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As Katrina's flood waters recede, government contractors are flowing into the Gulf Coast and reaping billions of dollars in pre-bid, limited bid, and sometimes no-bid contracts. Many of these contractors and the men who award them are the same players who bungled the reconstruction of Iraq. Deja vu all over again.

In April, Najaf's main maternity hospital received rare good news: an $8 million refurbishment program financed by the United States would begin immediately. But five months and millions of dollars later, the hospital administrators say they have little but frustration to show for it.

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.

European defense companies deposited millions of dollars into bank accounts for front companies of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, a source close to a Chilean court probe into the accounts told Reuters.

Blackwater USA, the North Carolina-based security firm best known for supplementing U.S. troops in Iraq, is now attracting international attention patrolling the flooded streets of New Orleans.

The task order is a cost reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity construction capabilities contract for post-Katrina recovery efforts in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for "unwatering activities" in Plaquemines, East and West basins, New Orleans.

There are estimated to be more than 20,000 armed expatriates working for private security companies in Iraq, more than all the non-US troops combined and contrary their numbers do not appear to have fallen appreciably. The Baghdad bubble, as it has been dubbed, has yet to burst.

While the industry was growing rapidly in the southeast Europe, there are problems with private security companies being affiliated with political parties as well as criminal, paramilitary and ethnic groups reports the Britain-based Saferworld think-tank.

For nearly five years George Bush has infuriated much of the world by refusing to take action on global warming. Instead, he has called for more study. In a way, he got what he wanted with Hurricane Katrina.

White House uses practices criticized in Iraq rebuilding for hurricane-related jobs.