us what the real Iraq is and how we can work hard to be
something."

Even political blocs put their squabbles on hold following the teams
victory,with the largest Sunni party postponing a major statement
in light of the game. As tennis coach Mustafa Faraj, 53, observed,
"It seems that sports have become more important than politics."

Indeed, as Hennessy-Fiske reports at a time when sectarian tensions
between Shiites and Sunnis have worsened in the Iraqi government
and on the streets, the soccer team has been credited with helping
unite Iraqis. Its leaders include Sunni and Shiite Muslims who work
well together and often talk about overcoming sectarianism.

In Kirkuk, a northern oil city known for its various ethnicities,
Sirwan Rasheed, 55, a Kurd, said he erected flags in the team's
honor with friends of various sects and ethnicities --- Sunni and
Shiite Arabs, Turkomans and Christians.`This team has united the
sons of Iraq from the south to the north,he said.

Would that the Iraqis tennis coach was correct and that rivalries
between nations and divisions could be settled on the athletic
fields and courts of the world rather than in life and death battles
in the cities and villages of ones own country.

Yet, at this writing some 3660 Americans are dead with another
26,943 wounded, many seriously, due to being caught in the midst
of a civil war, induced primarily by a country seeking to assert
itself as an imperial power In pursuit of a natural resource which
will allow itself to live in the privileged life style to which it
has become accustomed.

But American lives are not the only casualties in Iraq as a recent
Oxfam International report has concluded for poverty, hunger and
public health continue to worsen in the country which says that
more aid is needed from abroad. It calls on the Iraqi government
to decentralize the distribution of food and medical supplies.

The report states that roughly four million Iraqis, many of them
children, are in dire need of food aid; that 70% of the country
lacks access to adequate water supplies, up from 50% in 2003; and
that 90% of the countrys hospitals lack basic medical and surgical
supplies. One survey cited in the report, completed in May by the
Iraqi Ministry of Planning, found that 43% of Iraqis live in absolute
poverty, earning less than $1 a day.

Unemployment and hunger are particularly acute among the estimated
two million people displaced internally from their homes by violence,
many of whom are jobless, homeless and largely left on their own.
The government of Iraq, international donors and the United Nations
system have been focused on reconstruction, development and building
political institutions, and have overlooked the harsh daily struggle
for survival now faced by many, the report says.

At the outset of the Iraqi conflict George W. Bush stated intention
of invading the Middle Eastern country as to bring democracy to
that nation. That idea has long since vanished to be replaced by
the U.S. battling to not suffer a humiliating defeat. A war mongering
ego obsessed Bush and his syncopates in the White House are now
paying and will continue to pay a costly price in human lives and
national honor by giving due attention to the words of comedian-activist
Dick Gregory when he observed many years ago:

If democracy is so good why do we have to go to other countries and
try to jam it down their throats with a gun. Stay here and make
democracy work. If its good you dont have to force it on others ---
theyll steal it !!!

SAUDIS' ROLE IN IRAQ FRUSTRATES U.S. OFFICIALS By Helene Cooper New
York Times JULY 27, 2007

During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials
confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest
that Iraqs prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning
him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was
aimed in part at Mr. Sadrs militia. Another document purported to
offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged.
But, said administration officials who provided an account of the
exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift
between Americas most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and
its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at
what they say has been Saudi Arabias counterproductive role in the
Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian
agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups
in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq
each month, American military and intelligence officials say that
nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have
not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that
Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr.
Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni
insurgents because, he said, That would get into disagreements over
who is an insurgent and who is not.

Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns
would be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to
Jidda, Saudi Arabia. Officials in Washington have long resisted
blaming Saudi Arabia for the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq,
choosing instead to pin blame on Iran and Syria. Even now, military
officials rarely talk publicly about the role of Saudi fighters
among the insurgents in Iraq.

The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several
senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia
would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the
United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki
and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy
goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan. In
agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi Arabia,
the officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a pointed
signal to a top American ally. They expressed deep frustration that
more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce
a change in course.

The American officials said they had no doubt that the documents
shown to Mr. Khalilzad were forgeries, though the Saudis said they
had obtained them from sources in Iraq. Maliki wouldnt be stupid
enough to put that on a piece of paper, one senior Bush administration
official said. He said Mr. Maliki later assured American officials
that the documents were forgeries.

The Bush administrations frustration with the Saudi government has
increased in recent months because it appears that Saudi Arabia has
stepped up efforts to undermine the Maliki government and to pursue
a different course in Iraq from what the administration has charted.
Saudi Arabia has also stymied a number of other American foreign
policy initiatives, including a hoped-for Saudi embrace of Israel.

Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to
prop up Sunni groups in Iraq and has for the past two years explicitly
told senior Bush administration officials of the need to counterbalance
the influence Iran has there. Last fall, King Abdullah warned Vice
President Dick Cheney that Saudi Arabia might provide financial
backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraqs Shiites if the
United States pulled its troops out of Iraq, American and Arab
diplomats said.

Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed
that Saudi Arabias direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this
year as the Saudis lost faith in the Maliki government and felt
they must bolster Sunni groups in the eventuality of a widespread
civil war.

Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf
countries to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups
in Iraq, said one former American ambassador with close ties to
officials in the Middle East. The former ambassador, Edward W.
Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan, said that during a
recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia had pressed
other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council --- which includes
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman --- to
give financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this
effort last December, Mr. Gnehm said.

The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an
Op-Ed page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by
Mr. Khalilzad, now the United States ambassador to the United
Nations. Several of Iraqs neighbors --- not only Syria and Iran but
also some friends of the United States --- are pursuing destabilizing
policies, Mr. Khalilzad wrote. Administration officials said Mr.
Khalilzad was referring specifically to Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates.

Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates, as well as Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley,
the national security adviser, have in recent months pressed their
Arab counterparts to do more to encourage Iraqs Sunni leaders to
support Mr. Maliki, senior administration officials said.

This message certainly has been made very clear in Riyadh and Abu
Dhabi, a senior administration official said. But there is a deep
reserve directed both at the person of the Maliki government but
more broadly at the concept that Iraqs Shiites are surrogates of
Iran. Saudi Arabia has grown increasingly concerned about the rising
influence of Iran in the region.

A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return
telephone calls on Thursday. But one adviser to the royal family
said that Saudi officials were aware of the American accusations.
As you know by now, we in Saudi Arabia have been active in having
a united Arab front to, first, avoid further inter-Arab conflict,
and at the same time building consensus to move toward a peace
settlement between the Arabs and Israel, he said. How others judge
our motives is their problem.

Even as American frustration at Saudi Arabia grows, American military
officials are still cautious about publicly detailing the extent
of the flow of foreign fighters going to Iraq from Saudi Arabia.
Earlier this month, for instance, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the top
American military spokesman in Iraq, detailed the odyssey of a
foreign fighter recently captured in Ramadi.

In his public account, General Bergner told reporters that the man
had arrived in Syria on a chartered bus, was smuggled into Iraq by
a Syrian facilitator, and was given instructions to carry out a
suicide truck bombing on a bridge in Ramadi. He did not identify
the mans nationality, but American officials in Iraq say he was a
Saudi.

The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide
bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40% of all
foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the
foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others
arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers.

American military and intelligence officials have been critical of
Saudi efforts to stanch the flow of fighters into Iraq, although
they stress that the Saudi government does not endorse the idea of
fighters from Saudi Arabia going to Iraq. On the contrary, they
said, Saudi Arabia is concerned that these young men could acquire
insurgency training in Iraq and then return home to carry out attacks
in Saudi Arabia --- similar to the Saudis who turned against their
homeland after fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Bush administrations relationship with Saudi Arabia has
deteriorated steadily since the United States invasion of Iraq,
culminating in April when, bitingly, King Abdullah, during a speech
before Arab heads of state in Riyadh, condemned the American invasion
of Iraq as an illegal foreign occupation.

A month before that, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed a high-profile
meeting between Israelis and Palestinians, planned by Ms. Rice, by
brokering a power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian president,
Mahmoud Abbas, and the militant Islamist group Hamas that did not
require Hamas to recognize Israel. While that agreement eventually
fell apart, the Bush administration, on both occasions, was caught
off guard and became infuriated. But Saudi officials have not been
too happy with President Bush, either, and the plummeting of Americas
image in the Muslim world has led King Abdullah to strive to set a
more independent course.

The administration thinks the Saudis are no longer behaving the
role of the good vassal, said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and
director of the American Strategy Program at the New America
Foundation. The Saudis, in turn, see weakness, they see a void, and
theyre going to fill the void and call their own shots.

This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim
Rutenberg, and written by Ms. Cooper. Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed
reporting from Baghdad.

U.S. SET TO OFFER HUGE ARMS DEAL TO SAUDI ARABIA By David S. Cloud
New York Times July 28, 2007

The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an
arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected
to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States
officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive
role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which
includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters
and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters
in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on
Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those
concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid
over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has
received in the past ten years.

But administration officials remained concerned that the size of
the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader
concerns about Saudi Arabias role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics
in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified
about the deal this fall. In talks about the package, the administration
has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would
be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a condition
of receiving the arms package, the officials said.

The officials said the plan to bolster the militaries of Persian
Gulf countries is part of an American strategy to contain the growing
power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what
happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab
allies. Officials from the State Department and the Pentagon agreed
to outline the terms of the deal after some details emerged from
closed briefings this week on Capitol Hill.

The officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates, who are to make a joint visit to Saudi
Arabia next week, still intended to use the trip to press the Saudis
to do more to help Iraqs Shiite-dominated government. The role of
the Sunni Arab neighbors is to send a positive, affirmative message
to moderates in Iraq in government that the neighbors are with you,
a senior State Department official told reporters in a conference
call on Friday. More specifically, the official said, the United
States wants the gulf states to make clear to Sunnis engaged in
violence in Iraq that such actions are killing your future.

In addition to promising an increase in American military aid to
Israel, the Pentagon is seeking to ease Israels concerns over the
proposed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by asking the Saudis to
accept restrictions on the range, size and location of the
satellite-guided bombs, including a commitment not to store the
weapons at air bases close to Israeli territory, the officials said.

The package and the possible steps to allay Israels concerns were
described to Congress this week, in an effort by the administration
to test the reaction on Capitol Hill before entering into final
negotiations on the package with Saudi officials. The Saudis had
requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials
said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol
Hill that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the
kingdom.

In his visit with King Abdullah and other Saudi officials next week,
Mr. Gates plans to describe what the administration is willing to
go forward with in the arms package and what we would recommend to
the Hill and others, according to a senior Pentagon official, who
conducted a background briefing on the upcoming trip with reporters
on Friday. The official added that Mr. Gates would also reassure
the Saudis that regardless of what happens in the near term in Iraq
that our commitment in the region remains firm, remains steadfast
and that, in fact, we are looking to enhance and develop it.

The $20 billion price tag on the package is more than double what
officials originally estimated when details became public this
spring. Even the higher figure is a rough estimate that could
fluctuate depending on the final package, which would be carried
out over a number of years, officials said.

Worried about the impression that the United States was starting
an arms race in the region, State and Defense Department officials
stressed that the arms deal was being proposed largely in response
to improvements in Irans military capabilities and to counter the
threat posed by its nuclear program, which the Bush administration
contends is aimed at building nuclear weapons.

Along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United
Arab Emirates are likely to receive equipment and weaponry from the
arms sales under consideration, officials said. In general, the
United States is interested in upgrading the countries air and
missile defense systems, improving their navies and making modest
improvements in their air forces, administration officials said,
though not all the packages would be the same. Ms. Rice is expected
to announce Monday that the administration will open formal discussions
with each country about the proposed packages, in hopes of reaching
agreements by the fall.

Along with the announcement of formal talks with Persian Gulf allies
on the arms package, Ms. Rice is planning to outline the new agreement
to provide military aid to Israel, as well as a similar accord with
Egypt. The $30.4 billion being promised to Israel is $9.1 billion
more than Israel has received over the past decade, an increase of
nearly 43%. A senior administration official said the sizable
increase was a result of Israels need to replace equipment expended
in its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer, as well as to
maintain its advantage in advanced weaponry as other countries in
the region modernize their forces.

In defending the proposed sale to Saudi Arabia and other gulf states,
the officials noted that the Saudis and several of the other countries
were in talks with suppliers other than the United States. If the
packages offered to them by the United States are blocked or come
with too many conditions, the officials said, the Persian Gulf
countries could turn elsewhere for similar equipment, reducing
American influence in the region.

The United States has made few, if any, sales of satellite-guided
munitions to Arab countries in the past, though Israel has received
them since the mid-1990s as part of a United States policy of
ensuring that Israel has a military edge over its regional rivals.
Israeli officials have made specific requests aimed at eliminating
concerns that satellite-guided bombs sold to the Saudis could be
used against its territory, administration officials said.

Their major concern is not a full-scale Saudi attack, but the
possibility that a rogue pilot armed with one of the bombs could
attack on his own or that the Saudi government could one day be
overthrown and the weapons could fall into the hands of a more
radical regime, officials said.

APATHY PLAGUES IRAQI PARLIAMENT By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Los Angeles
Times July 28, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq --- Missing this week from a session of the Iraqi
parliament were about half of the members, including the speaker,
the former speaker and two former prime ministers.

Also missing: a sense of urgency.

American officials have been pressuring Iraqi leaders to prove their
determination to overcome sectarian strife by approving landmark
legislation before the Bush administration's next report to Congress
on Iraq in mid-September. But even as parliament's monthlong August
break approaches, key issues are not under discussion. Quorums are
marginal, or fleeting.

On Thursday, the parliament's 50th session of the year, members
convened a half-hour late. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name
roll call took another half-hour, a quarter of the time in what
turned out to be a roughly two-hour session. A bell rang in the
convention center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to
take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic
system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137
as members walked out after the first vote.

Those present circulated an agenda of 11 items, none related to the
benchmark legislation the U.S. has been demanding, including laws
concerning oil investment and revenue-sharing between regions;
re-integrating former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime
into government, disarming militias and mounting local elections.

Some members say the meetings are a symptom of parliament's inability
to overcome sectarian divisions and put together the two-thirds
majority to pass substantive legislation. "The fact of the matter
is our will is big, but our action is too little," said Saleem
Abdullah, a member of the Sunni Tawafiq bloc, which withdrew from
the Cabinet last week.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, on Friday attacked the block,
saying it had "shown sympathy, if not outright support to terrorist
forces," including affiliates of al-Qaida.

The parliament is under pressure from the U.S. and Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki to stay at work the rest of the summer.
But having already sacrificed one month of scheduled vacation in
July, and shifted from three- to six-day workweeks, many are unwilling
to give up their August break and unlikely to make progress before
it starts next week.

Still, President Bush remained upbeat about parliament's efforts.
"The Iraqi parliament has passed quite a few pieces of legislation,
and they're trying to work through their differences," Bush told
an organization of state officials in Philadelphia on Thursday.
Thursday's session began with members congratulating the Iraqi
national soccer team on their Wednesday victory over South Korea
in the Asian Cup competition. That ate up about ten minutes. The
chair of the sports committee then took the podium and chastised
the lawmakers.

"Our team promised us they would win. Where are the politicians who
promised us electricity and cold water?" said Hassan Othman, who
leads the sports committee. No one responded.

BECHTEL MEETS GOALS ON FEWER THAN HALF OF ITS IRAQ REBUILDING
PROJECTS By James Glanz New York Times July 26, 2007

One of the largest American contractors working in Iraq, Bechtel
National, met its original objectives on fewer than half of the
projects it received as part of a $1.8 billion reconstruction
contract, while most of the rest were canceled, reduced in scope
or never completed as designed, federal investigators have found
in a report released yesterday.

But the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction,
an independent agency, places a large share of the blame for the
failures on the government overseers at the United States Agency
for International Development who administered the contract. The
aid agency assigned just two people in Iraq to oversee the giant
contract, which included some 24 major projects and 150 subcontractors
and stipulated that all invoices be approved or denied in just 10
days.

The report is the first of a planned series of audits of Western
contractors that have received large slices of the roughly $40
billion in American taxpayer money that has been spent on the
troubled program to rebuild Iraq. Previous audits have looked at
individual projects but never the performance across Iraq of a
single contractor.

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who heads the special inspector generals office,
said the United States government clearly shared responsibility
with the company for the project failures. I would say theres fault
on both sides, Mr. Bowen said in an interview yesterday. He added
that neither the aid agency nor the United States Army Corps of
Engineers, which also oversaw aspects of the contract, ever came
close to filling all their staff positions in Iraq.

This isnt so much an indictment of Bechtel as it is a criticism of
the system, said Stephen Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for
Common Sense in Washington. Those two individuals overseeing over
a billion dollars in contracting  it seems to me they may deserve
a medal, but they shouldnt have had to do that, Mr. Ellis said.

While the new audit is a sometimes scathing look at landfills that
were never dug, fiber-optic networks never completed and sewage
treatment facilities that never worked as designed, there is also
praise for the work Bechtel did complete, including the installation
of two huge electrical generators at the Baghdad South Power Plant
and the rehabilitation of a sewer system in the Zafaraniya section
of the capital.

Its actually quite positive, looking at it from a Bechtel perspective,
in a lot of cases, said Bill Shoaf, program director for the companys
Iraq infrastructure program. Although only ten of the 24 job orders
met their original objectives, Mr. Shoaf said, Conditions change
and priorities change and customers want change.

Bechtel was one of the first American contractors working in Iraq
after the invasion, and it received an early reconstruction contract
worth about $1 billion in April 2003. Later that year, Congress
approved a much larger reconstruction program, worth $18.3 billion,
to rebuild Iraqs water, sanitation, electrical, oil, transportation
and telecommunications sectors. In January 2004, the company received
a contract for $1.8 billion of the rebuilding project to carry out
some of that work.

But by April of 2004, the main Iraq insurgency had broken out,
greatly complicating reconstruction efforts. And at the same time,
American government agencies overseeing the effort struggled to
fill staff positions. The aid agency filled only 170 of 251 authorized
positions in Iraq, the inspector generals report says, while the
Army Corps filled just 18 of 37 positions it had created to support
the agency in the country.

Adding further turmoil to the program was the decision by the United
States to shift billions of dollars from reconstruction to arming
and training Iraqi security forces, causing dozens of projects to
be cut back or canceled. Even on the projects that survived,
contractors like Bechtel subcontracted much of the work to companies
that in turn subcontracted parts of the work to other companies,
and so on, making oversight of progress in a dangerous, war-torn
country nightmarish at times.

The inspector generals report is careful to point out that even
under these conditions, Bechtel was successful on a number of
projects, and a few  including a $22 million water plant --- actually
came in at under the expected cost. In other instances, however,
the report says, millions of dollars were spent and requirements
were not met, reduced or clearly established.

Among the work that failed was a huge project to add desperately
needed electrical output to the Musayyib power plant, south of
Baghdad. Originally budgeted at $23 million, the project ran into
problems with American subcontractors, the Iraqi Electricity Ministry
and deteriorating local security. Finally, only $6.6 million was
paid out before the project ended, and even then, the report says,
there is no clear indication of whether anything actually improved
at the plant. Thus, it is difficult to establish the value of the
product received for the $6.6 million cost of this job order, the
report says.

Perhaps even more telling was a Baghdad landfill project originally
budgeted at $14 million but never dug, even after $4 million had
been spent on the project. Highly trumpeted by the American authorities
in Iraq, the project was to be something entirely new for a country
never known for the quality of its sanitation facilities. The report
says in dry language that the project was canceled after three sites
were considered and rejected because of land ownership issues and
security concerns.

Mr. Shoaf, of Bechtel, said the history of the project was considerably
more colorful. The first site considered was near Abu Ghraib, an
area that turned out to be a cauldron of insurgent activity, in
addition to containing a notorious prison. The site also happened
to be riddled with unexploded military ordnance and was abandoned,
Mr. Shoaf said.

Work began on a second site on the outskirts of Baghdad, but the
local Iraqi governing council ordered that the landfill be moved
elsewhere, he said. Finally, the project turned to a third Baghdad
site where, as it happened, the water table was too high for a
landfill to be excavated. So, Mr. Shoaf said, the project was dropped
and the equipment that had been purchased was turned over to the
Iraqi government. By that time, according to the inspector generals
report, $4 million had been spent.

ARMY MAJOR FACES BRIBERY CHARGES

An Army major is facing federal charges that in 2005 he accepted
millions of dollars in bribes from contractors doing business with
the Pentagon in Iraq and Kuwait. The Justice Department said yesterday
that the major, John Cockerham, 41, of San Antonio, either awarded
or controlled the contracts. He has been charged with bribery, money
laundering and conspiracy. He and his wife, Melissa, were charged
Sunday. His sister Carolyn Blake, 44, of Sunnyvale, Tex., was charged
Tuesday. His wife and his sister were charged with conspiracy.

FORT LEWIS WON"T SWITCH TO MONTHLY MEMORIALS By The Associated Press
July 25, 2007

FORT LEWIS, Washington --- The commanding general of Fort Lewis' I
Corps said today that the Army base will continue holding individual
memorials for fallen soldiers rather than switching to monthly
ceremonies.

In May, Brig. Gen. William Troy, then-acting commanding general,
sparked outrage when he announced Fort Lewis would begin holding
one monthly service for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Critics suggested mass memorials would deny soldiers the individual
tributes they deserve. Fort Lewis had traditionally held individual
memorials, typically for one or two soldiers at a time. But a surge
in casualties --- 20 deaths in May alone --- forced the base to
start holding services for several soldiers at a time. "As much as
we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number
of soldiers we now have in harm's way, our losses will preclude us
from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies," Troy said
in a May 22 memo to commanders and staff.

But soon after taking over as commanding general in June, Lt. Gen.
Charles H. Jacoby Jr. put the policy change on hold, saying he
wanted time to discuss the matter with soldiers, their families,
Army retirees and others in the community. "I wanted to be very
deliberate in my approach because this is an issue that is important
to all of us," Jacoby said during a meeting with reporters Wednesday.

Jacoby said Fort Lewis will hold all memorials on Wednesdays  a
choice aimed at helping the community plan for the services and
making it easier for faraway relatives to book affordable airplane
tickets. He also noted Wednesdays would not likely conflict with
holidays. About 10,000 of Fort Lewis' 28,000 soldiers are currently
serving in Iraq, roughly 8,000 of them from the 3rd and 4th Stryker
brigades. The base has lost 141 soldiers in Iraq since the war
started in March 2003 and nine in Afghanistan since that war began
in October 2001, Fort Lewis spokesman Joe Hitt said.

KIDS FACE MORE NEGLECT WHEN PARENTS AT WAR By Internet Broacasting
July 31, 2007

Children left behind with one parent while the other is deployed
for military action face more mistreatment, according to a new study
by RTI International and the University of North Carolina.

"The rate of maltreatment by female parents, mothers or stepmothers
was more than three times greater during soldier's deployment as
it was during other times," said Deborah Gibbs, who helped conduct
the study.

Gibbs said that physical abuse increased, but the problem was more
likely to be neglect.

"The rate of child neglect, when a parent doesn't provide for the
basic needs of the child or doesn't supervise the child in a way
that's appropriate for the child's age, was nearly four times as
high during deployments compared to other times," she said.

The rates of child maltreatment weren't as high for men left at
home with kids, possibly because they seek help from extended family,
researchers said. However, mistreatment went up in all kinds of
families, regardless of the age of the parent, race, where the
family was stationed or the soldiers' rank.

The Department of Defense asked for the research, and the results
appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association