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No. 1 in dealing with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi: Never underestimate him. A year after observers pronounced him finished - spurned by one-time American sponsors and with no apparent political base in Iraq - Chalabi has emerged more powerful than ever.

What a break for U.S. corporations, such as Monsanto. The important information about Iraqi Order 81 is that it was designed to have a major impact on the way farming is done in Iraq. This order prohibits Iraqi farmers from using saving seeds from one year to the next.

Since 2003, the disbursement of aid and reconstruction funds in Iraq has not been in the hands of the United Nations, and if anything the record is even more dismal.

Earlier this summer, Marines detained a group of private contractors in Iraq for allegedly firing on their positions in Fallujah; the contractors, who worked for North Carolina-based Zapata Engineering, were expelled from Iraq after their release. That highly publicized incident followed questions from lawmakers about oversight of contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraqi investigators have uncovered widespread fraud and waste in more than $1 billion worth of weapons deals arranged by middlemen who reneged or took huge kickbacks on contracts to arm Iraq's fledgling military, according to a confidential report and interviews with U.S. and Iraqi officials.

The former director of accounting at WorldCom, Buford Yates Jr., was sentenced to a year and a day in prison on August 9, 2005 for his role in the large fraud at the company.

Lurking within the records of most cities and states in America there lies a scandal. A tax scandal. A jobs scandal. A corporate and political scandal.

No private contractors have so far faced prosecution despite their implication in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, according to a new Pentagon report.

Top army commanders have drawn up a series of extraordinary "countermeasures" to try to stop highly trained soldiers being lured to private military companies.

In a report the Pentagon submitted to Congress earlier this year, some partial figures have been released. From May 2003 through October 2004, U.S. authorities recorded at least 1,171 contractor casualties, including 166 contractors who were killed.