NPR clip on US companies rebuilding Iraq

Found the link to this clip on Talking Points Memo http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

You have to hear it to believe it: a Texas businessman explaining to an Iraqi sheik why he should pay for the privilege of his construction company getting subcontracting work from a US company to help in rebuilding Iraq. The Texan actually mocks the sheik for resenting having to pay to play. Absolutely disgusting.

http://www.marketplace.org/play/audio.php?media=/2003/10/13_mpp&start=00:00:21:41.0&end=00:00:26:52.7

Some Midland Texas carpet-bagger fleecing the dead and dying in Iraq... makes me sick.

the garbage companies in NY to pay to be able to bid on City Contracts? Why is this different? :shrug:

The contracts themselves go overwhelmingly to American companies, and god only knows what they paid for that privilege, since there doesn't seem to be any bidding and it's all done behind closed doors. Then the US companies farm the actual labor out to other countries like Pakistan and, if they're lucky, Iraq. I don't think there's any kind of legal control over how the American companies choose who to subcontract to... that would be interfering with the all power invisible hand of the free market system.

God forbid the contracts themselves actually be given to Iraqi companies. Then all the money Bush pretends is going to rebuilding Iraq would actually be... rebuilding Iraq! The Bushies will tell you that no Iraqi company is big enough to handle all the work (not surprising considering ten years of war and sanctions), and the money goes to the Halliburtons of the world instead. Tell me again how this war isn't about business.

almost drove off the road.

Here's an Iraqi who used to have a billion dollar company with hundreds of employees asking, "You mean I have to pay you $7,500 a month so I can work in my own country?"

Is that what they're calling Honest Graft these days?

There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': "I seen my opportunities and I took'em." -- George Washington Plunkitt (1842-1924), New York state senator and Tammany Hall sachem.
http://www.uhb.fr/faulkner/ny/plunkitt.htm

"Compny," "Irawwki," "think owtha box," -- what an ignorant fool.