still no War profits in this economy, sir!

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14649&CFID=5862376&CFTOKEN=68344658>

Sheryl Fred 
Center For Responsive Politics
03.13.03 	
Postwar profiteers
How a handful of construction firms got an early
invitation to rebuild Iraq

"[...] A select group of U.S. construction firms now
bidding on a lucrative government contract to rebuild
a postwar Iraq contributed a combined $2.8 million--68
percent to Republicans--over the past two election
cycles.

The U.S. Agency for International Development asked
Bechtel Group Inc., Fluor Corp., Halliburton Co.
subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, Louis Berger Group
Inc. and Parsons Corp. to submit bids last week for
the $900-million contract. This initial estimate for
repairing and building water systems, roads, bridges,
schools and hospitals in the country [...] "

That would be the US target list, it appears, or
perhaps just a realistic appraisal  of the expected
"collateral damage" (minus the dead or screaming
people occupying those targets); I guess all the talk
about "precision bombing" is just for public
consumption. 


"[...] is just the first step in what the Wall Street
Journal called "the largest government reconstruction
effort since Americans helped to rebuild Germany and
Japan after World War II." The firms that land the
contract are also likely to make the short list for
future projects in Iraq, which include plans to
develop the country's oil industry. [...] Bechtel, the
engineering giant that employed the likes of former
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, former Secretary
of State George Schultz and former CIA Director
William Casey before they took their government posts,
gave $1.3 million in individual, PAC and soft money
contributions between 1999 and 2002. As it prepares
its bid for the postwar project, Bechtel is facing
allegations that it contributed to Iraq's military
buildup nearly two decades ago. The San Francisco
Chronicle has reported that a German journalist
uncovered a document prepared for the United Nations
by Iraq that says Bechtel was among 24 U.S. companies
that supplied the country with weapons during the
'80s. [...] Representatives from Bechtel and
Halliburton told reporters this week that they were
asked to submit a bid because they've done similar
work with USAID in the past. Both companies
participated in the rebuilding of Kuwait, particularly
its oil fields, after the Gulf War. "


"[...] this ex-refinery, Jamf Olfabriken Werke AG, is
not a ruin at all. It is in perfect working order.
Only waiting for the right connections to be set up,
to be switched on . . . modified, precisely,
deliberately by bombing that was never hostile, but
part of a plan both sides -- "sides?"-- had always
agreed on . . . [...] if what the IG built on this
site were not at all the final shape of it, but only
an arrangment of fetishes, come-ons to call down
special tools in the form of 8th AF bombers [...] It
means this War was never political at all, the
politics was all theater, all just to keep the people
distracted . . . secretly, it was being dictated
instead by the needs of technology . . . by a
conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by
something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying,
'Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of
Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn
is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding,
funding, ahh more, more. . . . The real crises were
crises of allocation and priority, not among firms--it
was only staged to look that way--but among the
different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics,
Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by
the ruling elite . . . " 
(Gravity's Rainbow, p. 520-521)

...enjoy!

-Doug

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