A Band of Brothers: The Rebuilding of Iraq
By Stephen Pizzo (Award-Winning Investigative Journalist)
The Wall Street Journal describes it as "the largest government reconstruction effort since Americans helped to rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II." Just how much the rebuilding of Iraq will cost American taxpayers is a figure still too elusive to capture. But, the President's request for an additional $87 billion in September atop the $3.7 billion a month we are already spending, indicates the final figure will be, as one pundit described it quite "an adult number."
Recent estimates now put the final figure somewhere between $200 billion to as much as half a trillion dollars over the next ten years.
America's Iraq-sticker-shock may turn to anger when taxpayers discover the small group of men and companies reaping the benefits of President Bush's newly found appreciation for nation building.
While Vice President Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton has attracted most of press attention for its Iraq-related contracts; Halliburton is hardly the whole story. Halliburton's share is but a slice of multi-billion dollar pie being divided up among a brotherhood of unusually well connected and economically related individuals and entities.
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# posted by SV @ 10/16/2003 10:34:00 AM