Thursday, January 22, 2004

Spalding should have such a racket

War profiteers in Iraq pursue quick fixes and high profits by overcharging for shoddy work, while Iraqis protest that they could do the work better and cheaper. Welcome to the reconstruction racket.

...Breaking down the numbers reveals some startling details: Halliburton has spent $40 million to support the unsuccessful search for weapons of mass destruction—enough to support 6,600 families in Iraq for a year (at $500 a month, the number cited by many Iraqis as necessary for a decent standard of living).

Other numbers are just as startling—Halliburton’s net profit for the second quarter of 2003 was $26 million, which contrasts markedly with the company’s net loss of $498 million in the same quarter of 2002. Most of its new income is from the contracts in Iraq. “Iraq was a very nice boost” for the company, an analyst told The Wall Street Journal.


And that search was pointless, excepting that it profited Halliburton and gave the administration's press lackeys something to pretend there was good reason for which to be in Iraq. U.S. officials knew that the WMD program was belly-up since the first Gulf War. They already had the intelligence on that. They always knew they would find no WMD. But it was a great excuse to spend billions and billions of war dollars. And We the Fools People believed it.

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

Quote source: Southern Exposure (Institute of Southern Studies) - a non-profit research center.


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