From the Nation:
The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually called “reconstruction.” But American plans for Iraq’s future economy go well beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business.
The Center for Public Integrity:
Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, at least nine have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Four members are registered lobbyists, one of whom represents two of the three largest defense contractors.
Bob Herbert in the NY Times:
There aren’t a lot of rich kids in that desert. The U.S. military is largely working-class. The power brokers homing in on $100 billion worth of postwar reconstruction contracts are not.
Waxman acknowledged that the Bush administration may have had valid reasons for granting a contract without competition for emergency war work, but “it is harder to understand … what the rationale would be for a sole-source contract that has a multiyear duration and a multibillion dollar price tag.”
And a lot more over at Arms and the Man
