« Armed Contractors: Transparency and Accountability | Main
November 01, 2007
The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad
William Langewiesche takes a look in Vanity Fair.
Of course, the project is not on budget or on time. It was originally scheduled to be finished by June 2007 and cost $592-million. Th project is now being estimated to cost $740 million and remains under construction.
Posted by davidphinney at November 1, 2007 09:34 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.davidphinney.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/345
Comments
The Langewiesche piece is an essay, not reporting. He had his storyline set: the embassy is the only project on time and under budget in Iraq, but oh how ironic because it's just the irrelevant prison the occupiers are building for themselves.
Unless I greatly underestimate the lead time for articles like this (two-three months, I'd have thought), the reports of slippage and corruption were already out there when WL was writing. But they don't fit the narrative, so they're breezed over. Alexandra Zavis' LA Times article of July 24 mentions that the deadline had already been pushed back three months at that point, and raises the issue of shoddy work.
The VF piece dismisses your extensive reports of labor abuses in a way that strikes me as insulting and oblivious to the concerns of anyone but Americans -- real people.
Langewiesche is highly respected as a writer, but this piece shouldn't enhance his reputation as a reporter.
Posted by: Nell at November 2, 2007 02:49 AM