The Wrong Message

With nearly $20 billion in U.S. funds up for grabs in the rebuilding of Iraq, individuals and companies are willing to use influence, leverage and a whole lot more to shake the fruit from the money tree. Contracts for a cellular telephone network are one lucrative target.

Times writer T. Christian Miller reported Thursday that the Pentagon’s inspector general was investigating John A. Shaw, a Defense Department deputy undersecretary, over allegations he tried to alter a contract proposal in Iraq to benefit a group that included friends and colleagues. Even if Shaw is cleared of wrongdoing, the quarrel over establishing a mobile-phone network and the resultant delay have jeopardized the lives of U.S. troops and Iraqi security officials.

The importance of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority’s original proposal for a cellphone network linking police and firefighters in Iraq is obvious. On 9/11, many rescuers were unable to communicate during the World Trade Center disaster.

Sources said Shaw pressured the authority’s officials to change the contract language and put a consortium in charge to create not just a limited system for security forces but a commercial network that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year. Problem one for the proposal was the incompatibility of the system’s technology with that of other networks in the Middle East.

Shaw said he had no financial ties to the group he backed and thought it could get the job done more quickly. He said the consortium lost a “rigged” competition last year for commercial cellphone licenses in Iraq and that because the U.S. won the war it should be able to introduce a system that could become dominant in the region.

But Iraq was not invaded to provide a new market for U.S. firms.

Last year’s award of the commercial cellphone contracts to three non-U.S. groups was a strong rebuttal to the “anything for business” allegation and came after extensive review by the Coalition Provisional Authority.

An investigation showed the rigging charges to be baseless.

The contract for a system to link U.S. military officials and Iraqi police and firefighters should be awarded on cost, technology and ability, after competitive bidding. Ineffective use of the taxpayer dollars flooding Iraq could lead to a closing of the U.S. aid spigot.