It's pretty safe to say that Naomi Klein has nailed the issue

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040712&s=klein

Shameless in Iraq

(snip)

Unwilling to let go of their own money, the shameless ones have had no qualms about dipping into funds belonging to Iraqis. After losing the fight to keep control of Iraq's oil money after the underhand, occupation authorities grabbed $2.5 billion of those revenues and are now spending the money on projects that are supposedly already covered by US tax dollars.

But then, if financial scandals made you blush, the entire reconstruction of Iraq would be pretty mortifying. From the start, its architects rejected the idea that it should be a New Deal-style public works project for Iraqis to reclaim their country. Instead, it was treated as an ideological experiment in privatization. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the United States, to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency.

Iraqis saw something else: desperately needed jobs going to Americans, Europeans and South Asians; roads crowded with trucks shipping in supplies produced in foreign plants, while Iraqi factories were not even supplied with emergency generators. As a result, the reconstruction was seen not as a recovery from war but as an extension of the occupation, a foreign invasion of a different sort. And so, as the resistance grew, the reconstruction itself became a prime target.

The contractors have responded by behaving even more like an invading army, building elaborate fortresses in the Green Zone and surrounding themselves with mercenaries. And being hated is expensive. According to the latest estimates, security costs are eating up 25 percent of reconstruction contracts--money not being spent on hospitals, water-treatment plants or telephone exchanges.

Meanwhile, insurance brokers selling sudden-death policies to contractors in Iraq have doubled their premiums, with insurance costs reaching 30 percent of payroll. That means many companies are spending half their budgets arming and insuring themselves against the people they are supposedly in Iraq to help. And according to an estimate by Charles Adwan of Transparency International, quoted on NPR's Marketplace, "At least 20 percent of US spending in Iraq is lost to corruption." How much is actually left over for reconstruction? Don't do the math.

...more...

[burrowowl]

1. Klein usually does hit the nail on the head

Ah! Corporatism, when will Americans wake up and take away their charters?

[Insider]

2. lebensraum

"The people in charge of rebuilding Iraq can't be embarrassed, because clearly they have no shame."

investigation = $2.6 million
"war" = $100 billion

[nolabels]

3. Her website is full of her insights on pertinent matters

http://www.nologo.org/

The Year of the Fake

by Naomi Klein > January 9 2004

Don't think and drive.

That was the message sent out by the FBI to roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies on Christmas Eve. The alert urged police pulling over drivers for traffic violations, and conducting other routine investigations, to keep their eyes open for people carrying almanacs. Why almanacs? Because they are filled with facts — population figures, weather predictions, diagrams of buildings and landmarks. And according to the FBI Intelligence Bulletin, facts are dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists, who can use them to "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning."
(snip)
The blacklisting of the almanac was a fitting end for 2003, a year that waged open war on truth and facts and celebrated fakes and forgeries of all kinds. This was the year when fakeness ruled: fake rationales for war, a fake President dressed as a fake soldier declaring a fake end to combat and then holding up a fake turkey. An action movie star became governor and the government started making its own action movies, casting real soldiers like Jessica Lynch as fake combat heroes and dressing up embedded journalists as fake soldiers. Saddam Hussein even got a part in the big show: He played himself being captured by American troops. This is the fake of the year, if you believe the Sunday Herald in Scotland, as well as several other news agencies, which reported that he was actually captured by a Kurdish special forces unit.
(snip)

[Djinn]

4. Last year

she wrote a great piece that described the war for what it really was - a massive corporate theft from Iraqi people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1079575,00.html

Every time I hear the media automatons babble on about "Iraqi sovereignty" or the "handover" of power it makes me that little bit moer cynical about the quality of our journo's (wasn't much to begin with!) since WHEN does a SOVEREIGN nation have no control over it's foreign policy, army or the contracts it enters into.

I can understand why Americans havn't made a huge fuss over the financial duping of Iraqi's but why there wasn't more of a shitstorm about the favoured corporation stealing US tax money still baffles me!

[Dover]

5. Just a few stories from Corporate Watch web site >

http://www.corpwatch.org/index.php

Controversial Commando Wins Iraq Contract to Create the World's Largest Private Army


Oakland, CA, June 10th, 2004 -- Three weeks before Iraq is to be handed over to a new government, the United States led occupation has quietly awarded a contract to create the world's largest private army to a company headed by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a former officer with the Scots Guard, an elite regiment of the British military, who has been investigated for illegally smuggling arms and planning military offensives to support mining, oil, and gas operations around the world.

In an exclusive four part series published today on CorpWatch's award-winning website, managing editor Pratap Chatterjee reveals the details behind a $293 million "cost-plus" contract to Aegis Defence Services of London, to create an "integrator" or coordination hub for the security operation for every single reconstruction contractor and sub-contractor throughout Iraq.

There are currently several dozen groups Iraq that provide private security to both the military and the private sector, with more than 20,000 employees altogether. The companies include Erinys, a South African business, that has more than 15,000 local employees charged with guarding the oil pipelines; Control Risks Group, a British company that provides security to Bechtel and Halliburton; and North Carolina-based Blackwater Consulting, which provides everything from back-up helicopters to bodyguards for Paul Bremer, the American ambassador in charge of the occupation.

The military will pay all of Aegis' expenses, plus a pre-determined percentage of whatever they spend, which critics say is a license to over-bill. The company has also been asked to provide 75 close protection teams--comprised of eight men each--for the high-level staff of companies that are running the oil and gas fields, electricity, and water services in Iraq....cont'd >


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11362

_______

New War Profiteer Website Launched on Anniversary of Iraq Invasion


Oakland, CA, March 19, 2004: Exactly one year after the United States launched the dawn invasion of Iraq, war profiteering by multinational companies is at an all-time high with military contractors dramatically boosting revenues by 19% over 2002.

Today CorpWatch, an Oakland, California, based non-profit is launching a brand new version of the popular War Profiteers website to track these military contractors on a regular basis. The website, which can be found at http://warprofiteers.com, is the one-stop shop for communities, citizens, taxpayers, policy makers, media, students and activists to learn about the new merchants of global conflict.

Profiting from killing is wrong. What makes it even more outrageous is that taxpayers have to foot the bill.....cont'd

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=10428

__________


USA: Corporate Governance Law 'Too Strict'


by Mark Tran , The Guardian
June 22nd, 2004


Larry Weinbach, the chief executive of Unisys, accused Congress of overreacting yesterday when it introduced legislation following Enron and other financial scandals.

Mr Weinbach, whose technology company boasts annual sales of $6bn (£3.3bn), joined other executives who have recently criticised the Sarbanes-Oxley law for imposing too many burdens on companies.

Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley law in 2002 in reaction to a spate of financial scandals, notably Enron and WorldCom, that shook public confidence in corporate America. Sarbanes-Oxley, which called for tighter internal company controls, caused a rethink of corporate governance laws in the UK as well, with the publication of the Higgs report, written by Derek Higgs, the former investment banker.

But in the US, a corporate backlash has been steadily building up against Sarbanes-Oxley. Last week, the head of the New York stock exchange, John Thain, asked in the Wall Street Journal whether regulation had gone so far that foreign companies had decided against listing in the US....cont'd >

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11374