Making a killing in Iraq

The other kind.

It's 8.40am, and the Sheraton Hotel ballroom thunders with the sound of plastic explosives pounding against metal. No, this is not the Sheraton in Baghdad, it's the one in Arlington, Virginia. And it's not a real terrorist attack, it's a hypothetical one. The screen at the front of the room is playing an advertisement for "bomb-resistant waste receptacles" - this trash can is so strong, we're told, it can contain a C4 blast. And its manufacturer is convinced that, given half a chance, these babies would sell like hot cakes in Baghdad - at bus stations, army barracks and, yes, upscale hotels. Available in Hunter Green, Fortuneberry Purple and Windswept Copper.

This is ReBuilding Iraq 2, a gathering of 400 businesspeople itching to get a piece of the Iraqi reconstruction action. They're here to meet those doling out the cash, in particular the $18.6bn 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 programme 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 programme, and delegates have been promised that they'll get a chance to corner them at regular "networking breaks".
  article

How stupid are people? I mean, really. It will be very important to have a trash can withstand damage, and save that stuff you threw away.

Anyway, the other point to this post is...

"A fool and his money are soon parted"...

and the fool is us.

...[M]any delegates are sporting a similar look: army-issue brush cuts paired with dark business suits. The guru of this gang is retired Major General Robert Dees, freshly hired out of the military to head Microsoft's "defence strategies" division. Dees tells the crowd that rebuilding Iraq has special meaning for him because, well, he was one of the people who broke it. "My heart and soul is in this because I was one of the primary planners of the invasion," he says with pride. Microsoft is helping to develop "e-government" in Iraq, which Dees admits is a little ahead of the curve, since there is no g-government in Iraq, not to mention functioning phone lines.

...Youssef Sleiman, managing director of Iraq Initiatives for the Harris Corporation, has a similarly entrepreneurial angle on the violence. Yes, helicopters are falling, he says, but "for every helicopter that falls there is going to be replenishment".

Read the rest of the article for a look at the problem of insuring anything - and the solution. Yes, you figure into it. You pay taxes, don't you?

"To be honest," says Ed Kubba, a consultant and board member of the American Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, "I don't know where the line is between business and corruption." He points to US companies subcontracting huge taxpayer-funded reconstruction jobs for a fraction of what they are getting paid, then pocketing the difference. "If you take $10m from the US government and sub the job out to Iraqi businesses for a quarter-million, is that business, or is that corruption?"

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.