Bob Herbert discusses the IPS report discussed below (good call, Jason) and comes across reasonably moderately. He concludes:

Their philosophical flights in favor of the war would seem more graceful, and much less unsavory, if they weren't flying with the baggage of Bechtel and other large commercial interests that have so much to gain from the war.

This unilateral war and the ouster of Saddam have given the hawks and their commercial allies carte blanche in Iraq. And the company with perhaps the sleekest and most effective of all the inside tracks, a company that is fairly panting with anticipation over oil and reconstruction contracts worth scores of billions of dollars, is of course the Bechtel Group of San Francisco.

Perhaps the most important battle right now is not only who profits from the victory, but who runs the victory--ex-pat Iraqis, favored by the neo-cons, or those who remained inside the country, favored by Powell and State. The hawks have characteristically jumped the gun by shipping the ex-pats over for a tour without military approval, which looks fishy, and one has to wonder how installing a regime so closely tied to the West is going to play with Iraq's neighbors, or even its citizens. While there are certainly problems with reinstalling former members of the government post-war, consider that if the Allies had refused to let anyone connected with the Nazis run Germany after the war, the country would have become a de facto protectorate of the victors, and Germany, for the record, turned out fairly well.
posted by Mike B. at 3:33 PM 0 comments