Spoils of War

April 10, 2003, New York Times
By BOB HERBERT

Follow the money.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz is on the board of
directors of the Bechtel Group, the largest contractor in
the U.S. and one of the finalists in the competition to
land a fat contract to help in the rebuilding of Iraq.

He is also the chairman of the advisory board of the
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a fiercely pro-war
group with close ties to the White House. The committee,
formed last year, made it clear from the beginning that it
sought more than the ouster of Saddam's regime. It was
committed, among other things, "to work beyond the
liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy."

War is a tragedy for some and a boon for others. I asked
Mr. Shultz if the fact that he was an advocate of the war
while sitting on the board of a company that would benefit
from it left him concerned about the appearance of a
conflict of interest.

"I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from
it," he said. "But if there's work that's needed to be
done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But
nobody looks at it as something you benefit from."

Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior
vice president at Bechtel. He's also a member of the
Defense Policy Board, a government-appointed group that
advises the Pentagon on major defense issues. Its members
are selected by the under secretary of defense for policy,
currently Douglas Feith, and approved by the secretary of
defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

Most Americans have never heard of the Defense Policy
Group. Its meetings are classified. The members disclose
their business interests to the Pentagon, but that
information is not available to the public.

The Center for Public Integrity, a private watchdog group
in Washington, recently disclosed that of the 30 members of
the board, at least 9 are linked to companies that have won
more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and
2002.

Richard Perle was the chairman of the board until just a
few weeks ago, when he resigned the chairmanship amid
allegations of a conflict of interest. He is still on the
board.

Another member is the former C.I.A. director, James
Woolsey. He's also a principal in the Paladin Capital
Group, a venture capital firm that, as the Center for
Public Integrity noted, is soliciting investments for
companies that specialize in domestic security. Mr. Woolsey
is also a member of the Committee to Liberate Iraq and is
reported to be in line to play a role in the postwar
occupation.

The war against Iraq has become one of the clearest
examples ever of the influence of the military-industrial
complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against so
eloquently in his farewell address in 1961. This iron web
of relationships among powerful individuals inside and
outside the government operates with very little public
scrutiny and is saturated with conflicts of interest.

Their goals may or may not coincide with the best interests
of the American people. Think of the divergence of
interests, for example, between the grunts who are actually
fighting this war, who have been eating sand and spilling
their blood in the desert, and the power brokers who fought
like crazy to make the war happen and are profiting from it
every step of the way.

There aren't a lot of rich kids in that desert. The U.S.
military is largely working-class. The power brokers homing
in on $100 billion worth of postwar reconstruction
contracts are not.

The Pentagon and its allies are close to achieving what
they wanted all along, control of the nation of Iraq and
its bounty, which is the wealth and myriad forms of power
that flow from control of the world's second-largest oil
reserves.

The transitional government of Iraq is to be headed by a
retired Army lieutenant general, Jay Garner. His career
path was typical. He moved effortlessly from his military
career to the presidency of SYColeman, a defense contractor
that helped Israel develop its Arrow missile-defense
system. The iron web.

Those who dreamt of a flowering of democracy in Iraq are
advised to consider the skepticism of Brent Scowcroft, the
national security adviser to the first President Bush. He
asked: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an
election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do
you do? We're surely not going to let them take over."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/opinion/10HERB.html?ex=1051016752&ei=1&en=113a3708f1269f3d



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