The Price of Freedom

Get out your green visors, here's a breakdown of the major corporate players in the military industrial complex - complete with earnings, profits, Iraq contracts awarded, cronies on the board and political contributions. Most of this information has been out there for those who want to find it, but I've never seen it laid out in an easy-reference sorta way.... and they didn't even get to MCI(!) and the other contracts still up for pretend bidding.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4495.htm

(snip)From a taxpayers’ perspective, the most important question is how many billions of dollars has our government paid private corporations to ensure a final victory in Operation Iraqi Freedom—whatever "victory" ultimately comes to mean?

What follows is a breakdown of the major corporations involved in Iraq from the incipient days of U.S. military action to the forthcoming years of rebuilding.

RUN-UP TO WAR: WHO PUT THE SHOCK IN "SHOCK AND AWE"

Long before the Bush Administration could sufficiently sell its case to the United Nations, Congress, and the American people, it was planning for war against Saddam and his Republican Guard. For companies like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin this meant a big boom in business in exchange for the big booms their weapons and bombs showered on Iraq months later. Though the ties that bind these companies to the Bush administration are not quite as controversial as those linking rebuilding and private military companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel, it is still clear, by tracing overlapping personnel, that far from being a relic of the Cold War, the military-industrial complex is alive and well and thriving in George W. Bush’s Washington. (end snip)