BearingPoint Corporation helps set Iraq policy - and profits from it

[pberq]

A great piece on how wars are fought for corporate profit.

It turns out that BearingPoint is a former subsidiary of KPMG, and it took over most of Arthur Anderson's operations after the Enron scandal. Now they are employed by the State Department and making a bundle off the Iraq war.

http://www.counterpunch.org/werther01082007.html

January 8, 2007

Parable of the Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone
Why We Fight
By WERTHER

<snip>

. . .

"The BearingPoint employees, who work out of offices in the State Department, arrange the meetings, set the agendas, take notes and provide summaries of the discussions, the official said. They also maintain the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad."

As any veteran of bureaucratic wars surely knows, whoever arranges meetings, sets agendas, and takes the official notes determines the policy, regardless of who is nominally in charge. But who is BearingPoint, and what interest do they have in Iraq? The media watchdog Sourcewatch.org provides the following:

In July of 2003, BearingPoint was awarded a contract by USAID worth $79.5 million to facilitate Iraq's economic recovery with a two-year option worth a total of $240,162,688. Responsibilities in this contract include:

1. Creating Iraq's budget.

2. Writing business law.

3. Setting up tax collection.

4. Laying out trade and customs rules.

5. Privatize state-owned enterprises by auctioning them off or issuing Iraqis shares in the enterprises.

6. Reopen banks and jump-start the private sector by making small loans of $100 to $10,000.

7. Wean Iraqis from the U.N. oil-for-food program, the main source of food for 60% of the population.

8. Issue a new currency and set exchange rates.

One is surprised that BearingPoint is not charged with rewriting Iraq's national anthem and choosing the members of its Olympic team. But, again, who is BearingPoint? That is hardly a name that rolls off the tongue like Microsoft, or Morgan Guaranty Trust. . .


(more at link . . .)

(edited for spelling)

[aquart]

1. Oh, goody. We privatized the State Department.

[ThomCat]

2. What, you don't want a for-profit corporation

running U.S. foreign policy? Hell, it just cuts out the middle man. Our foreign policy has always aimed at serving corporate america. :P

[aquart]

3. "The business of America is business." Yeah, fine.

But what is the PURPOSE of that business? To enrich a few at the expense of the many? To strip our national resources and sell them to foreign ownership? To beggar our children and give them unhealthy air and unsafe food? What is the PURPOSE of all our business?

That's the question nobody asks anymore.

[ThomCat]

4. I'm not sure the state department ever asked before either.

:shrug:

[pberq]

5. Iraq a profit center for corporations

http://www.counterpunch.org/werther01082007.html

"Was Auschwitz a German government-run death camp? Or was it just one of I.G. Farben's synthetic rubber factories, subject to a high employee turnover? One may also ask whether Iraq is the central front of the war on terrorism, or merely a profit center for corporations like BearingPoint and Exxon-Mobil."