Michael Scherer - K Street on the Tigris

(the author was on www.democracynow.org this morning)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/40/ma_556_01.html

(this might have been posted at DU...let me know.
I can't find the exact title here)

K Street on the Tigris
Washington insiders are lining up to help corporate clients cash in on rebuilding Iraq, whether the Iraqis like it or not.

Michael Scherer
September 30, 2003

The man who ran President Bush's last campaign has a new job, but he won't be checking poll numbers or arranging fundraisers. Instead, Joe Allbaugh, who left the Bush administration just weeks before the White House launched the war on Iraq, has opened up a lobbying firm with offices in Baghdad.

"It's beneficial to clients that I know who the players are and I know who the decision makers are," says Allbaugh, who was national campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000 and then became director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This summer, Allbaugh joined with Ed Rogers, a former White House aide to Bush's father, to found New Bridge Strategies, a lobbying firm that connects Western businesses with the American and Iraqi power brokers overseeing the reconstruction. The firm has already attracted companies looking to sell Iraq everything from new phone lines to catering services.

Allbaugh is not the only former official pitching his expertise to companies eager to cash in on the reconstruction of Iraq. The total cost of rebuilding the country is estimated at between $100 billion and $500 billion, with potential business opportunities reaching far beyond the much-publicized contracts held by Bechtel and Halliburton. "What you see on the surface is not really what is going on," says Timothy Mills, a partner at Patton Boggs, one of several K Street firms that have launched a practice dedicated to Iraq. Mills advises clients to look beyond the continuing violence in Iraq and toward the long-term payoff for multinational corporations. "Western companies, if they make the right connections early enough," he says, "have the potential of being swept into the mainstream of Iraqi commerce."

continued

laundering scheme for U.S. corporations by the Bush administration using using Iraq as an excuse. Everything I read on this suggests that all decisions are being made unilaterally by Americans with no input from any Iraqis.