Isn’t it comforting to know that someone is profiting … uh, benefiting from the war in Iraq?
THE surge in fourth-quarter revenues reported by Halliburton, the oil services company favored by the US government with contracts for rebuilding Iraq, underlines the spectacular war dividend being enjoyed by select US companies.
Revenues at Halliburton, vice president Dick Cheney’s old firm, jumped 63% to $5.46bn (£3bn) almost entirely because of its Iraq contracts and other spending related to the war.
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Halliburton is not the only winner. Bechtel, another major contractor in Iraq with strong Administration contacts, is also thought to have made significant profits from the US government but the details are less well-known because the company is privately held. It was recently awarded a further $1.8bn contract in Iraq.
There are indirect benefits too, with aerospace firms big beneficiaries of higher defense spending. Lockheed Martin recently reported a 15% rise in fourth-quarter sales while Raytheon’s sales climbed from $5.1bn to $4.7bn over the same period.
Let’s see. It looks more and more likely that Iraq never had WMDs post 1996 or so. And it looks like the recently touted “humanitarian” reasons for the war don’t measure up.
So it is possible that hundreds of U.S. servicemembers and thousands of Iraqis died for nothing more than corporate profits?