Mods: I’m looking for a factual answer to a specific question, but the nature of the content might drive this into GD territory.
There’s this known blog called Baghdad Burning, supposedly a 24 year old Iraqi female in Baghdad.
Her 28th Aug 03 post contains an anecdote that can be summarized as follows (summary below is mine)
The poster’s cousin works for a major engineering firm in Baghdad experienced in building bridges. The cousin has been in the bridge-building business for 17 years and was involved in the reconstruction of 20 out of 133 damaged bridges in the first Gulf War. The Coalition Provisional Authority asked the company to estimate the rebuilding cost for the New Diyala bridge in South-East Baghdad. The cousin and his team assessed the damage and forwarded a total all-inclusive cost of $300,000. A week later, an American company got the contract for $50 million.
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My question is, is there any way to verify the part about the American contract and the figure quoted? Or is that information under wraps?
Yuck. That bridge story was messy from day one, and you want to sort it out 3 months later? :eek:
This article might help you get started: Diyala Bridge Cost Overruns.
AlltheWeb may be your friend here. Its emphasis seems a bit more attuned to obscure news sources than does Google.
OK, this post on a blog, which has been picked up and reported in lots and lots of places (mostly web pages very critical of the US involvement in Iraq) probably can’t be confirmed. The most probable reason is that it is likely incorrect. It appears that the CPA is not letting out contracts for individual bridges. This bridge was probably included in a large contract for many construction projects. Here is another bloggers take on the situation:
I did find a number of websites that tried to determine the accurace of this. They seemed to be on both sides of the political spectrum but they were unable to confirm this. The story seems to stem from this single web blog relating what she heard from her cousin who supposedly works for a company which did not get a contract. Complicating the investigation is the fact that the Diyala River is the main river through Baghdad. There may be 50 Diyala bridges and it’s not clear which one this is. It appears information is available but none of it seems to link up to this story.
Most people looking into this seem to conclude that, given the volume of construction going on in Iraq and the total amount contracted thus far, it is highly unlikely that there are any $50,000,000 bridges. Given the absolute absence of any second source of information, I’d classify this one as an urban myth.
I saw it quoted on Metafilter a couple days ago. I don’t follow the Iraq politics religiously, so I apologize for having missed it earlier :o
Anyway, my question is still unanswered. All your link shows is that blogger’s coverage of the story and mention of a reader’s failed websearch. That does not tell me much, conclusively, apart from the search abilities of that reader.
What’s messy about that story anyway (apart from its incredulity) ?
Given that it is anecdotal, I don’t expect a lot of pro-US websites to relay such a rumor. Not surprising at all.
Cite?
Quite possible. But, is there any definite information that the blogger’s claim is false? Irrespective of the actual truth, I think lot of people are dismissing her claims due to the incredulity and the uneasy implications if it were true.
It is incredibly difficult to prove that a fuzzy allegation is untrue when it is not directly addressed by the parties involved. Bechtel has responded to a number of allegation but apparently this one doesn’t have enough traction to get addressed. However, infrastructure repair and construction, including bridges, airport work, sewage systems, port construction, electrical systems etc. had totaled $680 million as of 10/22/2003. (From the BBC) http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3201680.stm
If one bridge amounted to 50 million, that would be a pretty big deal. However, this administered through the US AID and, when I went to their web site, http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/pdf/transportation.pdf
I found that they highlight three bridges, none of which are in Baghdad.
So, if this single report is accurate, USAID is spending close to 10% of the total budget on a single bridge which doesn’t even get mentioned in the list of specific projects being done in Iraq.
My BS meter is going off the chart on a $50 million bridge. Let me start with some circumstantial evidence before looking for something more direct.
The President’s $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanstian that flew through Congress about six weeks ago contained $470 million for “housing construction, repair and reconstruction of public buildings, and repair and reconstruction of roads and bridges.” Cite. (warning, large PDF - but check page 48)
Of that $470 million, $100 m was requested for housing projects, $130 m for the repair of public buildings, and $240 m for transportation projects. The detailed justification for that budget, which I have in my hot little hands at this moment, but unfortunately I cannot find on the web to provide a link, contains the following passages:
“Investments in the amount of $240 million must be made in Iraq’s Road and Bridge infrastructure… a total of 32 bridges are currently damaged and will not adequately support the high volume of transportation required… The proposed $240 million… will provide enough money to fund the remaining war-damaged bridges on the priority projects list [which I will look for later -R] and invest a significant amount of funds into Expressway 1 for critical equipment…”
It goes on and on, and this document does not list the specific bridges, but suffice it to say that it is pretty rediculous to think that the CPA would spend $50 million on one bridge, and then claim that $190 million would fix 31 other bridges AND Expressway 1, a 146 KM road.
I will look around for some more concrete (har har) information on that bridge.