| Date: | Saturday April 12, @08:51PM |
|---|---|
| Author: | admin |
| Topic: | Bush |
| from the observer.co.uk dept. | |
"A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal.
DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department.
The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN police officer it unfairly sacked in Bosnia for whistleblowing on DynCorp colleagues involved in an illegal sex ring. "
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,935689,00.html
Cheney's ex-firm cited as example
By William Neikirk
Tribune senior correspondent
Published April 13, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The United States' plan to rebuild Iraq, which will cost billions of dollars, already is facing criticism for being a closed process vulnerable to cronyism.
Several members of Congress have denounced the administration's method of handpicking the contractors--many with strong Republican ties--who will be responsible for major reconstruction projects involving roads, oil wells and other infrastructure.
The disclosure that a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., a Dallas-based firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was awarded a contract for up to $7 billion for repairing oil wells in Iraq has begun to focus attention on the entire reconstruction effort.
"It troubles me that Halliburton is around every corner when it comes to major spending by this administration," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who contends that Chicago contractors interested in bidding have been unfairly left out. "It does smack of an old boys' network."
Carlyle's Power Web on the Potomac
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
A TRUSTED adviser to the Pentagon stands to make $725,000 for advising a company seeking a deal that the government opposes on national security grounds. When the country is at war, no less.
This very recent tale, of Richard N. Perle, who was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a voluntary citizens advisory body, but thought nothing wrong of his arrangement, shows that few topics could be more timely than the web of government, business and military interests that lobbyists and bureaucrats call the iron triangle.
Now a first-time author, Dan Briody, has come along with "The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group" (Wiley, $24.95), which aspires to tell the ultimate tale of private interests trampling on public trust. Carlyle is the Washington buyout firm that has made the most of its unusual political connections to complete some rarified deals. As the author warns in his preface, "the scandal here is not what's illegal but what's legal."
The firm and the world in which it operates have been the subjects of previous profiles, most memorably a 1993 article by Michael Lewis in The New Republic. He called Carlyle the "neat solution for people who don't have a lot to sell besides their access, but who don't want to appear to be selling their access." Mr. Briody himself wrote about the firm in December 2001 in Red Herring magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/business/yourmoney/13SHEL.html
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printed from The Bush Crime Family Demonstrates It's Loyalty on 2004-05-25 23:10:43