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In Kampala, the gates of Askar Security Services in Kamwokya are buzzing with enthusiastic young men and women signing in for deployment in Iraq. They want to take the chance of a lifetime. They cannot wait to test the waters.

Assistant Labor Minister Africo Madrid said the company, Triple
Canopy, had contacted the government, saying it wanted Hondurans with
military training and was willing to pay 10 times the going rate for
similar jobs in Honduras.

More than 200 protesters flanked Halliburton Co.'s annual shareholders meeting Wednesday, adding drama to an otherwise perfunctory gathering to elect directors and retain auditors. Fifteen were arrested.

Two years after Mr. Hussein's ouster, revelations about his alleged bribery system have developed into a full-force international financial scandal. The controversy involves both the nature of bribes and the zeal, or lack thereof, of the United Nations reaction.

'Those knowledgeable with the cut-throat, multi-billion dollar global security contractors' business would not quickly dismiss the claims by Askar Security that it was asked by Kroll Associates and South African Coin Security to recruit thousands of Ugandans for security work in Iraq and elsewhere.'

It's not every day that you get invited to a meeting you're not allowed to attend. Halliburton called earlier this week to ask if I was coming to the company's annual meeting today at the Four Seasons. There was one catch: The company wasn't allowing outsiders in the meeting. That included the press.

British lawmaker George Galloway told a U.S. Senate panel today that Congress was were diverting attention from the failings of U.S. contractors in Iraq, the possible misuse of money by the U.S.-led Coalition, the spreading of money around the country by U.S. military commanders without accountability, and U.S. companies such as Bayoil (USA) Inc., which is accused of paying millions of dollars to Hussein for the right to sell Iraqi oil.

Halliburton-type profiteering only seems like a Republican specialty. But the immutable law of war is that while unlucky people die, lucky ones make a killing. That's been true whether Gengis Khan was pillaging his way across Asia, whether Abraham Lincoln was saving the Union, or George W. Bush was saving the world. Party registration has never had anything to do with it other than to give the minority party, when it exists, a chance to seem relevant.

Although private security forces often perform many of the same functions as U.S. troops, they are not governed by military rules mandating the amount of men and firepower they take along for tasks such as convoy protection, said Deborah Avant, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. "There are situations when they are more at risk."

A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.