| Chile: US Contractor Recruits Guards for Iraq in South America by Jonathan Franklin, Guardian (London) March 5th, 2004 The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace its soldiers on security duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has begun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $4,000 (2,193) a month to guard oil wells against attack by insurgents. |
| US: Court Revives GE Challenge of Superfund Law by Devlin Barrett, Associated Press March 4th, 2004 A federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 1980 Superfund law that allows the government to assess polluters for cleaning up toxic waste sites. |
| World: Donor Countries Study Iraq Costs Melbourne Age February 28th, 2004 In Abu Dhabi, representatives of some 40 donor countries, including the United States, the European Union and Japan, as well as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations, prepared to kick off a two-day conference on rebuilding post-war Iraq. |
| US: United Technologies' Chairman Collects $70 Million in Salary, Stock Options
by Knight-Ridder, Tribune Business News February 28th, 2004 Feb. 28--United Technologies Corp. paid Chairman George David $4 million in salary and bonus last year -- $400,000 more than in 2002. But the great bulk of David's gains came from exercising stock options. |
| US: Lawmakers seek Halliburton internal documents by David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle February 27th, 2004 Two key Democratic lawmakers want Halliburton to turn over internal documents that reportedly identified significant deficiencies in the company's cost controls. |
| Congressional Inquiry Necessary for War Profiteering Campaign to Stop the War Profiteerers February 25th, 2004 The Pentagon and State Department criminal fraud investigations of Halliburton concerning their handling of a fuel contract in Iraq are an important first step - but point to the need for bold action on the part of the President and Congress to ensure accountability of military contractors, according to the Campaign to Stop the War Profiteers. |
| UK: Watchdogs Call Government on Unethical Sales BBC February 25th, 2004 The government is allowing British arms manufacturers to sell to some of the most dangerous and repressive regimes in the world, two charities claim. A dramatic rise in the sale of arms components to these regimes undermines the government's own ethical policies, say Oxfam and Amnesty International. |
| US: Army cancels Comanche helicopter project
The Associated Press February 24th, 2004 In a dramatic about-face, the Army canceled its Comanche helicopter program Monday after sinking $6.9 billion and 21 years of effort into producing a new-generation chopper. |
| Iraq: Pentagon Opens Criminal Inquiry of Halliburton by Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times February 24th, 2004 Pentagon officials said Monday night that they have opened a criminal fraud investigation of Halliburton, the giant Texas oil-services concern, in an inquiry that will examine "potential overpricing" of fuel taken into Iraq by one of the company's subcontractors. |
| Contractors are Cashing in on the War on Terror World Policy Institute February 24th, 2004 "With the Pentagon budget at $400 billion per year and counting, plus a new Department of Homeland Security with a $40 billion per year budget, plus wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have cost $180 billion to date, these are lucrative times to be a military contractor." |
| Iraq: RTI Designing Government for Baghdad by Naomi Klein, Nation February 23rd, 2004 On March 4, 2003, with the invasion just fifteen days away, the United States Agency for International Development asked three US firms to bid for a unique job: After Iraq was invaded and occupied, one company would be charged with setting up 180 local and provincial town councils in the rubble. This was newly imperial territory for firms accustomed to the friendly NGO-speak of "public-private partnerships," and two of the three decided not to apply. The "local governance" contract, worth $167.9 million in the first year and up to $466 million total, went to the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a private nonprofit best known for its drug research. None of its employees had been to Iraq in years. |
| World: Making Money on Terrorism by William Hartung, Nation February 23rd, 2004 We all know that Halliburton is raking in billions from the Bush Administration's occupation and rebuilding of Iraq. But in the long run, the biggest beneficiaries of the Administration's "war on terror" may be the "destroyers," not the rebuilders. The nation's "Big Three" weapons makers--Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman--are cashing in on the Bush policies of regime change abroad and surveillance at home. |
| US: Pentagon's Changing Priorities Challenge Lockheed by Renae Merle, Washington Post February 23rd, 2004 Lockheed's stranglehold on the military aircraft market is based on two planes, the F/A-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, both frequently lambasted by members of Congress for their technological problems and growing budgets. While Lockheed dominates the fighter market, it is not secure with unmanned drones, which many experts consider the future of military aviation. And the Pentagon is thinking about radical new ways of changing warfare that could threaten Lockheed's dominance. |
| Ivory Coast: British Mercenaries Follow Diamond Money by James Astill, Guardian (London) February 22nd, 2004 Executive Outcomes drew international attention to the industry, worth an estimated £30bn a year in the late 90s, by fighting for the besieged governments of Angola and Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone the British mercenary company Sandline International broke a UN arms embargo, allegedly with British government approval. |
| US: American Companies in Iraq Starting from Ground Up by Joel Brinkley February 22nd, 2004 When government contractors took on the task of rebuilding Iraq's hospital system last year, they were distressed to learn that nursing staffs no longer existed. Under Saddam Hussein, the contractors discovered, hospitals were forced to fire all their nurses to save money. |
| US: Workers Fear Toxins In Faster Nuclear Cleanup by Sarah Kershaw and Matthew Wald, New York Times February 20th, 2004 Faster cleanup schedules raise questions about environmental dangers and workers at risk for exposure to asbestos and beryllium. |
| USA: Halliburton Stops Billing U.S. for Meals Served to Troops by Eric Schmitt, New York Times February 17th, 2004 Seeking to defuse a growing election-year issue, the Halliburton Company said Monday that it had stopped billing the Pentagon for the cost of feeding American troops in Iraq and Kuwait until a dispute over the number of meals served is resolved. |
| US: Presidential Helicopter War by John Machacek, Gannett News Service February 17th, 2004 Lockheed Martin, one of the world's largest aerospace and defense contractors, had begun running full-page ads in newspapers and at subway stops near the Pentagon as part of an all-out lobbying campaign to oust tiny Sikorsky as the presidential helicopter builder. |
| Iraq: Ex-Minister Says US Mismanaging Iraqi Oil by Barbara Shook, Oil Daily February 16th, 2004 Former Iraqi oil minister Issam al-Chalabi charged Tuesday that the US-led occupation forces and the Coalition of Provisional Authority (CPA) -- aided by units of Houston-based energy services company Halliburton -- are continuing the mismanagement of Iraqi's oil fields that was begun under former leader Saddam Hussein to the detriment of the Iraqi people. |
| Iraq: Start-up Company with Connections by Knut Royce, New York Newsday February 15th, 2004 U.S. authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $400 million in contracts to a start-up company that has extensive family and, according to court documents, business ties to Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite on the Iraqi Governing Council. |
| Colombia: Private U.S. Operatives on Risky Missions by Juan Forero, New York Times February 14th, 2004 The three Americans -- Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell and Thomas Howes -- worked cloaked in secrecy for two subsidiaries of Northrop Grumman, the huge military contractor, in an arrangement used increasingly by the United States government in conflict zones from Colombia to Afghanistan. The men's families and critics of American policy here say the case sheds light on a shadowy world of secret operations that employ private contractors in deals that make it easy to skirt public scrutiny and for all to wash their hands if something goes wrong. |
| US: Ex-Halliburton Workers Allege Rampant Waste by T. Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times February 13th, 2004 Halliburton has systematically wasted U.S. taxpayer dollars in its operations in Iraq and Kuwait, according to two of the company's former employees who have spoken to congressional investigators. |
| Iraq: Watchdog Presses US To Name Oil Auditors Reuters February 13th, 2004 An international watchdog overseeing how Iraq's oil money is spent during the U.S.-led occupation pressed the U.S. authorities on Friday to finalize the appointment of auditors so its work can begin in earnest. |
| US: Army, Industry Speed Document Exploitation by Ann Roosevelt, Defense Daily February 10th, 2004 The Army has enlisted The Sytex Group, Inc.'s Sytex unit and American Management Systems [AMSY] to aid soldiers in Iraq translate and manage captured foreign documents with the Document and Media Exploitation (DOMEX) Tactical Support Suite (TSS). |
| US: What Did the Vice-President Do for Halliburton? by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker February 10th, 2004 Halliburton blamed the high costs on an obscure Kuwaiti firm, Altanmia Commercial Marketing, which it subcontracted to deliver the fuel. In Kuwait, the oil business is controlled by the state, and Halliburton has claimed that government officials there pressured it into hiring Altanmia, which had no experience in fuel transport. Yet a previously undisclosed letter, dated May 4, 2003, and sent from an American contracting officer to Kuwait's oil minister, plainly describes the decision to use Altanmia as Halliburton's own "recommendation." |
| Iraq: Country's Largest Bank Up for Sale? by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Reuters February 9th, 2004 Iraq's largest bank, state-owned Al-Rafideen, plans to lay off a third of its staff and overhaul a debt-laden balance sheet to prepare for privatization, possibly next year, the bank's chairman said on Monday. |
| Australia: Gov't Looks Away From Payments to Indonesian Forces by Bob Burton, InterPress Service February 7th, 2004 One month after an unarmed protester against the construction of a Australian-owned mine in Indonesia was shot and killed, the Australian government is refusing to warn companies against paying Indonesian security forces for protection. |
| US: Making Money On Terrorism by William D. Hartung, The Nation February 5th, 2004 We all know that Halliburton is raking in billions from the Bush Administration's occupation and rebuilding of Iraq. But in the long run, the biggest beneficiaries of the Administration's "war on terror" may be the "destroyers," not the rebuilders. The nation's "Big Three" weapons makers--Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman--are cashing in on the Bush policies of regime change abroad and surveillance at home. |
| US: Supreme Court Justice Guest of Cheney by David G. Savage and Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times February 5th, 2004 Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks. The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney's upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the high court agreed to take up Cheney's bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force. |
| Iraq: Occupation, Inc. by Pratap Chatterjee and Herbert Docena, Southern Exposure February 4th, 2004 Bechtel's projects are examined by freelance journalists. Locals complain of shoddy work, problems with schools, sewage, electricity, gas lines, and low wages. |
| IRAQ: Life More Difficult Now? by Pratap Chatterjee and Herbert Docena, Southern Exposure February 4th, 2004 Bechtel's projects are examined by freelance journalists. Locals complain of shoddy work, problems with schools, sewage, electricity, gas lines, and low wages. |
| Nigeria: Halliburton Faces US Probe for Bribes by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenrball, Newsweek February 4th, 2004 The Justice Department has opened up an inquiry into whether Halliburton Co. was involved in the payment of $180 million in possible kickbacks to obtain contracts to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria during a period in the late 1990's when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company. |
| Iraq: World Bank Creates Trust Fund for Iraq by Martin Crutsinger, Associated Press January 29th, 2004 The World Bank on Thursday approved creation of a special fund to funnel reconstruction aid to Iraq. Officials insisted the country's uncertain security situation will not derail efforts to provide emergency assistance. The bank's 24-member executive committee endorsed establishment of the Iraq Trust Fund, which will operate from funds supplied by individual countries. |
| US: Pentagon Shapes Three Firms' Profits by Renae Merle, Washington Post January 28th, 2004 Defense giants Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. both swung to a profit in the fourth quarter as the Pentagon's determination to transform the military boosted sales of their high-tech programs. |
| US: Lockheed Martin Lobby Group Audited by Renae Merle, Washington Post January 28th, 2004 The Federal Election Commission will audit Lockheed Martin Corp.'s political action committee after a former manager allegedly embezzled at least $170,000 from the fund, the company said yesterday. |
| Afghanistan: How To Spend Wisely by Anne Carlin, New York Times January 26th, 2004 Washington has announced that it is accelerating the disbursement of $1.6 billion in new assistance to Afghanistan in an effort to produce visible improvements in stability and governance by early summer. The seemingly laudable plan is part of the Bush administration's rush to show measurable progress in Afghanistan — by number of schools and clinics built, miles of road paved and tons of wheat seed distributed. But in terms of sustainable development, such numbers are far less meaningful than one might think. |
| Iraq: Broadcast Blues by Bruce B. Auster, US News and World Report January 26th, 2004 Science Applications International Corporation, a defense contractor, won $82 million in contracts to create the Iraqi Media Network, and botched the job. |
| US: Halliburton Acknowledges Kickbacks in Iraq Contract by Matt Kelley, San Francisco Chronicle January 23rd, 2004 Halliburton has fired employees who allegedly took kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor helping to supply U.S. troops in Iraq, the company said. The kickback allegations involve KBR's contract to supply U.S. Army troops in Iraq, not its separate contract to rebuild Iraqi oil facilities and deliver gasoline to civilians. |
| Iraq: Baghdad Stock Exchange to Reopen in Hotel Financial Times January 22nd, 2004 After several months of work by financial and technical advisers with the US-led civilian authority in Iraq, a revamped Baghdad stock exchange is due to open this month, temporarily housed in a disused hotel. The exchange last traded officially on March 19 2003, the day before the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein was launched. |
| Iraq: Vinnell's Army on the Defensive by Steven Rosenfeld, TomPaine.com January 21st, 2004 Forget Halliburton. The vice president's former company may keep getting the headlines for its hefty contracts in Iraq and Pentagon overcharging, but it's not the private company that's so badly botched the training of the new Iraqi Army that the Jordanian Army has been hastily brought in to finish the job. |
| US: Kellogg Brown & Root Wins New US Army Contract BBC News January 16th, 2004 Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) has won a new US army contract to help repair Iraq's dilapidated oil industry. The appointment is likely to raise eyebrows as KBR has been accused of overcharging the US military for fuel. |
| World: America's Empire of Bases by Chalmers Johnson, Tom Paine January 15th, 2004 Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire – an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order. |
| Iraq: 10 Contracts Maintain U.S. Work in Iraq by Jackie Spinner, Washington Post January 15th, 2004 U.S. officials plan to tap a series of broad contingency contracts the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just awarded to 10 firms to keep reconstruction going in Iraq until a delayed round of rebuilding contracts is awarded. |
| Iraq: Pentagon's War on Hostile Media by David Miller, Guardian (London) January 13th, 2004 The US considered the control of information -- from both friend and foe -- during the Iraq war to be as important as any specifically military strategy. "Information dominance" came of age during the conflict in Iraq. It is a little discussed but highly significant part of the US government strategy of "full spectrum dominance," integrating propaganda and news media into the military command structure more fundamentally than ever before. In the past, propaganda involved managing the media. Information dominance, by contrast, sees little distinction between command and control systems, propaganda and journalism. They are all types of "weaponized information" to be deployed. As strategic expert Colonel Kenneth Allard noted, last year's attack on Iraq "will be remembered as a conflict in which information fully took its place as a weapon of war." |
| Iraq: The Pentagon's Solution To Criticism by David Miller, Guardian (London) January 13th, 2004 The US considered the control of information -- from both friend and foe -- during the Iraq war to be as important as any specifically military strategy. The new TV service for Iraq was paid for by the Pentagon. In keeping with the philosophy of information dominance it was supplied, not by an independent news organization, but by a defense contractor, Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Its expertise in the area -- according to its Web site -- is in "information operations" and "information dominance." |
| US: American Firm Awarded Contract to Run Iraqi Media Network Online NewsHour January 12th, 2004 The Pentagon has awarded a $96 million contract to a U.S. communications equipment company to develop Iraq's existing but antiquated media network for the next 12 months. The Florida-based Harris Corp. will upgrade and operate Saddam Hussein's old radio and TV networks, now called al-Iraqiya, and the national newspaper, previously headed by Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, the firm announced Friday. |
| Iraq: US Firm To Run Iraqi TV by Walter Pincus , Washington Post January 12th, 2004 The Pentagon has awarded a $96 million contract to Harris Corp., based in Melbourne, Fla., to run Saddam Hussein's old television and radio network, now called al-Iraqiya, for the next 12 months. |
| Iraq: Free-Market? Not So Fast
by Daphne Eviatar, New York Times January 10th, 2004 There is no doubt about American intentions for the Iraqi economy. As Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, "Market systems will be favored, not Stalinist command systems." And so the American-led coalition has fired off a series of new laws meant to transform the economy. Tariffs were suspended, a new banking code was adopted, a 15 percent cap was placed on all future taxes, and the once heavily guarded doors to foreign investment in Iraq were thrown open. |
| Iraq: Bechtel Wins $1.8bn Deal by Joshua Chaffin and Guy Dinmore, Financial Times January 7th, 2004 Bechtel, the US construction company, was awarded a contract valued at up to $1.8bn on Tuesday to repair Iraq's electricity grids, roads, ports and other infrastructure damaged by the coalition invasion and years of neglect. |
| Iraq: Soldiers Needed by Al Kennedy, Guardian (London) January 7th, 2004 Or are you a brave, decent individual with a trust in your country's leaders and a deep sense of duty? Obviously, you can sign up, too, but your disillusionment will cause no end of trouble. You might well suffer long-term psychological problems, send emails to Michael Moore, complain to your relatives that you're being forced into illegal acts for corporate profit, and generally reduce company morale. Your duty is to keep your head down and make sure those pipelines stay secure. |
| Iraq: Army Allows Halliburton to Supply Iraq Fuel Without Disclosure by Matt Kelley, Associated Press January 6th, 2004 The Army has allowed Halliburton to increase the supplies of fuel delivered to Iraq without giving the usual data to justify its cost, a spokesman said Tuesday. The December action by the Army Corps of Engineers does not exonerate Vice President Dick Cheney's former company in a dispute with the Pentagon over fuel prices, Army corps spokesman Ross Adkins said Tuesday. |
| US: Risky Business by Naomi Klein January 5th, 2004 This is ReBuilding Iraq 2, a gathering of 400 businesspeople itching to get a piece of the Iraqi reconstruction action. They are here to meet the people doling out the cash, in particular the $18.6 billion in contracts to be awarded in the next two months to companies from "coalition partner" countries. The people to meet are from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), its new Program Management Office, the Army Corps of Engineers, the US Agency for International Development, Halliburton, Bechtel and members of Iraq's interim Governing Council. All these players are on the conference program, and delegates have been promised that they'll get a chance to corner them at regularly scheduled "networking breaks." |
| Iraq: Pentagon Freezes Funds Amid Corruption Probes by Stephen J. Glain, Boston Globe December 30th, 2003 The Pentagon has frozen new funds approved for Iraqi reconstruction amid growing allegations of corruption and cronyism associated with the rebuilding process. Companies eager for a stake in the $18.6 billion in fresh postwar funds that Congress approved in November have been told not to expect requests for proposals from the Defense Department, the first step in the kind of ambitious redevelopment slated for the war-torn country. |
| Iraq: Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Privatization Plans by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post December 28th, 2003 The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated. |
| Japan: Consortium To Bid For Iraq Gas Project by Bayan Rahman and Carola Hoyos, Financial Times December 18th, 2003 A consortium led by Mitsubishi, the Japanese trading company, is preparing to bid for a gas development project in Iraq. The consortium is made up of nine Japanese trading and plant engineering companies and KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton, the US energy services group formerly led by US vice-president Dick Cheney. |
| Iraq: One Newsman's Take On How Things Went Wrong by Don North , Television Week December 15th, 2003 Don North, a former correspondent in Vietnam, Washington and the Middle East for ABC and NBC News, tells the story of his work for the Iraqi Media Network as an employee of defense contractor Science Applications International between January 2003 and July 24, 2003, when he quit because he believed that the network had become an irrelevant mouthpiece for occupation propaganda, managed news and mediocre programs. |
| Iraq: Rebuilding Iraqi TV Costly by Doug Halonen and Alex Ben Block, Television Week December 15th, 2003 |
| Iraq: Halliburton Accused of Overcharging $61m by Julian Borger, Guardian (London) December 13th, 2003 A Pentagon audit has found that Halliburton, the company formerly run by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, overcharged the government by $61m (about 35m) for delivering petrol to Iraq. |
| US: Neil Bush's Business Dealings by Thomas Catan and Stephen Fidler, Financial Times December 12th, 2003 While many newspapers focused on the lurid revelations of "sex romps" on his trips in Asia, Mr Bush's deposition also gave important insights into his business dealings. Among other things, Mr Bush said he was co-chairman of the Houston-based Crest Investment Corporation and was paid Dollars 15,000 every three months for providing "miscellaneous consulting services . . . such as answering phone calls when Jamal (sic) Daniel, the other co-chairman, called and asked for advice". |
| Middle East: Bush's Brother Helped New Bridge Strategies Businessmen by Stephen Fidler and Thomas Catn, Financial Times December 11th, 2003 Two businessmen instrumental in setting up New Bridge Strategies, a well-connected Washington firm designed to help clients win contracts in Iraq, have previously used an association with the younger brother of President George W. Bush to seek business in the Middle East, an FT investigation has found. |
| World: The Privatization of War by Ian Traynor, Guardian (London) December 10th, 2003 Private corporations have penetrated western warfare so deeply that they are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq after the Pentagon, a Guardian investigation has established. |
| US: The Booming Defense Business by William D. Hartung, Los Angeles Times December 10th, 2003 It's not every day that the chief executive of a major defense contractor steps down because of ethical wrongdoing on his watch, as Boeing CEO Phil Condit did Dec. 1. But let's be clear about one thing: This mounting scandal, which centers on whether Boeing improperly offered Pentagon procurement official Darleen Druyun a job while she was negotiating the terms of a $20-billion deal to lease 747s from the company, goes well beyond a few misguided executives at one corporation. |
| Iraq: Bush Business Partner to Restructure Debt by Greg Palast, TomPaine.com December 9th, 2003 This week came the payoff when President Bush appointed Baker, the firm's senior partner, to "restructure" the debts of the nation of Iraq. And who will net the big bucks under Jim Baker's plan? Answer: his client, Saudi Arabia, which claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq plus $12 billion in reparations from the First Gulf war. |
| Iraq: Making a Killing Without Taxes and Tariffs by Rory McCarthy, Guardian (London) December 8th, 2003 Free trade was one of the pillars of the neo-conservative vision for the new Iraq: a progressive, secular democracy with one of the most open, tariff-free markets in the world. |
| US: Boeing’s Skillful Lobbying Efforts by Marianne Brun-Rovet, Joshua Chaffin, Caroline Daniel and James Harding, Financial Times December 8th, 2003 In a June day this year, just over 50 executives from the Boeing Company trooped into Room 405 upstairs in the Old Executive Office building adjacent to the White House. From the podium where George W. Bush often hosts visiting groups, Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, briefed the Boeing managers on the administration's agenda and how it overlapped with Boeing's concerns. |
| Iraq: Funds Falling Short of Donor Pledges by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times December 7th, 2003 Six weeks after organizers of an international donors conference in Madrid said that more than $3 billion in grants had been pledged to help Iraq with immediate needs, a new World Bank tally verifies grants of only $685 million for 2004. |
| Iraq: Delays Hand Halliburton $1bn by Oliver Morgan, Observer (London) December 7th, 2003 Halliburton, the engineering group formerly run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, has been given $1 billion worth of reconstruction work in Iraq by the US government without having to compete for it, thanks to repeated delays in opening up a key contract to competition. |
| UK: BAE Accused of Hiding Cash Paid to Win Deals by David Leigh and Rob Evans, Guardian (London) December 5th, 2003 Britain's biggest arms company stands accused of running an international system of secret commission payments, using Swiss banks and a tiny island in the Caribbean. The allegations, by sources involved in the transactions, are based on Swiss bank records. These normally closely-guarded documents have emerged following long-running controversies over BAE Systems' arms sales and the frequent allegations of corruption which surround them. |
| US: The Pentagon Clips Boeing's Wings by William Cederwell, Guardian (London) December 4th, 2003 A bad week got worse for Boeing on Tuesday when a $20bn (12bn) contract to supply the US air force with refuelling tankers was frozen, on Pentagon orders, following allegations of ethical misconduct at the troubled aerospace group. The contract had become tainted by accusations that Boeing's chief financial officer, Mike Sears, had recruited a senior Boeing executive, Darleen Druyun, when she was still a Pentagon employee and a key negotiator for the contract on the US air force's behalf. The pair were sacked last week, but "the stench has just gotten a lot more pungent", according to the Washington Post. |
| US: Northrop Wins Missile Defense Deal with Pentagon by Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times December 4th, 2003 Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co. on Wednesday won a major Pentagon contract potentially worth more than $10 billion to develop and build a new rocket that could destroy ballistic missiles in the early stages of flight. |
| US: Boeing's CEO Steps Down Amid Scandal by Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times December 2nd, 2003 Boeing Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Philip M. Condit unexpectedly resigned Monday, as the world's largest aerospace company moved quickly to restore an image sullied by scandal. |
| US: Boeing Chairman Resigns Following Ethics Questions by Dave Carpenter, Associated Press December 1st, 2003 The shake-up comes a week after Boeing unexpectedly fired its chief financial officer, Mike Sears, for unethical conduct, saying he negotiated the hiring of an Air Force missile defense expert while she was still working for the Pentagon and was in a position to influence Boeing contracts. Sears has denied any wrongdoing. |
| UK: Save the Children UK Silenced on Iraq by Kevin Maguire, Guardian (London) November 28th, 2003 One of Britain's most high-profile charities was ordered to end criticism of military action in Iraq by its powerful US wing to avoid jeopardizing financial support from Washington and corporate donors, a Guardian investigation has discovered. Internal emails reveal how Save the Children UK came under enormous pressure after it accused coalition forces of breaching the Geneva convention by blocking humanitarian aid. |
| Iraq: "Free Media" Run by Pentagon Contractor by Walter Pincus, Washington Post November 22nd, 2003 Now called the Iraq Media Network, the operation has come under criticism for carrying television and radio programming that features primarily occupation authority officials and announcements along with a weekly broadcast by L. Paul Bremer, head of the occupation authority. |
| US: Contractors Complain of TSA Limits by Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post November 21st, 2003 A pilot program to test the effectiveness of privately employed screeners at U.S. airports is yielding few security innovations or cost savings because of constraints imposed by the Transportation Security Administration, government investigators and private contractors said. |
| Iraq: Siemens Lands $95M Deal Reuters November 21st, 2003 German industrial company Siemens AG has won a $95 million deal to develop a power station in Iraq, an industry source said Friday, days after Washington vowed to share post-war reconstruction work. |
| Iraq: Contracts Leave Local Business Out by Peyman Pejman, Inter Press Service November 21st, 2003 U.S. officials have shut Iraqis out of the business of reconstruction contracts, many local businessmen say. U.S. officials and the contractors working for them favour a few high-profile Iraqi companies they trust, and set excessively high contract standards that most Iraqi companies cannot meet, they say. |
| Iraq: Members of Occupation Authority in Bribes Probe by Demetri Sevastopulo, Nicolas Pelham and Roula Khalaf, Financial Times November 21st, 2003 Two officials of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and the Iraqi minister of communications are being investigated by the Pentagon over allegations of taking bribes. Potentially lucrative licences to build and operate mobile phone networks in Iraq were announced last month by Haider al-Abadi, communications minister, in favour of three Middle-Eastern consortia - Orascom Iraq, Asia Cell and Atheer. |
| Iraq: Hopes Grow for UK Firms Winning Contracts BBC November 21st, 2003 UK firms could secure a "significant proportion" of new contracts to help rebuild Iraq, a government minister has told company bosses. Industry must "play its full part" in the reconstruction of the country, said trade minister Mike O'Brien. |
| USA: Deadline Set for $19bn in Iraq Contracts by Joshua Chaffin, Financial Times November 19th, 2003 US authorities on Wednesday laid out an ambitious timetable to rebuild Iraq, saying they planned to award $18.7bn in contracts for reconstruction projects by the beginning of February. |
| US: Computer Technicians Sue CSC to Seek Overtime Pay
by Lisa Girion, Los Angeles Times November 13th, 2003 Computer Sciences Corp. was accused Wednesday of cheating thousands of computer technicians out of overtime pay in a lawsuit that could open the technology industry to the same class-action litigation that has forced millions of dollars in back wages from fast-food chains and retail outlets. |
| Iraq: Is Anyone Watching The Iraqi Media Network? by Cynthia Cotts, Village Voice (New York) November 12th, 2003 In October 2003, the Pentagon began soliciting bids for a $100 million renewable contract to run the Iraqi Media Network (IMN). The project is overseen by the U.S. military occupation (a.k.a. Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA) and is rising out of the infrastructure of Saddam Hussein's state-run news network. The dream is for IMN to become a "world-class" media operation, including a 24-7 satellite channel, two land-based TV channels, two radio channels, a national newspaper, and TV and film studios in every major region of Iraq. |
| Iraq: Bay Area civilian vanishes in Iraq by Colin Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle November 11th, 2003 A Moss Beach man working as a contractor for the U.S. Army in Iraq has mysteriously disappeared while driving along an isolated road north of the country's violence-plagued Sunni Triangle. |
 | U.S. Contractors Reap the Windfalls of Post-War Reconstruction by Maud Beelman, Center for Public Integrity, Center for Public Integrity October 30th, 2003 More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. |
| Iraq: Contract Extended for Halliburton by Larry Margasak, The Associated Press October 29th, 2003 Vice President Dick Cheney's former company will retain a no-bid contract in Iraq longer than expected, the Bush administration said Wednesday, blaming sabotage of oil facilities for delays in replacement contracts. |
| US: The $87 billion money pit by Rod Nordland and Michael Hirsh, Newsweek October 27th, 2003 Iraqis like to point out that after the 1991 war, Saddam restored the badly destroyed electric grid in only three months. Some six months after Bush declared an end to major hostilities, a much more ambitious and costly American effort has yet to get to that point. It is only in recent weeks that the Coalition amped up to the power-generation level that Saddam achieved last March-4,400 megawatts for the country (though it's since dropped back). True, Saddam didn't have a guerrilla war to contend with, and his power infrastructure was in much better shape than the Americans found it. But he also had far fewer resources. |
| US: Uncle Sam Keeps SAIC On Call For Top Tasks by Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun October 26th, 2003 While Science Applications International Corporation is dwarfed by such defense giants as Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, no contractor does a more mind-boggling variety of jobs for the government. None is entrusted with more sensitive tasks. Yet few Americans have heard of the San Diego-based company, whose forgettable name and low public profile have long been a draw for publicity-shy intelligence agencies. |
| World: Donors Promise About $37.5 Billion to Rebuild Iraq Reuters October 24th, 2003 Governments and international agencies pledged around $37.5 billion in aid and loans to help rebuild war-ravaged Iraq on Friday as the results of a donors' conference came in well above initial low expectations. |
| Iraq: The Pentagon's Private Corps by Julian Brookes, MotherJones.com October 22nd, 2003 Washington has long outsourced work to private firms. What's new is the size and variety of contracts being doled out, particularly by the Pentagon. Private military companies now do more than simply build airplanes -- they maintain those planes on the battlefield and even fly them; construct detention camps in Guantanamo Bay, pilot armed reconnaissance planes and helicopter gunships to eradicate coca crops in Colombia; and operate the intelligence and communications systems at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado -- work that brings the various companies an estimated $100 billion a year. |
| US: Halliburton Ceated Raised Prices of Gas by Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com October 16th, 2003 Why is getting gasoline to oil-rich Iraq costing Americans so much money? The congressmen have a one-word, obvious answer: Halliburton. |
| Iraq: Basra Crude Reaches California by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle October 15th, 2003 ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips both imported Iraqi crude to California in August, according to a filing Tuesday by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. |
| Iraq: Halliburton Accused of Overbilling by Sue Pleming, Reuters October 15th, 2003 A U.S. Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday accused Halliburton , the Texas oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, of overcharging the U.S. government for gasoline the firm imports into Iraq. |
| US: Big Media Gets Bigger by Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS October 10th, 2003 Big media companies keep getting bigger – with more and more power over our lives. This week's deal between General Electric (GE) and Vivendi means that GE'S NBC, which helped elect Arnold Schwarzenegger Governor of California, has just picked up not only Universal Studios, but the USA, Trio and Sci-fi cable channels, to go with CNBC and MSNBC, all now part of a $43 billion dollar empire. |
| Iraq: News, But Not As We Know It by Robert Fisk, Independent (London) October 7th, 2003 Iraqi Media Network reporters have twice gone on strike for more pay and have complained of censorship. They were told by John Sandrock - head of the private American company Science Applications International Corporation - which runs the television station - that "either you accept what we offer or you resign - there are plenty of candidates for your jobs". |
| Iraq: Business Ties Raise Questions by Craig Gordon and Knut Royce, Newsday October 5th, 2003 The former law partner of the Defense Department's architect of Iraq's post-war planning has teamed up with the nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, a Pentagon-anointed leader in the country, to profit from the multibillion-dollar rebuilding of the war-ravaged nation. L. Marc Zell, a Jerusalem-based attorney, is the former partner of Douglas Feith, the Pentagon undersecretary who was a major force behind the push for war. |
| Iraq: Millions Misspent in Contracts by Patrick E. Tyler and Raymond Bonner, New York Times October 3rd, 2003 Iraqi officials and businessmen charge that millions of dollars in contracts are being awarded without competitive bidding, some of them to former cronies of Mr. Hussein's government. |
| Iraq: 'A Fox Left To Mind Chickens' by Tim Reid, The Times (London) October 3rd, 2003 There is one man perhaps even more eager than President Bush to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: David Kay, the former Iraqi nuclear inspector told by the Administration to uncover them and former employee of Science Applications International Corporation. |
| Brazil: Rio to Buy Fighter Jets by Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder October 2nd, 2003 A decision by Brazil's government to proceed with a $700 million purchase of supersonic fighter jets is raising questions at home and abroad about the country's military objectives. Brazil announced this week that it plans to replace at least 12 aging Mirage fighter jets, in what is believed to be Latin America's largest military hardware purchase since the end of the Cold War. Chile purchased 10 American-made F-16 jets for $660 million in 2002. |
| Liberia: Northbridge Services Group Under Investigation by Bruce Zagaris, International Enforcement Law Reporter October 1st, 2003 The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the role of the Northbridge Services Group, an Anglo-American private military company (PMC), about its role in the Liberia civil strife on behalf of the rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), especially a plan to arrest former Liberian President Charles Taylor and take him to the Sierra Leone Ad Hoc Tribunal to answer charges. |
| US: Insiders' New Firm Consults on Iraq by Douglas Jehl, New York Times September 30th, 2003 A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects. |
| Iraq: Total, ENI, Royal Dutch/Shell In Oil Development Talks Reuters September 29th, 2003 Iraq has begun to court several European oil company investors (Total, ENI, Royal Dutch/Shell) as it seeks to spur development of the country's massive oil reserves before Washington hands over power, a senior Iraqi official said Monday. |
| Iraq: Imposing US Mobile Phone System by Brian Whitaker, The Guardian (London) September 29th, 2003 Any day now, the authorities in Iraq will announce the winners of a contest to provide Iraq's long-awaited mobile phone service. This is one area where Halliburton - vice-president Dick Cheney's old firm - isn't a front-runner, so the outcome could be interesting. Last July, the US-run coalition provisional authority invited bids from phone companies for up to three licences, covering northern, central and southern Iraq. Licences, it said, would be issued on the basis of "best value". |
| US: Military Contractor, Reviewer Used Same Lobbyist by Ovetta Wiggins, Washington Post September 28th, 2003 Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has asked state investigators to look into the opposite interests of a well-known Annapolis lobbyist who represents two companies involved in the overhaul of the state's voting machine system: Diebold Election Systems Inc., the company that has a $ 55 million contract to provide the state with its electronic voting system, and Science Applications International Corp., the computer security company the state recently hired to examine the Diebold voting machines for flaws. |
| US: Cheney Continues to Have Financial Ties to Halliburton by Mike Allen, Washington Post September 26th, 2003 p>A Congressional Research Service report released yesterday concluded that federal ethics laws treat Vice President Cheney's annual deferred compensation checks and unexercised stock options as continuing financial interests in the Halliburton Co. Democrats have aggressively challenged Cheney's claim that he has no financial ties to Halliburton, despite those arrangements. |
| LATIN AMERICA: Sharp Increase in U.S. Military Aid by Jim Lobe, OneWorld.net September 23rd, 2003 Spurred by the wars on drugs and terrorism, levels of U.S. military aid to Latin America have more than tripled over the last five years, according to a report released by three foreign policy groups in 2003 |
| Iraq: Economy for Sale by Philip Thornton in Dubai and Andrew Gumbel, The Independant September 22nd, 2003 Iraq was in effect put up for sale yesterday when the American-appointed administration announced it was opening up all sectors of the economy to foreign investors in a desperate attempt to deliver much-needed reconstruction against a daily backdrop of kidnappings, looting and violent death. |
| US: Boeings Ties Bloat Government Budgets by Frida Berrigan, In These Times September 19th, 2003 Under the terms of a unique leasing deal Boeing negotiated with the Air Forcewhich has gotten long-overdue public scrutiny thanks to Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and his Commerce Committee the Air Force would lease 100 Boeing 767 air-refueling aircraft for more than $20 billion. As In These Times was going to press, the Pentagon was deciding whether or not to approve a smaller lease of planes instead. |
| US: JetBlue Shared Passenger Data with Defense Contractor by Ryan Singel, Wired September 18th, 2003 JetBlue Airways confirmed on Thursday that in September 2002, it provided 5 million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor for proof-of-concept testing of a Pentagon project unrelated to airline security -- with help from the Transportation Security Administration. The contractor, Torch Concepts, then augmented that data with Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information, including income level, to develop what looks to be a study of whether passenger-profiling systems such as CAPPS II are feasible. |
| UK: BAE Accused of Arms Deal Slush Fund by David Leigh and Rob Evans, The Guardian September 11th, 2003 Sir Richard Evans, the chairman of Britain's most powerful arms company, may have been personally complicit in the operation of a 20m "slush fund" designed to bribe Saudi officials, according to allegations contained in a letter by the head of the Serious Fraud Office. |
| USA: Other Things You Might Do With $87 Billion by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation September 10th, 2003 You can actually get a few things done with $87 billion, the amount that President Bush has asked Congress to appropriate for expenditures related to the military occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. |
| US: Securities and Exchange Commission Charges Ex-Northrop Official by Carrie Johnson, Washington Post September 9th, 2003 The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a former sales executive at a Herndon-based Northrop Grumman Corp. information technology unit yesterday with aiding and abetting securities fraud at supplier Legato Systems Inc. |
| World: Sesame Street Used to Promote US Army by Ryan Dilley, BBC September 4th, 2003 Images of heavily-armed Marines patrolling Iraq may not be winning the US many friends in the Islamic world. So it could be time to enlist the soft and fluffy inhabitants of Sesame Street in the battle against anti-Americanism. Is Sesame Street really brought to you by the letters U, S and A? The US Army - which partly sponsors the show's makers, the New York-based Children's Television Workshop - certainly loves Sesame Street. Especially its saccharine theme music about everything being "A-OK". |
| US: Militarization of Space by Joel Bleifuss, In These Times September 3rd, 2003 With no fanfare, the Bush Administration is taking military control of what it terms near space, thereby laying claim to the area of the Solar System that lies between the Earth and the Moons orbit. A key objective is not only to ensure U.S. ability to exploit space for military purposes, but also as required to deny an adversarys ability to do so, is how the Pentagons 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review explained U.S. strategy. |
| Colombia: US 'Private Army' Grows by Rachel Van Dongen, Christian Science Monitor September 3rd, 2003 Flying over the vast jungle here, a joint Colombian-American crew trolls for suspicious aircraft that could be smuggling tons of cocaine onto American soil. Yet the Americans involved are not active military men. Instead, they are part of the unofficial army of private US contractors working in Colombia, doing everything from spraying coca fields to training a Colombian antikidnapping squad. It's a formula the US has repeated from here to Afghanistan to Iraq: employing civilians to do jobs historically carried out by the armed forces. |
| Brussels: IMF, WB Donors Undeterred by Iraq Insecurity by Judy Dempsey, Financial Times September 3rd, 2003 Leading international donors on Wednesday said next month's crucial aid-pledging conference for Iraq would take place in Madrid as scheduled, despite the deteriorating security environment across the country and the weak status of the current United Nations mandate. The donors, led by a core group comprising the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US, the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme as well as Saudi Arabia, Japan and the United Arab Emirates, also said they expected detailed "needs assessment" reports would be ready in time for the conference, on October 23-24. |
| India: New Delhi Buys Hawk Jets from BAE by Mark Odell, Financial Times September 3rd, 2003 New Delhi has agreed to buy the Hawk jet trainer from the UK's BAE Systems, ending years of indecision over the deal.The government has been close to approving the purchase on several occasions since the early 1980s but each time political sensitivities led to the deal's collapse. The 800m ($1.3bn) order for 66 jets is part of a 1.1bn training deal, which will initially see Indian air force pilots trained in the UK. |
| Iraq: U.S. Plans To Reshape the Iraqi Economy by Adam Horowitz, Z Magazine September 1st, 2003 On May 1, 2003 the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bush administration has “drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq’s economy in the U.S. image.” According to this report, the U.S. is planning to privatize state-owned enterprises, create a modernized Baghdad stock exchange, a reformed central bank, and rewrite the tariff and tax code systems. |
| Iraq: Halliburton Reaping Huge Profits by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post August 28th, 2003 Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents. The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors. |
| Middle East: Military Contractor's Media Mess by Katrin Dauenhauer and Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service August 16th, 2003 It is no secret that US defense and construction companies - particularly those with close ties to the administration of President George W Bush - are making a lot of money in the post-war rush for contracts in Iraq. |
| USA: We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation August 13th, 2003 In yesterday's Washington Post, Condoleeza Rice, the President's National Security Advisor, writes the following:>"Our task is to work with those in the Middle East who seek progress toward greater democracy, tolerance, prosperity and freedom. As President Bush said in February, The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life.'" |
| Colombia: Private Companies on the Frontline by Stephen Fidler and Thomas Catn, Financial Times August 12th, 2003 US-financed anti-narcotics operations in Colombia, which are largely carried out by DynCorp and other US private military companies (PMCs), are cloaked in secrecy. In February, a US citizen and a Colombian national were executed by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after their aircraft crashed in rebel territory. Three other American contractors were abducted. The Americans were employees of California Microwave Systems, a subsidiary of the US defence group, Northrop Grumman. A few weeks later another three contractors were killed when their aircraft crashed while searching for the previous three. |
| World: The Jobs of War by Stephen Fidler and Thomas Catn, Financial Times August 11th, 2003 The missions in Afghanistan and Colombia are just two of hundreds being carried out across the globe by private contractors. These so-called private military companies (PMCs) are providing services for governments that were once the preserve of the military. They are hired - principally, though not exclusively, by the US - for relatively mundane tasks such as building and guarding army bases and sophisticated roles providing battlefield logistics, training, strategic analysis and intelligence gathering, for example. Some, a controversial minority, are hired for direct combat duties. |
| Iraq: Oil Wealth May Not Mean Country Will Prosper by Mark Fritz, Associated Press August 11th, 2003 Iraq is swimming in oil, but anybody who thinks that such natural wealth translates into a fat and happy middle class is in for a crude awakening. |
| Iraq: Bidding for Contract Unfairly Favors Halliburton, Rivals Say by Tom Abate, San Francisco Chronicle August 8th, 2003 As the bidding deadline looms on two big contracts to repair Iraqi oil facilities, some competitors grumble privately that the process favors Halliburton, the Texas oil firm formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, because the bidding specifications closely resemble what one of its divisions is currently doing in Iraq. |
| Iraq: US Bartering Arms for Soldiers by Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service August 6th, 2003 UNITED NATIONS, Jul 30 (IPS) - Faced with a rising death toll among its soldiers in Iraq, the United States is trying to buy foreign troops for a proposed 30,000-strong multinational force in Baghdad. "When they were seeking U.N. support for a war on Iraq, they were twisting arms," one Asian diplomat told IPS. "Now they are offering carrots in exchange for our troops." |
| Iraq: Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows by David Wood, Newhouse News Service July 31st, 2003 U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said. |
| Iraq: Firms 'Banned' from Mobile Bids BBC July 31st, 2003 Rules drawn up for mobile phone licences in Iraq by the US authorities could bar many of Europe's biggest telecoms companies - and almost all those in the Middle East - from bidding. |
| US: Boeing Punished for Stolen Data by Renae Merle, Washington Post July 25th, 2003 The Air Force stripped Boeing Co. of $ 1 billion in potential revenue as a penalty for possessing documents stolen from Lockheed Martin Corp. during a competition for a large contract to launch military satellites. |
| Iraq: Long-Term Oil Contracts Given to Major Corps by Bruce Stanley, Associated Press July 24th, 2003 LONDON -- Two major oil companies have each agreed to buy 10 million barrels of Iraqi oil under the first long-term contracts to be offered by Iraq since the end of the war. |
| Iraq: Corporate Slush Funds for Baghdad by Steve Kretzmann and Jim Vallette, Counterpunch July 22nd, 2003 In early April, during the initial assault on Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp Exxon until Pentagon PR realized that didn't look very good and ordered them renamed. |
| Iraq: Troubles At Iraqi Media Network by Kathleen McCaul, Baghdad Bulletin July 21st, 2003 Science Applications International Corporation stumbles along the way to building the Iraqi Media Network with funding from the US Department of Defense. |
| USA: Why Bush Deserves to be Impeached by Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun July 20th, 2003 "Worse than a crime, it was a blunder," was how the cynical Talleyrand famously described Napoleon's murder of the Duke d'Enghien. The same may be said of President George Bush's attempts to murder the leader of a sovereign nation, Saddam Hussein, and his foolhardy eagerness to invade Iraq. |
| Iraq: Will the UN Bail Out Bush? by Jim Lobe, InterPress Service July 18th, 2003 WASHINGTON, Jul 18 (IPS) - Make no mistake: U.S. President George W. Bush is in very big trouble. Whereas a week ago, people here were talking about the dread "V" word -- for Vietnam -- this week the dreaded "W" word -- for Watergate -- was back in vogue, even as the "V" word was still in use. Watergate plus Vietnam is about the worst combination for a sitting president that anyone could possibly imagine. |
| Iraq: US Soldiers Complain of Low Morale by Sue Pleming, Reuters July 16th, 2003 Fed up with being in Iraq and demoralized by their role as peacekeepers in a risky place, a group of Caired their plight on U.S. television on Wednesday and said they had lost faith in the Army. |
| Iraq: 20 Lies About the War by Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker, lndependent/UK July 13th, 2003 Falsehoods Ranging from Exaggeration to Plain Untruth Were Used to Make the Case for War. More Lies are Being Used in the Aftermath |
| USA: Row Over Weapons Allegations Threatens to Turn the Iraq Conflict Into Liability for Bush by Rupert Cornwell, Independent UK July 10th, 2003 The row over Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction has been slow to reach America, but it is starting to become as much of a headache for President George Bush as it is for Tony Blair. |
| US: Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers by Naomi Klein, The Guardian June 24th, 2003 The war on NGOs is being fought on two clear fronts. One buys the silence and complicity of mainstream humanitarian and religious groups by offering lucrative reconstruction contracts. The other marginalises and criminalises more independent-minded NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to democracy. The US Agency for International Development (USaid) is in charge of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise Institute, the most powerful think-tank in Washington, is wielding the sticks. |
| Iraq: Nation Builders for Hire by Dan Baum, New York Times magazine June 22nd, 2003 When Dwight Eisenhower warned in 1961 of the ''military-industrial complex,'' he never imagined the regimental descendants of Monty's boys at El Alamein tenting in the desert to baby-sit corporadoes earning $10,000 tax-free a month. This, however, is modern might. The military has become the industrial, and vice versa. |
| US: Security Issues Delay Rebuilding by Jackie Spinner, The Washington Post June 20th, 2003 To get the lights back on and the air conditioning humming again in Iraq, U.S. construction firm Bechtel National Inc. needed a giant tool called a crimper to repair and reconnect high-voltage power lines. But three days after the San Francisco-based company shipped in an 80-pound crimper last month, the $15,000 tool disappeared, stolen in a ripple of looting that has become a major challenge for aid workers and private contractors operating in Iraq. |
| Iraq: U.S. Weighs Plan To Mortgage Iraqi Oil For Rebuilding Costs
by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal June 19th, 2003 The Bush administration is considering a controversial plan to pay for Iraq's reconstruction by mortgaging its future oil revenue. The proposal, which could involve issuing securities or trade credits backed by projected oil revenue, has the enthusiastic endorsement of the two major U.S. companies with reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Halliburton Co. and Bechtel Group Inc. |
| ACEH: US Weapons Aid Repression by Frida Berrigan, CounterPunch June 16th, 2003 On May 19th, Indonesia launched a military campaign to "strike and paralyze" a small band of separatist rebels in the Aceh province. In a made-for-TV photo op, 458 soldiers parachuted onto the island from six C-130 Hercules transport aircraft manufactured by Lockheed Martin, the United States' largest defense contractor. |
| US: For Whistle-Blowers, Virtue May Be the Only Reward by Peter Pae, Los Angeles Times June 16th, 2003 Richard Bagley doesn't sound like someone who just hit the jackpot. Last week, he became one of the nation's wealthiest whistle-blowers when Northrop Grumman Corp. agreed to settle a case he and the Justice Department brought against TRW Inc., and the department awarded him $27.2 million. In all, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, which recently acquired TRW, agreed to pay $111.2 million to resolve claims that TRW padded bills for defense work done in the early 1990s. |
| Afghanistan: Ex-SAS man framed for Kabul killings by Lucy Morgan Edwards, Sunday Times (London) June 15th, 2003 A BRITISH man held in jail in Kabul and accused of killing two Afghans in a mysterious shoot-out in his hotel bedroom has declared his innocence. |
| UK: US group secures Chubb for £620m
by Mark Milner, Guardian (London) June 13th, 2003 One of Britain's oldest security companies, Chubb, has agreed to a £620m takeover bid from the US conglomerate United Technologies Corporation, which makes Pratt & Whitney aircraft engines, Sikorsky helicopters and Otis lifts is offering 75p a share plus a special 1p a share dividend. |
| US: Northrop Subsidiary Overcharged 1990's Space Project Work by Anitha Reddy, Washington Post June 10th, 2003 Northrop Grumman Corp. agreed to pay $ 111.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit alleging that a subsidiary overcharged the government for work done on space projects during most of the 1990s. |
| USA: Are Corporations Too Big to Debar? by Anne Marie Squeo, The Wall Street Journal June 10th, 2003 WASHINGTON -- Federal inquiries into whether Boeing Co. illegally won a multibillion-dollar military contract are sparking debate here about whether rules to ban companies that run afoul of the law from doing government work are ineffective in policing corporate behemoths. |
| Georgia: US Privatizes Military Aid by Nick Paton Walsh, Guardian (London) June 6th, 2003 The Pentagon is to privatise its military presence in Georgia by contracting a team of retired US military officers to equip and advise the former Soviet republic's crumbling military, embellishing an eastward expansion that has enraged Moscow. |
| US: America's Most Wanted: War Profiteer Cards by Julia Scott, Alternet May 29th, 2003 Corporate watchdogs, poker aficionados and concerned citizens will all have reason to delight in The Ruckus Society's newest bid to expose the ''War Profiteers'' who benefit from combat at the expense of Iraqis and Americans alike, engagingly rendered on a harmless-looking set of playing cards. |
| USA: Spying for Fun and Profit by Kari Lydersen, Alternet May 28th, 2003 Survelliance technologies raise serious questions about invasions of privacy and violations of civil liberties. They also cost a lot of money. Taxpayers fund this massively beefed up security. Private corporations and even individuals are also paying large amounts to boost their own security procedures in light of the war on terrorism. Naturally, someone is also profiting off this boom. |
| US: Defense Firms Consolidate As War Goes High-Tech by Renae Merle, The Washington Post May 27th, 2003 The nation's leading defense contractors are gobbling up small technology firms in a consolidation binge driven by the Pentagon's demand that future military conflicts be dominated by high-tech warfare. |
| USA: Defense Firms Consolidate as War goes High-Tech by Renae Merle, The Washington Post May 27th, 2003 The nation's leading defense contractors are gobbling up small technology firms in a consolidation binge driven by the Pentagon's demand that future military conflicts be dominated by high-tech warfare. |
| Saudi Arabia: Vinnell and the House of Saud by Ian Urbina, Asia Times May 17th, 2003 Few people had ever heard of the Vinnell corporation before the recent bombings in Riyadh. The company, which is a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman of the US, has always kept a low profile, remaining behind the scenes throughout many of the most controversial chapters of US foreign policy over the past 70 years. |
| USA: Bush Ally Set to Profit from War on Terror by Antony Barnett and Solomon Hughes, The Observer May 11th, 2003 James Woolsey, former CIA boss and influential adviser to President George Bush, is a director of a US firm aiming to make millions of dollars from the 'war on terror', The Observer can reveal. |
| Iraq: US-Backed Iraqi Exiles Return To Reinvent Nation by Douglas Jehl, New York Times May 3rd, 2003 Pentagon officials hired Science Applications Iternational Corporation to run a shadow Iraqi government out of offices in suburban Virginia called the Iraqi Reconstruction and Redevelopment Council, to smooth a transition to an Iraqi-led authority by resuscitating moribund ministries and restarting basic services. |
| Iraq: The Aftermath; Bush Launches Reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan by Rupert Cornwell, Independent (London) May 2nd, 2003 The US declared an end to serious hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq yesterday, and it shifted the focus to reconstruction in the two countries that have been the prime targets of the Bush administration's war on terrorism. |
| Iraq: Bush Officials Devise a Broad Plan
For Free-Market Economy in Iraq
by Neil King Jr, Wall Street Journal May 1st, 2003 The Bush administration has drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq's economy in the U.S. image. Hoping to establish a free-market economy in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. is calling for the privatization of state-owned industries such as parts of the oil sector, forming a stock market complete with electronic trading and fundamental tax reform. |
| US: In The Company Of Spies by Paul Kaihla, Business 2.0 May 1st, 2003 It's the largest private IT firm in the nation. It's turned a profit for 33 straight years. And it's on the front lines of the war on terror. So why haven't you heard of Science Applications International Corporation? |
| Iraq: New Drill: Inside Giant Oil
Industry, Maze Of Management Tensions
by Chip Cummins, Susan Warren and Bhushan Bahree , Wall Street Journal April 30th, 2003 The Pentagon is embarking on one of the most audacious hostile takeovers ever: the seizure and rejuvenation of Iraq's huge but decrepit state-run petroleum industry. The U.S. oilmen have to cull loyalists to Saddam Hussein's Baath party from management and find Iraqi executives willing to work for the occupation. Already, the Americans are having trouble recruiting senior talent. |
| Iraq: At Oil Plant, Bitterness And Idleness by Peter S. Goodman, Washington Post April 30th, 2003 Many Iraqi oil workers are frustrated that the United States has yet to put in place a functioning oil ministry, leaving managers at the giant South Oil Co. without the authority to buy new tools, vehicles and machinery in a country that holds the world's second-largest reserves of oil. |
| US: Supreme Court to Rule on General Dynamics Age Discrimination Case by Charles Lane, Washington Post April 22nd, 2003 The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will review a Colorado case that could help further define the constitutional ban on forced confessions. At issue is whether physical evidence that authorities discovered because of what a suspect told them before being fully informed of his rights should have been admissible in court. |
| Iraq: Plugging Into The Networked War by Diane Brady , Business Week April 21st, 2003 When Frank C. Lanza pictures combat in Iraq, he sees the invisible links connecting the electronics installed on fighter jets and tanks to commanders sitting hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. He sees dumb bombs made "smart," and unmanned vehicles that can assess Saddam's strongholds. On the home front, the CEO of L-3 Communications Corp. already sees his company's equipment handling tasks ranging from airport security to training first responders for terrorist attacks. And after the war, he foresees helping to rebuild a shattered Iraq with L-3's networked software and infrastructure consultants. |
| Iraq: Operation Iraqi Education by Jackie Spinner, Washington Post April 21st, 2003 Washington consulting firm Creative Associates International Inc. has sent workers for years to overseas trouble spots, helping rebuild communities in El Salvador, Lebanon, Serbia and Afghanistan. Now the firm, headed by Charito Kruvant, a native of Bolivia and longtime Washington civic leader, can add Iraq to the list. Ten days ago, the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded the firm an initial $ 2 million contract to start rebuilding the educational system in Iraq as part of the Bush administration's $ 1.7 billion reconstruction plan. |
| USA: Bechtel to Rebuild Iraq by David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle April 18th, 2003 Bechtel Corp., the San Francisco construction giant known for its global reach and high-powered political connections, won a contract Thursday worth up to $680 million to rebuild Iraqi roads, schools, sewers and hospitals damaged in the war. |
| IRAQ: Privatization in Disguise by Naomi Klein, The Nation April 18th, 2003 On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer than that." |
| US: The Fatal Flaws in the Patriot Missile System
by Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch April 17th, 2003 This time around it was going to be different. This time around the Patriot missile was going to live up to all the hype, unlike in the first installment of the Gulf War when the missiles nearly struck out against Iraqi Scuds, the softballs of the ballistic missile world. |
| Middle East: U.S. Hopes to Pry Open Region's Economies by James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle April 16th, 2003 Bush administration officials have been clear in saying that as the war winds down and they begin their campaign to bring political reform to Iraq and the Middle East, a critical step will be opening the region's markets to trade and investment. |
| USA: Maine Protesters Blockade General Dynamics in Tax Day Protest by Jen Fish, Portland Press Herald April 16th, 2003 Fifteen activists bound together by a mixture of roofing tar, chicken wire and nails wrapped around PVC piping were arrested Tuesday after trying to block the entrance to General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products Co. |
| Iraq: Welcome Aboard the Gravy Train by Terry Jones, The Observer April 13th, 2003 Well the war has been a huge success, and I guess it's time for congratulations all round. And wow! It's hard to know where to begin. First, I'd like to congratulate Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) and the Bechtel Corporation, which are the construction companies most likely to benefit from the reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts in the region of $1 billion should soon coming your way, chaps. Well done! And what with the US dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles on Iraq so far and with more to come, there's going to be a lot of reconstruction. It looks like it could be a bonanza year. |
| USA: Working Class Women as War Heroes by Farai Chideya, AlterNet April 4th, 2003 Private Jessica Lynch is a hero, the kind who in her hopefully long life will never escape her youthful fame. The baby-faced 19-year-old fought off Iraqis in an ambush, endured broken bones, gunshot and stab wounds, and went eight days without food. This movie played in real time has all the elements that make fast-paced war flicks like "Behind Enemy Lines" box office magic. Her face, frozen with what must have been shock, pain and relief during her rescue, is already one of the most haunting images of the war. |
 | Cheney, Halliburton and the Spoils of War by Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray, Citizen Works April 4th, 2003 Why Dick Cheney's wartime conflicts of interest are among the most troubling in Washington. |
| USA: The Business of War by Thalif Deen, AlterNet April 3rd, 2003 When the dust finally settles on post-war Iraq, the United States may have unleashed virtually all of its state-of-the-art weaponry on a country already devastated by 13 years of rigid U.N. sanctions. |
| Iraq: Marketplace Deaths Caused by Raytheon Missile by Cahal Milmo, Independent (London) April 2nd, 2003 An American missile, identified from the remains of its serial number, was pinpointed yesterday as the cause of the explosion at a Baghdad market on Friday night that killed at least 62 Iraqis. The codes on the foot-long shrapnel shard, seen by the Independent correspondent Robert Fisk at the scene of the bombing in the Shu'ale district, came from a weapon manufactured in Texas by Raytheon, the world's biggest producer of "smart" armaments. |
| World: Iraq Coverage Helps Arms Exporters
by Renae Merle, Washington Post April 1st, 2003 When the war in Iraq winds down, the U.S. defense industry is likely to launch a major new offensive to sell its battlefield-tested weapons to countries around the world. |
| Iraq: Reconstruction and U.S. Interest Globe and Mail April 1st, 2003 Even before winning the war, the United States appears intent on managing the peace and the costly reconstruction on its own. This opens Washington to criticism that the conflict is partially about profiteering, rather than simply the removal of a vile dictator and the introduction of some stability to a volatile region. |
| US: Builders Look at Iraq Project as Open Door by David Streitfeld, Nancy Cleeland and Mark Fineman, The New York Times March 31st, 2003 When the U.S. Agency for International Development asked the three California companies whether they wanted to bid on a project on the other side of the world, all of them jumped at the chance to write proposals on a tight deadline. The reason: No one wanted to miss out on the chance to be the first to rebuild Iraq. As the corporate giants well know, the $600 million is merely the initial installment of what promises to be a much bigger sum. |
| Iraq: Oil Companies Aid Military Planners, Industry Avoids Publicity About Its Role in Teaching Troops to Operate Iraq Wells by Chip Cummins , Wall Street Journal March 27th, 2003 The oil industry has gone to great lengths to distance itself from any planning related to the potential post-war opening of Iraq's massive fields, now partly in U.S. and British hands. But it is becoming clear that a number of companies played significant advisory roles in military operations taking place on those fields, underscoring an unusual partnership between the military and private companies in the Iraq campaign. |
| Iraq: US Army Depots Named After Oil Giants by Neela Banerjee, New York Times March 27th, 2003 The subtleties surrounding the sensitive role oil plays in the Iraqi war may have eluded the United States Army. Deep in some newspaper coverage yesterday was a report that the 101st Airborne Division had named one central Iraq outpost Forward Operating Base Shell and another Forward Operating Base Exxon. |
| USA: Bechtel to Get Richer in Post-War Iraq by Aaron Davis and Dana Hull, San Jose Mercury News March 25th, 2003 Bechtel raised the Bay Bridge and assembled the Hoover Dam. The San Francisco company extinguished the oil well fires in Kuwait and dug tunnels for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Its workers have laid 50,000 miles of pipeline and built 17,000 miles of roadway in 140 countries. |
| EU: Boycott of American Goods Over Iraq War Gains Momentum by Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters March 25th, 2003 BERLIN - No more Coca-Cola or Budweiser, no Marlboro, no American whiskey or even American Express cards -- a growing number of restaurants in Germany are taking everything American off their menus to protest the war in Iraq. |
| US: Protests Focus on Corporations Supporting Iraq War by Joe Garofoli, Harriet Chiang, Peter Fimrite, Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle March 25th, 2003 Anti-war demonstrators are turning away from the widespread protests that disrupted San Francisco last week and are instead using smaller actions focusing on the government and businesses that contribute to the U.S. war effort, activists said Monday. |
| USA: Investors Say War Bad For the Economy by Jim Lobe, Project Against the Present Danger March 21st, 2003 As the war proceeds in Iraq, debates have already begun over the impact that the war will have on the economy. Perhaps lost amidst this debate is the key question raised by Business Week this week in a lead article headlined "The High Price of Bad Diplomacy." Citing growing fears about instability and the implications of an open-ended '"Bush Doctrine" to fight evil and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) wherever they raise their heads, it noted with characteristic understatement... |
| USA: Inside Lockheed's $250 Billion Pentagon Connection by Geoffrey Gray, Village Voice March 19th, 2003 George Bush has said if he is fortunate enough to be elected president, he is going to look at our whole military situation, including the tactical air account. He's noted that the 3000 number [of planes] seems a bit much. |
| USA: On Eve of War, Washington's Image Plummets in Europe and Russia by Jim Lobe, InterPress Service March 18th, 2003 With the launch of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as close as 24 hours, major surveys of eight key European nations have shown a sharp rise in critical attitudes towards the United States, focused particularly on President George W.. Bush's foreign policy. |
| US: American firms set to cash in on reconstruction of Iraq by Danny Penman March 11th, 2003 The American government is on the verge of awarding construction contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is deposed. |
| USA: Secret Bidding on Iraq Contracts Looks Bad by Mark Tran, The Guardian March 11th, 2003 The surreptitious way the process for inviting engineering companies to submit bids for the rebuilding of Iraq was handled could lead to more trouble for the Bush administration, writes Mark Tran |
| USA: Firms Set for Postwar Contracts by Danny Penman and agencies, The Guardian March 11th, 2003 The American government is on the verge of awarding construction contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Iraq once Saddam Hussein is deposed. |
| IRAQ: Thousands of Private Contractors Support U.S. Forces in Persian Gulf by Kenneth Bredemeier, Washington Post March 3rd, 2003 Private contractors are sending thousands of technical experts to the Persian Gulf region. They operate communications systems, repair helicopters, fix weapons systems and link the computers with the troops to command centers. |
| USA: General/Defense Contractor to Rebuild Iraq by David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle February 26th, 2003 The retired general tapped by the Bush administration to oversee rebuilding of post-war Iraq was, until just a few weeks ago, an executive at a leading defense contractor working on missile systems that would be used to bomb Baghdad. |
| USA: 12 Reasons to Oppose a War with Iraq by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation February 24th, 2003 With the airwaves and op-ed pages dominated by war-mongers who mock and mischaracterize the burgeoning peace movement, there remains a need to continually reiterate the common-sense reasons to oppose a war. Here are a dozen. |
 | The New Oil Order by Michael Renner, Foreign Policy in Focus February 14th, 2003 We take a look at the geopolitics of oil and the role they play in Washington's war on Iraq. |
| USA: Corporations, War, You by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation February 6th, 2003 One thing is clear about the Bush administration's current rush to war: It has nothing to do with protecting U.S. security. |
| Turkey: Learning To Dance To Bush's Tune by Adam McConnel, GVNews.Net February 5th, 2003 ISTANBUL, Feb 05, 2003 -- Under heavy pressure from U.S. officials and the Turkish military, Turkey's leading politicians have signaled a distinct change in attitude towards the United States' Iraq plans. |
| US: This Gun For Hire by Dan Baum, Wired February 1st, 2003 DynCorp has operated in the shadows of the capital for five decades. It is neither the most visible nor the most powerful of the companies that rely on government contracts. But it has thoroughly mastered the byways of Washington, and its purchase by CSC shines a spotlight on the modern military techno-industrial complex. |
| US: Air Force job to send 100 Sytex staffers to Asia by Harold Brubaker, Philadelphia Inquirer January 31st, 2003 A Doylestown information technology company signed a five-year, $98 million contract yesterday to provide communications support services to the Air Force in southwestern Asia. |
| Kuwait: Colleaugues mourn N.H. native killed in Kuwait attack Associated Press January 24th, 2003 Colleagues of an American software executive killed in Kuwait while working on a military contract remembered him as hardworking and caring. |
| Iraq: US begins secret talks to secure Iraq's oilfields for fear that wells will be torched if regime falls by Nick Paton, Julian Borger, Terry Macalister and Ewen MacAskill, Guardian January 23rd, 2003 The US military has drawn up detailed plans to secure and protect Iraq's oilfields to prevent a repeat of 1991 when President Saddam set Kuwait's wells ablaze. |
| Kuwait: Poway man killed, San Diegan injured by Bradley J. Fikes, North County Times January 22nd, 2003 A North County software executive was shot and killed in Kuwait on Tuesday and a colleague injured by the same gunman in an ambush near an American military base. |
| US: Senator to Testify in Oracle/Logicon Inquiry Los Angeles Times January 15th, 2003 The grand jury investigating the Davis administration's ill-fated software contract with Oracle Corp. has subpoenaed a state legislator to testify, the first public indication that the state attorney general's office is continuing an active investigation of the matter. |
| USA: M.I.T. Studies Accused of Covering-Up Flaws in Antimissile System by William J. Broad, New York Times January 2nd, 2003 CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is looking into accusations that its premier laboratory lied to cover up serious problems with the technology at the heart of the administration's proposed antimissile defense system. |
| US: Seeking Nashville Kurds Associated Press December 31st, 2002 Kurdish immigrants in Nashville are among those being recruited in three cities to work as translators for Army troops and personnel in case of war in Iraq. |
| US: Arms Factories Pollute Drinking Water by Peter Waldman, Wall Street Journal December 16th, 2002 Five years ago, the Voetsches learned that the home they bought in 1970 lies on the edge of a so-called plume of underground water polluted with waste from a nearby missile factory. Among the chemicals found in local drinking wells is perchlorate, the main ingredient of solid rocket fuel and a known toxin. The Voetsches believe it was in their water and, they suspect, their garden soil. "We lived off the land and never thought twice about it," Mr. Voetsch says. |
| Russia: Oil Giants Try to Beat US to Iraqi Reserves by Nick Paton Walsh, The Guardian December 11th, 2002 Russian oil companies are trying to secure new contracts with Baghdad in an attempt to dominate Iraq's huge reserves and hold Washington to its promise of respecting Moscow's economic interests in the event of a regime change. |
| UK: BP Chief Fears US Will Carve up Iraqi Oil Riches by Terry Macalister, The Guardian October 30th, 2002 Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war. |
| US: Thousands March on Capital to Condemn Iraq War by Katherine Stapp, InterPress Service October 27th, 2002 In the largest U.S. anti-war protest in recent memory, at least 75,000 demonstrators encircled the White House on Saturday to demand a diplomatic solution to escalating tensions with Iraq. |
| USA: Feds Pushing Toxic Anthrax Drug? by Elliot Borin, Wired.com October 24th, 2002 Many veterans' advocates believe a certain anthrax vaccine to be a major cause of Gulf War sickness. The company manufacturing it has launched a massive lobbying campaign to persuade the Bush administration to stockpile the controversial drug so it can be administered to civilians. |
| US: The Breast Cancer Money-Go-Round by Lynn Landes, Alternet October 23rd, 2002 Most of the well-financed breast cancer organizations make little or no mention of the non-genetic causes of breast cancer. Go to their websites. Read their literature. These organizations don't focus on the environmental and pharmacological causes of this epidemic because it's a dank dark alley that leads right to their corporate sponsors. |
| US: GAO Won't Touch WorldCom Defense Deal by Renae Merle, Washington Post October 10th, 2002 The General Accounting Office (GAO) dismissed protests by two competitors to WorldCom Corp.'s $450 million Defense Department contract, despite acknowledging that the agency "relied on grossly inaccurate financial information" in making the award. |
| US: A Wartime Bonanza by Michelle Ciarrocca, AlterNet September 30th, 2002 President Bush's military budget increase and the war time "unity" on Capitol Hill have created an environment in which weapons makers can enjoy the best of both worlds – continuing to make money on the weapons systems of the cold war while reaping the benefits of a war time bonanza of new defense contracts. |
| US: Nuclear Reactor Guards Feel Vulnerable to Attack by Cat lazaroff, Environment News Service September 12th, 2002 Security guards protecting 24 of the nation's nuclear reactors, located at 13 power plants across the U.S., have little confidence that they could defeat a determined terrorist attack, finds a new report by a nonprofit nuclear watchdog group. The guards told interviewers that their morale is very low, and that they are under equipped, understaffed, and underpaid. |
| WORLD: International Criminal Court Unlikely to Prosecute Environmental Crime Environment News Service September 9th, 2002 The International Criminal Court is not likely to prosecute environmental crimes due to military actions, a new report prepared for the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute concludes. It examines the possibilities of environmental damage during military action becoming a criminal liability for military personnel and/or their contractors before the newly formed International Criminal Court (ICC). |
| US: Government Secrecy and Corporate Crime by Stephen Pizzo, Daily Enron August 27th, 2002 What began with Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal 15 months ago to make his energy task force documents public expanded quickly to include policy making at virtually every level of government. And, after September 11, the blanket of secrecy - which had until then only covered the brass breasts of the DOJ's Lady Justice statue - darkened some of America's most valued constitutional protections. |
| UK: Chief of United Technologies Talks About Truth and Accounting by Oliver Morgan, Observer (London) July 28th, 2002 George David, the quintessentially American chairman and CEO in question - at the head of US industrial combine United Technologies Corporation - expands the point. 'Accounting summarises the judgements of hundreds, if not thousands of people. UTC has activities at 500 locations in the world. People make judgements in all these locations.' He adds: 'I am choosing my words very carefully.' |
| Uzbekistan: PricewaterhouseCoopers Advises on US-Government Relations O'Dwyer's PR Daily July 16th, 2002 ricewaterhouseCoopers is providing government relations services to Uzbekistan, the Central Asian country that is a prime ally in President Bush's ''War on Terror.'' |
| US: In Tough Times, a Company Finds Profits in Terror War by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., New York Times July 12th, 2002 The Halliburton Company, the Dallas oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.From building cells for detainees at Guantnamo Bay in Cuba to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root. |
| US: Tech Industry Pushes Homeland Security Legislation by D. Ian Hopper, Associated Press July 10th, 2002 The companies making new homeland security devices, such as bomb detectors and biological weapon alarms, want the government to pick up the tab if their products fail and they are sued. |
| USA: Northrop to Purchase TRW for $7.8 Billion by Renae Merle, Washington Post July 2nd, 2002 Northrop Grumman Corp. agreed to pay $7.8 billion in stock for TRW Inc. yesterday in a deal that would complete its transformation from a struggling defense contractor to the second-largest force in the industry. |
| Afghanistan: New World Bank Grants Worth US$90 Million Reach Out Across Afghanistan June 6th, 2002 The World Bank today approved grants for three development projects in Afghanistan, bringing the institution's support for the war-ravaged country to a total of US$100 million in grant funding for the fiscal year ending June 30. |
| South America: Countries Worry Plan Colombia Will Spillover by Lucien O. Chauvin, LatinAmerica Press May 30th, 2002 In one highland city in the Andes, it's hard to walk a single block without coming across graffiti denouncing the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia: ''Stop spraying,'' ''Yankees go home,'' ''No military buildup.'' |
| Afghanistan: World Bank and Central Asian Pipeline Agence France-Presse May 15th, 2002 World Bank chief James Wolfensohn said Wednesday he had held talks about financing a fuel pipeline to channel massive gas reserves from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to India or Pakistan. Wolfensohn, who was in the Afghan capital to open the financial institution's offices here and to confirm 100 million dollars of World Bank grants for the interim administration, said a number of companies had already expressed an interest in the project. |
| US: Sex scandal still haunts DynCorp
by John Crewdson, Tribune May 13th, 2002 Hoping to avoid a repeat of a sex scandal that marred the presence of American police officers in Bosnia, U.S. law-enforcement personnel recruited to help reorganize Iraq's shattered police forces must acknowledge in writing that human trafficking and involvement with prostitution "are considered illegal by the international community and are immoral, unethical and strictly prohibited." |
| US: Wages Of Sin - Why Lawbreakers Still Win Government Contracts by Christopher H. Schmitt, U.S. News & World Report May 13th, 2002 Lockheed Martin is not the only big federal contractor that continues to do business with Washington despite repeated contract difficulties and other legal and regulatory trouble. In the past dozen years, 30 of the 43 largest federal contractors have racked up more than 400 enforcement cases, resulting in at least 28 criminal convictions, 286 civil settlements, and 88 administrative settlements, mostly involving their government contracts, according to data from the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit Washington, D.C. group that investigates government activities, and additional research by U.S. News. |
| US: Unjust Rewards by Ken Silverstein, Mother Jones May 1st, 2002 The government continues to award federal business worth billions to companies that repeatedly break the law. A Mother Jones investigation reveals which major contractors are the worst offenders. |
| US: Prophet Rushed to the Field For Intelligence Collection by Elizabeth G. Book, National Defense Magazine April 1st, 2002 The Army's tactical signals-intelligence and electronic-warfare system, the Prophet, has undergone a faster-than-planned development cycle, in order to meet operational needs in Afghanistan. The systems in the field today are not the full "100 percent solution," officials said, but they provide a sound foundation for the Army to plan future upgrades. |
| ECUADOR: Farmers Fight DynCorp's Chemwar on the Amazon by Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch February 27th, 2002 The International Labor Rights Fund has filed suit in US federal court on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadorian peasant farmers and Amazonian Indians charging DynCorp with torture, infanticide and wrongful death for its role in the aerial spraying of highly toxic pesticides in the Amazonian jungle, along the border of Ecuador and Colombia. |
| US: DynCorp Disgrace by Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Insight Magazine January 14th, 2002 Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia. |
| USA: Bush Faces Flak Over Links to Defense Contractor by Jason Niss, The Independent (UK) January 13th, 2002 President George W Bush's administration, already on the back foot over its connections with the collapsed energy giant Enron, faces questions over a massive defence contract which aided an investment firm with Bush family links. |
| USA: Boeing's Sweet Deal by Jeffrey St. Clair, Counter Punch November 26th, 2001 Boeing may have lost out to Lockheed in it's bid to build the Joint Strike Fighter, one of the most lucrative contracts in Pentagon history, but no one should mourn for the defense giant. The Pentagon needs a plump Boeing as much as Boeing needs Pentagon largesse. In this spirit, it's no surprise that Congress is poised to quietly hand Boeing a big consolation prize in the form two unprecedented contracts that will give the company, which has recently fled Seattle for Chicago, a bailout that will total more than $10 billion. |
| UZBEKISTAN: US Ally Hopes War Will Lead to Oil Investment by Priscilla Patton, Globalvision News Network November 26th, 2001 The Uzbek government hopes to parlay its close working relationship with the United States during the ''war on terrorism'' into closer economic ties, garnering much-needed direct investment for its underdeveloped petrochemical sector and increased bilateral trade, according to Sadyq Safayev, former Uzbek ambassador to the U.S. and first deputy foreign minister since May. |
| US: Osama's Mama - Corporate Hip-Hop Promotes War by Kevin Weston, Pacific News Service November 5th, 2001 The night the United States began bombing Afghanistan, I was listening to a Bay Area hip-hop/R&B station, KMEL. KMEL is owned by Clear Channel, one of the largest radio conglomerates in the country. |
| US: Economic Stimulus With Corporations in Mind by Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times October 27th, 2001 Late last winter, when President Bush was shaping his $1.35 trillion tax cut, corporate lobbyists were told to wait, their turn would come. And now, their turn is here. The $100 billion tax-cut bill narrowly passed by the House this week and sent to the Senate has been lauded by the White House as a broad stimulus package that will pull the United States economy out of a stall made worse by the terrorist attacks. |
| USA: Crumbling Public Sector Makes Country Vulnerable to Bio-Terrorism by Naomi Klein, Toronto Globe & Mail October 24th, 2001 Only hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Republican Representative Curt Weldon went on CNN and announced that he didn't want to hear anyone talking about funding for schools or hospitals. From here on, it was all about spies, bombs and other manly things. |
| USA: Business Wants Military Ties with Indonesia by Tim Shorrock, Asia Times October 10th, 2001 WASHINGTON -- With political tension building in Indonesia over the United States military attacks on Afghanistan, US business groups are hoping to increase support for the government of Megawati Sukarnoputri by convincing Congress to lift the ban on military training for Jakarta. |
| US: Opportunists Use the Crisis to Push Agenda by Naomi Klein, The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland) October 4th, 2001 There are many contenders for biggest political opportunist since the September 11 atrocities. Politicians ramming through life-changing laws while telling voters they are still mourning; corporations diving for public cash; pundits accusing their opponents of treason. |
| US: 'New War' May Shift Defense Spending by Gary Gentile, Associated Press October 1st, 2001 In the nation's "new kind of war" on terrorism, defense spending is likely to focus as much on information and surveillance as bombs and bullets. |
| USA: Biotech Terrorism? by Jeremy Rifkin, The Guardian (UK) September 27th, 2001 For the first 10 days we worried about commercial airplanes being hijacked and used as missiles. Now, the American people are worried about a new, even more deadly threat: bacteria and viruses raining from the sky over populated areas, infecting and killing millions of people. |
| USA: Merchants of Death Cash In on Tragedy by Tom Turnipseed, Common Dreams September 25th, 2001 While the dead and missing toll rose toward 7000 people and the stock market suffered it's largest week's loss since the great depression due to the terrorist attack on the symbols of U.S. economic and military power, the stock of the weapon and surveillance industries zoomed. The 401 (k)retirement plans of U.S. citizens took their biggest one week hit ever as the Dow Jones fell 14.3% last week, but the big winners of the week were the weapons industry, who were the top eight corporations in percentage increase in the price of their stock. |
| USA: War on Terror, or Fight Against Old Enemies? by Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK) September 25th, 2001 While covering the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, I would, from time to time, drive down through Jalalabad and cross the Pakistan border to Peshawar to rest. In the cavernous, stained interior of the old Intercontinental Hotel, I would punch out my stories on a groaning telex machine beside an office bearing the legend ''Chief Accountant'' on the door. |
| USA: Wartime Opportunists by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation September 6th, 2001 Corporate interests and their proxies are looking to exploit the September 11 tragedy to advance a self-serving agenda that has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with corporate profits and dangerous ideologies. |
| US: Company Seeks to Reassure NSA on Groundbreaker by Patience Wait, Washington Technology August 13th, 2001 For Computer Sciences Corp., winning the National Security Agency's huge Groundbreaker outsourcing contract has been like catching a tiger by the tail. |
| US: The Case Against General Electric Multinational Monitor August 1st, 2001 General Electric has a lengthy record of criminal, civil, political and ethical transgressions, some of them shocking in disregard for the integrity of human beings. This article will list a few examples. |
| Colombia: Americans Blamed in Raid by Karl Penhaul, San Francisco Chronicle July 15th, 2001 Three American civilian airmen providing airborne security for a U.S. oil company coordinated an anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998, marking targets and directing helicopter gunships that mistakenly killed 18 civilians, Colombian military pilots have alleged in a official inquiry. |
| Colombia: Chemical Spraying of Coca Poisoning Villages by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, The Observer (London) June 17th, 2001 The tiny indigenous Kofan community of Santa Rosa de Guamuez in Colombia had it hard enough with pressures from settlers on their reservation, without Roundup Ultra containing Cosmoflux 411F, a weedkiller that is being sprayed on their villages in a concentration 100 times more powerful than is permitted in the United States. |
| Colombia: Private Firms Take on U.S. Military Role in Drug War by Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald May 22nd, 2001 As U.S. efforts to reduce drug trafficking out of the Andes escalate, more U.S.-supplied equipment is flowing into the region and more Americans are becoming involved -- and occasionally coming under fire. But because of the growing privatization of U.S. military efforts abroad, their presence is often unseen. |
| Palestine: Death in Bethlehem, Made in America by Robert Fisk, The Independent (U.K.) April 15th, 2001 Lockheed Martin of Florida and the Federal Laboratories of Pennsylvania have made quite a contribution to life in the municipality of Bethlehem. Or, in the case of Lockheed, death. Pieces of the US manufacturer's Hellfire air-to-ground missile lie in the local civil defence headquarters in Bethlehem less than two months after it exploded in 18-year-old Osama Khorabi's living room, killing him instantly. |
| US: Activist Group Links Pentagon, Firms to Child Labor Washington Post December 22nd, 2000 The Defense Department and five companies, including Sharper Image Corp. and Kohl's Corp., sell goods produced at factories in Asia and Central America that exploit workers, a labor rights group claimed. |
| NICARAGUA: Pentagon Contracts Nicaraguan Sweatshops by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times December 3rd, 2000 An arm of the Pentagon has come under fire for procuring large quantities of apparel from a Nicaraguan factory that labor rights groups say is a sweatshop and that the United States trade representative has voiced serious concerns about. |
| Colombia: US Military Aid from the Private Sector by Paul de la Garza and David Adams, St. Petersburg Times December 2nd, 2000 But the Clinton administration quietly has hired a high-level group of former U.S. military personnel whose job far exceeds the narrow focus of the drug war and is intended to turn the Colombian military into a first-class war machine capable of winning a decades-old leftist insurgency. |
| US: Lockheed Martin's Tests on Humans
Environmental Working Group November 27th, 2000 On behalf of military contractor Lockheed Martin, Loma Linda University is conducting the first large-scale tests of a toxic drinking water contaminant on human subjects -- a precedent medical researchers and Environmental Working Group condemned as morally unethical and scientifically invalid. |
| US: Lockheed Martin's Promotional Film by Jacques Peretti, Guardian (London) August 3rd, 2000 The slick, multimillion dollar productions of Lockheed and Boeing are in a different class. After watching hours of these corporate arms videos, one is struck not by the weaponry or the technology but the absence of human beings. The few faces that do appear, fleetingly, are partially hidden behind visors and clad in fireproof space suits, pressing buttons. The complete invisibility of the victims of war that first became apparent to the world during the Gulf war has reached its logical conclusion in the arms video. The average 15-year-old boy would see more bloodshed playing Doom in his bedroom. |
| World: General Electric's Global Assault by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Mother Jones May 26th, 2000 While the 20-reign of General Electric's CEO has been a golden era for shareholders - the company's stock value has risen three time more than the Dow Jones average, leading Forbes magazine to name Welch the "Most Admired CEO of the Century" - it has been a disaster for employees. |
| US: A Blank Check from Washington for Colombia's Dirty War by Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet April 1st, 2000 One of the problems with deleting our government's worst crimes from America's historical hard drive is that they tend to recur. How many people even know the hideous story of how we supported and financed the slaughter of tens of thousands – innocent civilians, teachers, health care and church workers – in Central America in the 1980s? |
| US: Slashing Safety? by Nina Shapiro, Seattle Weekly April 1st, 2000 Is Boeing compromising on safety in order to cut costs? Some workers believe so, pointing to changes in the way the company carries out inspections. A former head of the National Transportation Safety Board, among others, seems to agree. |
| US: Raytheon Wants IDs of Net Chatters
by Leslie Miller, Associated Press March 5th, 1999 Raytheon Corp. has sued 21 people for allegedly disclosing company secrets via the Internet in a case that raises questions about the wisdom of chatting about your employer online. |
| US: No Remorse from Raytheon Protesters by Sarah Godcher, Eagle-Tribune April 23rd, 1998 Seven anti-war protesters arrested at Raytheon last month held a vigil outside the Lawrence courthouse before a pre-trial hearing yesterday. Shown here are (from left) former North Andover resident Sean Donahue of Durham, N.H., and Marcia Gagliardi and Harriet Nestel, both of Athol, talking to Shannon O'Connor of Maine. But all seven self-described "Raytheon Peacemakers" rejected the offer in favor of a jury trial - all the while admitting they did cross a boundary line established by police. |
| China: Reviewing Ban of the Arms sales on China
by Steven Lee Myers , New York Times January 18th, 1998 On the eve of his trip to Asia this week, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen pressed the Clinton Administration to let an American arms maker sell spare parts to China, despite a ban on sales of military equipment imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Administration officials say. |
| US: The Northrop Grumman B-2 Boondoggle by Ken Silverstein, Multinational Monitor September 1st, 1997 As the monitor goes to press, the U.S. Congress appears headed for a showdown vote on the fate of Northrop-Grumman's B-2 bomber, the single most expensive piece of military equipment ever designed, with a per unit price of about $2 billion. Congress has already allocated $44 billion for the project, a figure that exceeds the annual defense budget for all but four nations in the world (England, France, Japan and Germany). Now, hawks in the House led by Representative Norm Dicks of Washington state -- a major recipient of campaign cash from Boeing, a B-2 subcontractor -- are trying to win another $9 billion for the bomber. The Senate has voted to cap production at the current level of 20. A conference committee will soon resolve the issue. |
| Saudi Arabia: Royal Family Gets Quiet Help From U.S. Firm With Connections by Charles J Hanley, Associated Press March 22nd, 1997 Vinnell first came to Saudi Arabia 22 years ago on a "one-time" training mission. Today, under a Pentagon-supervised contract, its military specialists are permanent on-scene consultants throughout the National Guard. Three hundred Vinnell experts, almost all U.S. military veterans, many recently discharged, instruct Saudi guardsmen in the latest weaponry, supervise supply operations, teach brigade-level tactics, help operate a hospital and are updating the Guard's data processing, among other functions. |
| US: Old hands hold hands with Beijing on trade policy
by George Archibald, The Washington Times March 3rd, 1997 Big bucks and big names are proving to be corporate America's weapons of choice in a heightened lobbying push to head off any U.S. retaliation for China's reported involvement in the unfolding political fund-raising scandal. |
| US: Lockheed Talks, the Pentagon Listens by William Hartung, Washington Post June 26th, 1996 His name is not a household word, but Norman Augustine is one of those rare Washington power brokers for whom a Cabinet-level position would be a demotion. Augustine is the chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense conglomerate, and a key player in the network of quasi-official military-industrial interest groups. He will probably have as much to say about how much money the United States spends on weapons through the end of this decade as any secretary of defense. |
| Saudi Arabia: Mercenaries, Inc. by William D. Hartung, The Progressive April 1st, 1996 The sanitized version of American foreign policy asserts that the United States is hard at work promoting democratic values around the world in the face of attacks from totalitarian ideologies ranging from communism during the Cold War to Islamic fundamentalism today. Every once in a while an incident occurs that contradicts this reassuring rhetoric by revealing the secret underside of American policy, which is far more concerned with propping up pliable regimes that serve the interests of U.S. multinational corporations than it is with any meaningful notion of democracy. The November 13, 1995 bombing of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) headquarters and an adjacent building housing a U.S. military training mission is one such incident. |
| Brazil: Amazon Contractor Raytheon has CIA Ties by Pratap Chatterjee, Inter Press Service December 3rd, 1995 A contract to monitor the Amazon rainforest in Brazil will include a shadowy company once described as ''virtually indistinguishable'' from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The 1.4-billion-dollar contract for satellite monitoring of drug trafficking and deforestation in the 3.2-million-square-kilometre forests in the Brazilian Amazon was awarded last summer to Raytheon, a 12-billion-dollar, Massachusetts-based company, Raytheon, that makes Patriot and Sidewinder missiles. |
| Brazil: Police Wiretap Jeopardizes Raytheon Radar Project
by Katherine Ellison , The Miami Herald November 25th, 1995 It was meant to be a shining model of the new era of inter-American trade: a $1.4 billion U.S. contract -- the largest ever awarded in Brazil -- in which the Massachusetts- based Raytheon Corp. would build a vast radar project in the Amazon jungle. |
| South Korea: General Dynamics Denies Bribery Allegations by John Mintz, Washington Post October 26th, 1995 A South Korean legislator alleged yesterday that General Dynamics Corp. paid former president Roh Tae Woo at least $100 million in 1991 in a successful effort to persuade the South Korean military to buy the company's F-16 fighters. The Falls Church-based company strenuously denied the allegation. |
| World: Bribe Probe For US Arms Firms by Mark Tran, Guardian (London) September 2nd, 1995 The US government is investigating two of America's biggest defence contractors, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, for possible bribery in foreign sales - with the world's most widely used fighter, the F-16, the apparent focus of interest. |
| US: Missile-Blower by Daniel Golden, Boston Globe July 19th, 1992 When MIT professor Theodore Postol punctured the Patriot missile's invincible reputation, he made some powerful enemies: Raytheon, the Army, and MIT administrators who valued corporate contributions over academic freedom |
| US: General Electric Expose Garners an Oscar by Megan Rosenfeld, Washington Post April 23rd, 1992 Chasnoff's film indicts the multi-billion-dollar corporation on two counts: failing to clean up the site of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, and knowingly poisoning workers with asbestos and radiation at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, N.Y. Scenes of Hanford area residents who have had or know of birth defects and cancer are juxtaposed with the familiar jingle: "GE: We bring good things to life." |
| Turkey: U.S. Businessman Slain; Terror Group Claims Responsibility by Ahmet Balan, New York Times March 22nd, 1991 Gunmen today killed a former U.S. Air Force officer working for an American company in Turkey, police said. A Marxist terrorist group claimed responsibility. It was the third time in two months the group - Dev Sol, or Revolutionary Left - said it was behind armed attacks on Americans. |
| US: The "Patriots" at Raytheon by Jim Donahue, Multinational Monitor March 1st, 1991 Raytheon Corporation has recently become known throughout the United States as an outstanding defender of democracy thanks to its Patriot missile, which has attracted so much media attention for its role in the Persian Gulf War. |
| US: Secret Task Led to Web Of Firms; Virginian Ran Covert Missions Washington Post March 22nd, 1987 The mission that apparently launched the network of private companies now embroiled in the Iran-contra affair took place in October 1983, when an obscure U.S. Army unit asked a retired lieutenant colonel to undertake a secret job in the Caribbean, according to informed sources. |
| US: Oman Hold Delicate Negotiations Over Bases; Sultanate Pushing for Greater Control Over Access to Persian Gulf Facilities by David B. Ottaway, Washington Post July 19th, 1985 The United States has been involved for two months in delicate negotiations with the Persian Gulf sultanate of Oman, which is seeking more control over U.S. access to, and use of, its strategically located airfields and other military facilities. |
| Saudi Arabia: How U.S. Is Helping in Huge Arms Buildup by Saudi Arabia by Smith Hempstone, U.S. News & World Report April 17th, 1978 An impressive combination of U.S. weapons and American know-how is helping turn this thinly populated kingdom into one of the leading military powers in the entire Middle East. |
| Saudi Arabia: This Gun For Hire by Kim Willenson with Nicholas C. Profitt in Beirut and Lloyd Norman in Washington, Newsweek February 24th, 1975 In the aptly named Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra last week, a private contractor was recruiting a ragtag army of Vietnam veterans for a paradoxical mission: to train Saudi Arabian troops to defend the very oil fields that Henry Kissinger recently warned the U.S. might one day have to invade. |
| Saudi Arabia: Vinnell Adds Saudis To Its Trainee Roster Business Week February 24th, 1975 Vinnell Corp., has a $77-million contract to train Saudi Arabian forces to defend Saudi oil fields, but the Pentagon sidesteppped any probing questions about the contract, shunting them to the State Dept., which had approved it. |
| LIBERIA: Liberia recruits a new army by Elizabeth Blunt, BBC News The new Armed forces of Liberia are being trained by Dyncorp. |
| IRAQ: Indian Youths Coerced Into Iraq by Ajay Bharadwaj, Daily News & Analysis India Human trafficking is not a new phenomenon in Punjab. However, it is the landing of young aspirants in Iraq that has started raising hackles. |
| US: Pentagon Stalls on Bannning Contractors that Use Forced Labor
by Cam Simpson, The Chicago Tribune A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away. |
| IRAQ: KBR Workers in Iraq Paid 50 cents an Hour by Pamela Hess, United Press International KBR hires out subcontractors whose job is to recruit, transport, house, feed and pay "third-country" nationals to stock, prepare, serve and clean up at the dining facilities at 43 bases across Iraq. As pressure to keep contract costs down, subcontractors have moved from country to country in search of cheaper labor markets. |
| US: CACI Plans to Drop Interrogation Work by Ellen McCarthy, The Washington Post CACI International Inc., the Arlington-based defense contractor that attracted controversy when an employee was accused of participating in the Abu Ghraib prison abuses, is getting out of the interrogation business. |
| US: All Eyes on Halliburton As contacts Turn into Contracts The Observer Concerns in the US are mounting that Katrina could prompt a round of 'pork barrel' contracts. |
| IRAQ: Turn the Lights On by Joe Cochrane, Newsweek International Americans were as wrong about the health of Iraq's infrastructure as they were about their welcome as liberators and the insurgents know that depriving Iraq of power is at least as effective as killing soldiers and policemen. |
| IRAQ: The Trillion Dollar War Chart |
| US: Want Big Bucks For Big Risks? Jobs Open In Iraq, Afghanistan by Steven Isbitts, The Tampa Tribune Plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, food-service workers, logistics specialists and other professionals work 12-hour days providing support services to American troops. It's hard, dangerous work. But the pay is high. A year on the job can change the average person's financial life. |
| US: Want Big Bucks For Big Risks? Jobs Open In Iraq, Afghanistan Plumbers, electricians, truck drivers, food-service workers, logistics specialists and other professionals work 12-hour days providing support services to American troops. It's hard, dangerous work. But the pay is high. A year on the job can change the average person's financial life. |
| IRAQ: Security Fears and Costs are Road Block to Rebuilding by Rick Emert, Stars and Stripes Of the $18 billion budgeted for the Iraq Reconstruction Program, $7 billion is spent on securing the workers and the construction sites that are contracted and overseen by the Corps of Engineers Gulf Region District and the Project and Contracting Office. |
| IRAQ: Friendly-fire victim Fights for Compensation with Claims that Titan Abandoned Him by David Washburn and Bruce V. Bigelow, The San Diego Union-Tribune Mazin al Nashi's worries escalated when he learned that the fledgling Iraqi insurgency had put a $250,000 bounty on the heads of interpreters. He had never received any body armor from Titan. |
| IRAQ: Filipino Workers Urged to Leave Iraq Associated Press Government officials on Sunday urged about 6,000 Filipino workers to immediately leave Iraq after a foiled kidnapping injured two Filipinos, stressing that the situation there remains very dangerous for foreign workers. |
| U.S.: Cubic Receives Contract to Compete for U.S. Army Force Management Services www.cubic.com |
| U.S.: Cubic Receives Contract to Compete for U.S. Army Force Management Services www.cubic.com |
| IRAQ: Dirty Warriors by Barry Yeoman , Mother Jones How South African hit men, Serbian paramilitaries, and other human rights violators became guns for hire for military contractors in Iraq |
| U.S.: Titan Revenue Up 12 Percent, Profit Flat by Bruce V. Bigelow, San Diego Union-Tribune Titan's wartime translator business helped drive a 12 percent increase in third-quarter revenue, but legal costs hurt. |
| IRAQ: $80K a Year? Many Say No Thanks http://newsobserver.com/business/story/1758902p-8038598c.html Scores of contractors that flocked to Iraq from around the world have also pulled out in recent months because of the escalating violence. |
| United Nations to use Iraq Oil-for-Food Program funds for investigation Wall Street Journal |
| Jordan: World Bank Trains Iraqi Civil Servants Ahead of Development Schemes Agence France-Presse Seventy-five Iraqi civil servants completed here a training course organised by the World Bank ahead of implementing emergency development schemes in the war-battered country, a bank official said Monday. |
| Iraq: Trade Bank of Iraq Gets $2.4 bln Export Guarantees by Haitham Haddadin, Reuters The U.S.-established Trade Bank of Iraq on Saturday said it has secured a total of $2.4 billion in export guarantees for firms seeking postwar rebuilding deals. Bank President Hussein al-Uzri told a news conference in Kuwait City it was also close to signing a new deal for hundreds of millions of dollars more with a Pan-Arab organisation. |
| Iraq: Questions Raised About Creative Associates Contract by Jackie Spinner, Washington Post The Washington firm awarded a government contract worth up to $157 million to rebuild Iraq's educational system may have helped shape the proposal it was then asked to bid on, according to a critical internal government review. The inspector general's office at the U.S. Agency for International Development said Creative Associates International Inc. participated in a roundtable discussion with agency officials about Iraq's education system last November, four months before USAID invited it and four other companies to bid on the work. Creative Associates was the only firm to bid, and it listed three of the four competitors as possible subcontractors. |
| US: Iraq healthcare system faces $1.6 billion financing gap by Sunita Kaul, The Daily Star After 13 years of economic sanctions, the healthcare system in Iraq is in disrepair. A further blow was dealt to it by the damage caused by the looting of hospitals and clinics since the war began and the ongoing disruptions in the delivery of supplies and equipment. |
| US: Bechtel criticized over school project in Iraq by Larry Kaplow, Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service President Bush and other U.S. officials tout the repairs to Iraq's schools as a hallmark of an American-led renewal, a symbol of hope for a new generation of Iraqis. But for many in Baghdad, including some U.S. troops involved in the work, Bechtel's school rehabilitation appears slipshod and wasteful. |