Reply #11: Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts

[w8liftinglady]

http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6532
Last month, multi-billionaire Riley Bechtel was sworn in as a member of President Bush's Export Council to advise the government on how to create markets for American companies overseas.
-snip-
Last week when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the contract, Tom Hash, president of Bechtel National, released a brief statement: "Bechtel is honored to have been asked to help bring humanitarian assistance, economic recovery, and infrastructure reconstruction to the Iraqi people."

The initial contract is capped at $680 million over 18 months, although experts say this may be one of the biggest export bonanzas in history that could eventually be worth up to $100 billion. Eventually Iraqi citizens will probably be handed the bill, most likely to be financed out of the country's oil revenues
-snip-

For Bechtel was just like old times. Twenty years ago, in December 20, 1983 Middle East peace envoy Donald Rumsfeld arrived in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, on a special mission from George Shultz (then secretary of state for President Ronald Reagan) to meet with Saddam Hussein. Rumsfeld asked the Iraqi dictator to support Bechtel's bid on construction of an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba.