Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: Who Profits From This War?

Who Profits From This War?
Institute for Public Accuracy
October 20, 2004 
# PRATAP CHATTERJEE, 
pra...@corpwatch.org
, 
www.corpwatch.org
 
Chatterjee is author of the new book Iraq Inc. and has traveled to
Iraq twice. He said today: "Nineteen months after the invasion, most
services [in Iraq] have not been restored, the bills have reached
astronomical proportions and Iraqis have very few jobs. Iraqi security
guards get less than 1 percent of their foreign counterparts for the
same work, the average Iraqi worker is paid $100 a month while truck
drivers from the United States are paid $8,000 for work with similar
skills by Halliburton, and American consultants provide grants of less
than $100,000 for Iraqi organizations for a full year of work while
paying individual expatriate employees more than that. It is small
wonder that most of the infrastructure is hardly improved from pre-war
levels." 
Chatterjee added: "Today, while [many of these private] companies
continue to be guaranteed profits as high as 25 percent, few of them
have done a decent job for the Iraqis, let alone the American
taxpayer. Halliburton's overcharging for supplying oil to the military
is only the tip of the iceberg -- private security companies are
charging double by using shell companies in the Cayman Islands.
Companies hired to supervise elections are squandering 90 percent of
their money on expensive expatriate advisors while ignoring local
experts. Television executives hired by the Pentagon pay themselves
$200 an hour while refusing to pay local staff a similar sum for a
whole month's work. And as if wasting money wasn't bad enough, private
contractors have been caught raping prisoners and stealing equipment
from the very places they were hired to repair. Today, 18 months after
the fall of Baghdad, millions of Iraqis are still without proper
electricity, clean water and health care despite having surrendered
tens of billions of dollars of their own oil revenue." Pratap
Chatterjee is the managing editor of CorpWatch. 
# ANTONIA JUHASZ, 
aju...@ifg.org
,
www.commondreams.org/views04/1014-20.htm
 
Juhasz's op-ed article titled "A Nice Little War to Fill the Coffers"
appeared in the Los Angeles Times on October 14. According to Juhasz:
"Halliburton, far and away the largest recipient of Iraq
reconstruction dollars with about $18 billion in contracts, has seen
revenues increase by 80 percent in the first quarter of 2004 compared
with the same quarter of 2003, according to the Financial Times. These
revenues reflect 'steep profits from their Iraq operations.' Next in
line is the Bechtel Group of San Francisco, with nearly $3 billion in
Iraq reconstruction contracts. In fact, revenues generated outside the
United States have increased by 158 percent since 2003 for Bechtel --
turning around a three-year slump in that category. Helping to boost
these bottom lines are rules [and orders] put into place by L. Paul
Bremer III, the head of the Bush administration's now-defunct
Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Among them are 'orders' that
ensure that none of the profits made by contractors have to be
reinvested in the fledging Iraqi economy or in helping with
reconstruction. Instead, every last penny can be sent back to the
United States. The orders also make it difficult, come January, for an
elected Iraqi government to overturn such rules. ... Not surprisingly,
some of the profits generated by the war in Iraq appear to be making
their way into Republican Party coffers. According to the nonpartisan
Center for Responsive Politics, each of these corporations is among
the leaders in its industry in 2003-2004 election-cycle contributions,
with most of the donations going to Republicans." 
Juhasz also points out: "The Bremer orders control every aspect of
Iraqi life -- from the use of car horns to the privatization of
state-owned enterprises. ... Orders No. 57 and No. 77 ensure the
implementation of the orders by placing U.S.-appointed auditors and
inspector generals in every government ministry, with five-year terms
and with sweeping authority over contracts, programs, employees and
regulations. Order No. 17 grants foreign contractors, including
private security firms, full immunity from Iraq's laws. Even if they,
say, kill someone or cause an environmental disaster, the injured
party cannot turn to the Iraqi legal system. Rather, the charges must
be brought to U.S. courts. With few reconstruction projects underway
and with Bremer's rules favoring U.S. corporations, there has been
little opportunity for Iraqis to go back to work, leaving nearly 2
million unemployed 1 1/2 years after the invasion. ... Clearly, the
Bremer orders fundamentally altered Iraq's existing laws. For this
reason, they are also illegal. Transformation of an occupied country's
laws violates the Hague regulations of 1907 (ratified by the United
States) and the U.S. Army's Law of Land Warfare. Indeed, in a leaked
memo, the British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Prime
Minister Tony Blair that 'major structural economic reforms would not
be authorized by international law.'" Juhasz is a project director
with the International Forum on Globalization and a Foreign Policy In
Focus scholar. 
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: 
Sam Husseini, 
(202) 347-0020
; or David Zupan, 
(541) 484-9167
 
http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR102004.htm
 

        Tu sei un fascista rosso e troppo pirla
--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://arianna.libero.it/usenet/