NO ETHICS? NO EXPERIENCE? NO PROBLEM! -- Rall

NO ETHICS? NO EXPERIENCE? NO PROBLEM!



NEW YORK--WorldCom Inc., recently and hilariously accused of rerouting phone calls to avoid paying connection fees to other phone companies (who was running the joint, frat dudes?), ranks with Enron in the annals of modern corporate debauchery. After an $11 billion accounting scandal sunk the infamous telecommunications conglomerate into bankruptcy, the U.S. General Services Administration banned federal agencies from doing business with WorldCom. So how is a proscribed "company that has demonstrated a flagrant lack of ethics"--the words belong to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), chairperson of the Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee--poised to land a $900 million Pentagon (news - web sites) contract to build a cell phone system for occupied Iraq?


"I was curious about it, because the last time I looked, MCI has never built out a wireless network," comments Len Lauer of Sprint.


Indeed, WorldCom's MCI division never figured out how to build a cell network in the U.S., and ultimately gave up trying. But who needs experience when you have tasty political connections? Before 2000 WorldCom donated equally to Democrats and Republicans in order to land cell service contracts with U.S. occupation armies in Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan (news - web sites). Now it's leveraging a $45 million deal with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) into a Halliburtonesque sweetheart contract to build the first national mobile phone network in Iraq, where more than 2 million new customers are expected to sign up right away.

more................

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/030821/7/51gg9.html

But sleazy back-room deals with Halliburton and MCI-WorldCom belie America's supposed faith in the transparency of free markets and their relationship to spreading democracy. They do more damage to our tattered relationship with the people of Iraq than any suicide bomb. And they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that George W. Bush's commitment to fight corporate fraud is just another lie.

That is directly on point.