Welcome Home, Bechtel!

Heckuva job:

Engineering and construction firm Bechtel Group Inc. is leaving Iraq after spending three years rebuilding the war-torn country that netted the company roughly $2.3 billion in government contracts.

Oh, it’s rebuilt then?! Good news.

The company said it completed 97 of the 99 tasks it had been charged with completing by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In a statement issued to the Congressional committee on government reform in late September, company president Cliff Mumm stood by the company's efforts.

"We provided training to thousands of Iraqi professionals and craft workers. And we accomplished all this with a safety record that would be the envy of any firm operating in the United States," said Mumm. "We are proud of our record in Iraq."

I’m not sure that “any firm operating in the US” would envy a record that includes 52 dead workers in three years. But who cares about them, since 47 of them were Iraqis, right?

Now, we all know full well that Iraq has not been rebuilt, that the infrastructure is still largely fucked, that power and water is still dodgy, if not totally unavailable, in lots of places, and that the worsening civil war is creating more destruction—and hence, more to rebuild—every day. So obviously, it’s not like there’s not more work for Bechtel. Are they “cutting and running” after earning $2.3 billion in contracts? Or has the government not offered them anything else beyond their last contract, which ended Tuesday, signaling some kind of resignation to the realities in Iraq? Good questions, and obvious too, don’tcha think? Too bad neither Bechtel nor the government is willing to provide answers.

(Thanks to Angelos for passing that along.)