01 July 2008

Baghdad Bonanza: Iraq's Failed Reconstruction

by Pratap Chatterjee

From the publisher:
"If you feel you only have time to read two American writers about the disaster in Iraq, your choice is easy: Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker and Pratap Chatterjee of CorpWatch."-David Weir, Stanford University

After five years of occupation and billions of US dollars spent, Iraq has less electricity, less drinkable water, and even less oil than before the invasion. Who got the tens of billions of dollars to rebuild the country, and what did they do with the money? To find out, Pratap Chatterjee travels to Iraq three times and comes back telling stories and naming names. He describes spectacular examples of fraud, from the ex-convict who bought luxury cars and gold watches with money he received to fix a library, to the company that repainted the national airline's own equipment and tried to sell it back to the Iraqi government.

Chatterjee details how US contractors played a role in training death squads, why 190,000 missing US guns are exacerbating the security crisis, and what the big roles played by Halliburton and Bechtel are. Written in the same fast-paced style that made his Iraq, Inc. a hit, Baghdad Bonanza is fearless investigative writing, destined to have a profound impact. This is a complete how-NOT-to manual for policymakers and citizens alike, anyone concerned with the issues of occupation and reconstruction.

Pratap Chatterjee is managing editor of CorpWatch. He is the author of Earth Brokers (Routledge, 1994), and he has written for the Financial Times and the Guardian. Chatterjee has appeared on CNN International, BBC, Fox, and MSNBC, and he was the recipient of a National Federation of Community Broadcasters award for his work in Afghanistan.