posted May 05, 2003 at 3:05 p.m. MDTIf the people of the USofA are disgusted by Enron's accounting hi-jinks, do they feel themselves represented by the Bush administration's crony capitalism in Iraq? A peculiar way to dedicate the lives of sons and daughters ...
Empowering Iraq [tompaine.com] - "Jack Kemp, director of the conservative think tank Empower America, has emerged as a key player in the debate over how best to rebuild Iraq. Kemp, who was Bob Dole's running mate in his unsuccessful bid for president in 1996, recently outlined a plan that promises to become a finalist in the competing ideas about Iraq's future.
The big winners in the Rumsfeld/Garner rebuilding plan are private U.S. companies like Halliburton, Bechtel, Dyncorps, Research Triangle Institute and SAIC, which have been hired to do everything from putting out oil fires, to rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, to grooming a select group of 150 Iraqi exiles for the U.S.-run "transitional authority" that will be the shell of a new Iraqi government. For the most part, they have received secret, no-bid, cost-plus contracts. Is that what democracy looks like?
Former Shell Oil executive Philip Carroll is set to chair an advisory committee that will determine the future of the Iraqi oil industry, in consultation with the Pentagon. Not exactly Iraq for the Iraqis, one might say. Most of the companies involved in rebuilding Iraq have close ties to the Bush administration, and are likely to funnel some of the money they make on rebuilding Iraq into the Bush 2004 campaign coffers.
