Berkeley Author Investigates Iraq War Profiteers

Berkeley Author Investigates Iraq War Profiteers: By JUDITH SCHERR
Special to the Planet (11-30-04)

Many of us come to understand the Iraq War through the lens of newspaper and TV journalists who track our forces on the battlefield and in Pentagon briefings.

In Iraq, Inc: a Profitable Occupation, Pratap Chatterjee provides a view of the Iraq War that goes beyond Humvees, firefights and Pentagon spinmeisters, and reveals a complex and lucrative system of private enterprise, where billions of tax dollars are spent—and sometimes misspent—to support the warriors and rebuild Iraq.

The 248-page paperback, just released by Seven Stories Press, looks at the army of privately contracted dishwashers, barbers, toilet cleaners, security guards, transporters of prisoners, intelligence gatherers and truck drivers, generally invisible to the public. The presence of these workers only comes to light when one among them gets kidnapped or killed or steps out of line and into the media spotlight, as the contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib did.

At the core of Chatterjee’s research are the multinational corporations that get the contracts, deploy the workers, purchase the equipment and get rich in the process. A project director and managing editor at Oakland’s CorpWatch, Chatterjee, 40, has been tracking military spending for a decade.


http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=11-30-04&storyID=20204