Update on USAID Reconstruction Activities in Iraq (Natsios Bitch Slaps Financial Times Reporter!)

I saw this reaired on C-SPAN today. Realplayer video is available on their website, or try this link:

As always Natsios was excellent and, as usual, he took no shi'ite from the press. Here's the exchange with the financial times reporter:

QUESTION: Alan Beattie from Financial Times. Mr. Natsios, as you know, there's been quite a lot of criticism of the lack of transparency of the -- of USAID's and the CPA's operations in Iraq --

MR. NATSIOS: I'm not aware of any criticism of AID. I don't know about anybody else.

MR. NATSIOS: --and everything that we've done has been completely transparent. It's on our website, it's been on our website for eight months. Anybody who wants to see it, just look up the website. All the contracts are there, all the subcontracts are there, all the budgets are there. They've been there all along. Anybody who wanted to could look them up.

QUESTION: -- to the, you know, the general reconstruction. I mean, in view of, for example, the fact that open tendering for contracts still haven't been introduced and --

MR. NATSIOS: Sir, you say these things, and I read some of the stuff in the Financial Times. It's simply inaccurate. You keep repeating these things, they are not accurate, and I think it's really deceptive to do it. So I would urge you to get your facts straight.

MR. NATSIOS: There is open tendering for all AID contracts, sir. There was open tendering prior to this, okay? Under the Federal Contracting Law, we did do tendering. One, since the war started, there have been full and fair competitions for these contracts. We just awarded an agriculture contract. It was full and fair competition. It was on the website. Anybody could bid on it, and they did. And it was awarded. And we've just bid another one for a major $1.5 billion construction contract. That was also on the Web.

QUESTION: When you say Internet, does that include all international companies or just U.S. companies?

MR. NATSIOS: No. We are following federal law, and that is not a matter of transparency, sir. It's a matter of federal statute. And it's a public statute. And other donor governments like the British Government, and the European Governments and the European Union do exactly the same thing. I've seen no criticism in your articles, sir, about any European countries that do exactly the same thing. The French Government has always done only French companies bidding. But you never mention that in your articles.

QUESTION: Okay. I don't want to get into a back and forth, because it's not true that we've never criticized hired aid and other countries. U.K. Government, by the way, has abolished hired aid. But if I can just -- if we can just, if we can just now push it forward, a large proportion -- I don't think the Administration's yet given the amount, but I think it's --

MR. NATSIOS: Let me just go back to this. It is a function of federal law, so it's irrelevant what -- what you think should be the case. The fact is there are federal laws AID must comply with.

QUESTION: AID -- I think the Administration said a large part, or much, but haven't given the proportions of the U.S. contribution of $20 billion or so --

QUESTION: -- will be, will be -- the U.S. contribution to reconstruction will be spent bilaterally --

QUESTION: -- and a small part will be through the trust fund. Can you just say what causes you to give that breakdown? Why not put it all through the trust fund?

MR. NATSIOS: Why would we put any of it through the trust fund? The trust fund is not designed for major donors. We're the largest aid agency in the world. We're larger, by far, than any UN agency. We're larger in operation than parts of the -- some of the international banks. The purpose of the trust funds in all of the major reconstruction efforts in the last 15 years, even before the end of the Cold War, was to create a mechanism for small aid agencies that are not operational to be able to do things.

You know, a small country of four or five million people may have a large, you know, by their standards, want to make a large donation. They don't have people on the ground to carry it out. They don't do things in the developing world operationally and they don't have mechanisms to do it. So these trust funds are created -- and two were announced just a few days ago by the World Bank and UNDP for these countries that don't expect to be sending people into Iraq to carry programs out.

But that's always been the case. And we created these trust funds in order to make it easier for smaller countries that are not -- do not have operational aid agencies to do that. But AID spent $14.9 billion last year. I mean, if we put all that money in trust funds, the trust funds would break down because they can't handle that much money.

We are operational on the ground. We are working in a collaborative way. I talk with my friends who are development ministers in other countries all the time. Hilary Benn, who is the new minister of DIFID, was in to see me, I think, last week or the week before -- week before last. I talked to Susan Whelan, the Minister of Development in Canada, the head of CIDA all the time. I was on the phone with the head of the European -- the agency of the EU that carries out their aid programs yesterday about a matter, not in Iraq, but another country.

So we talk regularly, we coordinate. In major sectors, there are interests -- for example, the restoration of the marshes. There's a deep interest in Britain, in Spain, in Canada and in Italy on that. And our technical people have been meeting all along on that. A lot of our money directly goes not from trust funds from AID through UN agencies. We put $200 million in cash through the World Food Program that ran the food program, the public distribution system, from the time the conflict began until this November. That was in cash from the U.S. Government, plus 500,000 tons of food.

We've given UNICEF, I think, $50 million. We've given UNESCO $10 million. We've given the World Health Organization $10 million. And so rather than put money in these trust funds, we move it directly into the UN agencies that are operating on the ground, that have high levels of transparency and competence in their programming, and that we've worked with around the world. So there is an integrated international effort that is going on in Iraq, even though it may not be highly visible.

Here's a press release from the U.S. embassy in Sweden that includes more quotes from the news conference:

By David Shelby Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The Iraqi economy is functioning and poised to grow according to USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios. In an October 21 briefing at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, Natsios observed, "The big thing that I look at whenever I go to a country that has just been through a war or conflict is the markets. Are the markets functioning? Because merchants don't take risks if things are highly unstable. And there are more things on the markets now in the streets of Baghdad than there have been in 20 years."

Natsios noted in particular the growing number of satellite dishes being installed as Iraqis seek access to international broadcasts.

Furthermore, Natsios and USAID staff working in Iraq see enormous potential for quick economic growth. "If Iraq gets their policies right and they move into a stable market economy under a democratic system of government, I think it could be the richest country in the Middle East," Natsios asserted.

"[This is] mainly because the number of highly educated, technically skilled people in Iraq is very high," he continued. "I was kind of astonished at the level of competence. And they're not only competent technically in their disciplines, like medicine, they're also very good managers. They made systems work that were profoundly dysfunctional," Natsios explained.

The USAID administrator also commended the Iraqis' work ethic. "They're very hard working. There are countries in the world where it's difficult to get the workforce focused in a highly efficient way," he said. "Our people [in Iraq] are telling me that this is very unusual and that there are a lot of building blocks for a highly stable, prosperous economy," Natsios stated.

As the economy begins to grow, of course, the demand on the infrastructure will grow, he said. Natsios confirmed that Iraq's electrical generation capacity returned to its pre-war level of 4400 MW as of a week ago, but he noted that efforts to rebuild capacity were not stopping there. "We expect a lot of industries to come back on line. Pouring all of this money into the economy is having an effect," he explained.

"As the economy begins to pick up, there's going to be more need for electricity and that's why there is this plan that Bechtel and Ambassador Bremer have to get the load up to at least 6000 MW by next June," Natsios continued.

The USAID administrator decried the neglect that the Iraqi infrastructure has suffered over the past 20 years. Discussing the state of facilities currently under reconstruction, he explained, "None of this damage we're talking about, almost none of it, is from the war. It's from the deterioration of infrastructure because money was not put by the Baathist Party into public infrastructure from before the Iran-Iraq War."

He went on to discuss the port of Um Qasr, which is "now one of the most modern ports in the entire Middle East. It's completely dredged, which has not taken place since 1983. We've taken the equivalent of 23 football fields of silt out of it. We've taken out 19 sunken ships and 250 pieces of unexploded ordinance."

The USAID administrator also noted the neglect of the country's human capital. According to Natsios, NGOs and the World Food Program have discovered that the food distribution system in place before the war was being used for purposes of political control. He said, "in some villages and cities 20 percent of the population were not on the rations. They had been taken off because they were politically suspect or they were regarded as opponents of the regime."

He also noted the low level of distribution of oral rehydration salts prior to the war. "Probably the lowest level in the world was in Iraq," he stated. These salts are a common treatment for severe diarrhea in young children and a key to preventing death from gastric diseases. "UNICEF had terrible problems getting the Iraqi government to allow the stuff out of the warehouses," he explained.

Natsios confirmed that everyone in the country is now receiving the food rations, that infant immunization programs are in place and that the rehydration salts are being distributed. "As you go through the list in the health sector, things are improving," he stated.

Some excellent facts in here for pro-admin, anti-saddamite PR purposes. E.g.:

He also noted the low level of distribution of oral rehydration salts prior to the war. "Probably the lowest level in the world was in Iraq," he stated. These salts are a common treatment for severe diarrhea in young children and a key to preventing death from gastric diseases. "UNICEF had terrible problems getting the Iraqi government to allow the stuff out of the warehouses," he explained.

In the other C-SPAN appearance I linked Natsios noted that Saddam's government also obstructed the dispersement of vaccines by NGOs and U.N. agencies. Note also his comments in the current press conference about 20 percent of elligible Iraqis purposefully excluded by Saddam from food aid. This is important to counter the leftists who are still whining about Iraqi deaths from sanctions. Saddam was quite intentionally following policies to fill coffins with children and babies for his anti-sanctions propadanda parades. Preventing distribution of rehydration salts was an especially effective way to do this as children suffer especially high mortality from untreated dysentary.

How Saddam 'staged' fake baby funerals ^
			Posted by aculeus On 06/22/2002 9:37 PM CDT with 33 comments The Observer ^ \| Sunday June 23, 2002 \| John Sweeney The Iraqi dictator says his country's children are dying in their thousands because of the West's embargoes. John Sweeney, in a TV documentary to be shown tonight, says the figures are bogus. Here he reports from Iraq on his findings The witness against the government of Iraq walked stiffly into the room, metal callipers buckled to heavy medical shoes. They had tortured her two years ago. She is now four.

Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade ^
			Posted by Pokey78 On 05/24/2003 6:28 PM CDT with 17 comments The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ \| 05/25/03 \| Charlotte Edwardes UN sanctions did not kill the hundreds of infants displayed over the years - it was neglect by the former regime, Iraqi doctors in Baghdad tell Charlotte Edwardes The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - were driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans. The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as George Galloway