Iraq, Inc

the long version

More than one year after the "fall of Baghdad," the reconstruction of Iraq is failing terribly. In this book, Chatterjee delivers an on-the-ground account of the occupation business, exposing private contractors as the only winners in this war. He examines the big failings and even bigger swindles of Iraq's corporate managers, from the dangerous follies of an out-of-touch government-in-exile to the unchecked price gouging by Cheney's successors at Halliburton. He contrasts the employment boom of mercenaries--more than 20,000 soldiers of fortune from apartheid-era South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, and elsewhere--with the crowds of unemployed locals ripe for recruitment to the resistance. He brings us the dilapidated hospitals, looted ministries, and guarded corporate enclaves that mark the plunderous road to America's "free Iraq."--Publisher description