… and some oil.
Have a look at the following photos from the Iraqi oil fields: http://menzelphoto.com/recent/iraq20031.htm. They come from my Canon D60 digital camera. Because I was too busy exploring the wonders of linear differential equations and the impedance method with MIT EE students, I couldn’t accompany Peter Menzel (he and Faith D’Aluisio did the Material World books and Robo Sapiens) to Kuwait and Iraq. When Peter returned the D60 he included a small vial of Iraqi crude, fresh from the wells! I’m thus one of the very few Americans who can truly say that he got what the U.S. Army went to Iraq for 🙂
The article neglects to mention the furore over the choice of Boots and Coots as subcontractors ( see the Channel4 news article), which describes them as a “small firm teetering on the edge bankruptcy”. The item intimates that Halliburton were resuscitating a somewhat down-in-the-mouth subsidiary.
And on contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, “Of the companies selected so far, several have strong connections to the White House”, with donations to the Republican party, and a revolving door with work for ex-officials. Smaller, less well-connected US firms are not getting a look-in.
actually we didnt go to iraq to get the oil (saudi has plenty). we went there to stop certain arabs from getting the oil.
Government contracts are always government contracts. That is just big business and large money….Harvard uses the muscle within the educational community…Its a fact of life. AS for the oil we did not go there for oil…Alot of people talk of the looting and the oil. No one talks of the torture and the mistreatment of human life that occurred under saddams rule. BTW the ones who had the most to gain from this in terms of oil were Russia and France. Both have contracts with Iraq but can not exercise them untill the UN lifts its sanctions. I can not understand how an academic like like yourself can have such a naive approach. Venture out of harvard yard more often….