[A-List] US imperialism: plundering Iraq

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Bush election donors share $8bn bonanza

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday October 31, 2003
The Guardian

Major donors to George Bush's election campaigns were the main beneficiaries
of an $8bn (£4.7bn) bonanza in government contracts for the rebuilding of
Iraq, an investigation published yesterday said.

In the most comprehensive survey to date of the postwar financial
dispensations for Afghanistan and Iraq, the Centre for Public Integrity
tracked more than 70 US firms and contractors involved in reconstruction,
exposing their connections to figures in various administrations, Congress
and the Pentagon.

The report arrives a day after senators agreed to give $18.4bn for the
reconstruction of Iraq in grants, rather than loans, a move seen as a
victory for the Bush administration. Mr Bush was in Ohio yesterday trying to
raise additional funds for an election warchest that has reached $85m.

According to the centre's report, more than half of the companies - and
nearly every one of the top 10 contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq - had
close ties to Washington's political establishment or to the Pentagon.
Company executives had worked in previous administrations - Democratic as
well as Republican - and cultivated privileged connections with their old
workplaces.

The study found a clear tilt towards firms with Republican connections -
especially among the top 10 list of beneficiaries from the postwar era.

Since 1990, the companies and their employees have donated $49m to national
political campaigns. Republican party committees received $12.7m, the report
says, compared with $7.1m for the Democrats.

President Bush alone got $500,000, more than any other candidate since 1990.
The biggest postwar windfall by far - $2.3bn - went to Kellogg, Brown &
Root, or KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the defence contractor under the
stewardship of Dick Cheney, until he was chosen by Mr Bush as his running
mate.

Connections to the Bush administration helped even with the dispensation of
relatively low-profile projects, such as the $38m contract awarded to
Science Applications International Corp for development of representative
government and free media in Iraq.

The firm was associated until recently with David Kay, the expert leading
Washington's hunt for Saddam Hussein's elusive arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction.
Mr Kay left his post as vice-president in October 2002, six months before
the war.

Yesterday's study followed more than six months of investigation in which
researchers from the centre filed 73 petitions with the Pentagon, the state
department, and the US agency for international development for information
about contracts.

Bill Allison, the managing editor of the report, says it presents a
disturbing view of the way business is done in Washington, especially under
the Bush administration. "At the very least it shows that this
administration does not pay particularly close attention to ethics," he said
yesterday.

Despite its revelations, however, the report is incomplete.

Mr Allison admits that researchers had been frustrated by bureaucratic
stonewalling - especially in the state department - and a general
bureaucratic reluctance to divulge information about contracts which, he
argues, fosters cronyism.

"The lack of disclosure is a real problem. When you have companies like KBR,
and Bechtel and SAIC that have high-ranking ties between them and the
administration, it does raise questions about whether they are taking care
of their friends."