Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
(Brave New Films; 75 min.)
Video Review by Michael Lodge
Under what circumstances would you involve civilian contractors in crucial support roles to the US military? Maybe if the military was downsizing? Maybe if contractors could offer superior expertise? Maybe if contractors offered huge savings to the American taxpayer? Why would a government allow it if none of the above were the case?
Iraq for Sale director Robert Greenwald thinks this would never happen unless the fix was in. Underachieving contractors are earning huge sums of money in Iraq doing jobs previously provided in-house. To Greenwald, this can only be explained by complicity between the US government and the corporations they hold close to their bosom (or vice versa).
Nothing too surprising there, you might say, but it’s always a good idea to get concrete examples of how the taxpayer is being ripped off. Greenwald’s documentary supplies plenty—and the viewer is left with a strong sense of the cronyism that costs the US taxpayer a great deal of loot.
Greenwald is no stranger to Iraq. Uncovered, his 2003 documentary exploring the bogus reasons for the Iraq invasion, begins with a roll call of experts drawn from political life and the intelligence community. Proven correct, the documentarian shifts his attention to the corporations and contractors profiting from the conflict. It’s a catalogue of waste, profiteering and disregard for the civilian contractors in Iraq.
The work farmed out to contractors is as varied as it is crucial to the war effort. If you need laundry service, internet access or a spot of lunch, Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) is there to provide it. If you need a translator of questionable ability, give Titan a call. Private security? That’s Blackwater. Most controversially, if you want an interrogator outside of military chain of command (and of dubious talent), get on the blower to CACI. Oh, and it’s all vastly overpriced.
Greenwald asks us to consider the value of contractors who do jobs the army did for a fraction of the price. More cynically, it’s difficult to shy away from the question of whether the war industry’s influence makes war more likely.
Greenwald is no fan of the War for Oil. Neither are his chosen insiders. But many of the disgruntled whistleblowers on display in Iraq for Sale don’t seem to have a problem with invading Iraq per se. Many were attracted by pay packets stuffed with danger money with a sheen of national duty thrown in. In this, there’s cause here for anger even if you regard the war as kosher and the pursuit of oil as a legitimate national objective.
You could be gung-ho about the Iraq war and still be pissed off about what this documentary reveals. Here’s a typical scenario: Halliburton gain a sole source contract to provide clean water for the troops in Iraq (no one else bids for it). They gracefully accept and work on a cost plus basis, then fail to deliver on that service. In fact, 63 out of 67 water purification plants weren’t providing clean water when KBR water purification specialist Ben Carter was in Iraq.
Government revenues are so huge, government contracts must be wet dream material to CEOs of major corporations. The counterargument advanced in the film is that companies like Halliburton are the only firms big enough to handle the job. This may well be true now that it’s been outsourced but the army was doing okay before for a fraction of the cost.
At its most perverse, one fully trained radio technician describes how he had to spend hours teaching contractors from KBR to fix radios. The technician ended up on guard duty. It’s difficult to find any sense in this. Greenwald doesn’t offer suggestions.
It’s sometimes useful to remember that this is all taxpayer money. Your money. Greenwald implies it’s all being wasted due to the complicity of a bunch of crooks in the House and the Senate. There is, of course, no discernible benefit to the troops.
Greenwald lets his editing do the talking most of the time, sometimes juxtaposing a corporate PR rent-a-gob next to a worker who was actually Iraq. They are never in agreement. Iraq for Sale is an important polemic. Others have detailed the waste in Iraq – not least Ed Harriman’s article’s in the London Review of Books - but documentaries like this reach more people as Greenwald chooses ‘guerilla’ marketing rather than a conventional release. That means if you haven’t already watched it, click through to the link below.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6621486727392146155&q=iraq+for+sale&hl=en |
