The Spoils of War

As they prepare to make war on Iraq, cowboy-in-chief George Bush and his cohorts have pulled out all the stops. They're trying to convince us that this act of pure aggression is a "preemptive" move that will allow Americans to sleep more peacefully in their beds, while the Iraqi masses cheer the conquerors who have starved them for a decade and then bombed them to smithereens.

And that's just for starters. In the imaginations of Bush and his advisers, this Wild West approach to the Middle East stands to knock out Syria's despot, rein in the Saudi royal family, inspire the neighboring Iranians to their own pro-American putsch, banish the Palestinians to Jordan, and clear the way for Israeli settlers.

The doctrine of the preemptive strike is the perfect strategy for ushering in a new century of neocolonialism, unfettered by any need to respect sovereignty or self-determination. Better still, it's going to mean big bucks for whoever gets in on the ground floor. Before the war can begin, the movers and shakers in Washington and around the world have their eyes on divvying up the spoils.

Military Vendors

First in line to benefit from the war is Dick Cheney's old company Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root -- or, more colloquially, just Brown & Root -- which has cornered the market in supplying American armies of "liberation" around the globe. Launched in the 1930s amid a maze of political deals and lucrative government contracts, the Texas oil construction outfit built airstrips, roads, harbors, and military bases in Vietnam, and later provided similar services in Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

As Bush Senior's secretary of defense, Cheney oversaw the privatization of the military's logistics operations. Journalist Robert Bryce, who has chronicled the construction company in minute detail, reports Brown & Root won contracts of nearly $9 million to help the government implement those policies, giving it a natural leg up. During the 1990s, records show, it earned more than $2.5 billion for military support -- much of it during Cheney's time as a top Halliburton executive.

With Cheney back in the White House, Brown & Root's fortunes have only improved. Last spring the Army Operations Support Command awarded it an open-ended deal to work with army engineers and "provide for the construction of base camps and their infrastructures, including billeting and dining facilities; food preparation, potable water and sanitary systems; showers; laundries; transportation; utilities; warehouses and other logistics support." How much has Brown & Root already made under this contract -- and how much does it stand to make in Iraq? We may never know. The numbers are classified.

Agricultural Interests

Before the first Persian Gulf war, Iraq had become a sizable market for American rice, wheat, and chickens. In the last half of the '80s, the United States sold $4 billion in food to Iraq. Twenty percent of the American rice crop went there at one point in the 1980s.

In 1988-89 the United States exported 521,000 tons of rice to Iraq, making it our number one consumer. More recently, the figure has been zero. A spokesperson for the U.S. Rice Federation, which takes a dim view of the sanctions, wouldn't comment on the current situation. But it's safe to say there would be nothing like a war, regime change, and the subsequent lifting of sanctions to open up this lucrative market once again.

Big Oil

Oil, clearly, is the commercial jackpot in this war. Even under the sanctions, Iraq provides us with 9 percent of our oil supply. Until this spring, we were buying half of all Iraq's oil exports. But oil is also the carrot the U.S. is holding out to potential allies. As Bush with his left hand assures the American people that he will fight to secure their energy supply, with his right he's giving away future Iraqi oil to buy support from the French and the Russians.