Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation

(Paperback)

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Chatterjee examines the big failings and even bigger swindles of Iraq's corporate managers, from the dangerous follies of an out-of-touch government-in-exile to the unchecked price gouging by Cheney's successors at Halliburton. Chaterjee contrasts the employment boom of foreign mercenaries with the unemployed locals ripe for recruitment to the resistance. Drawing on years of research and first-hand experience, Chatterjee brings us the dilapidated hospitals, looted ministries, and guarded corporate enclaves that mark the plunderous road to America's free Iraq.

Reviews

"Combining on-the-ground reportage with documentary sources, Chatterjee probes every aspect of the reconstruction of Iraq, and wherever the managing editor of CorpWatch looksfrom the education and health systems to the host of contractors providing security guards and interrogatorshe finds the same failings: delays, disastrous under-performance, blatant over-charging There's the raw material here for a Michael Moore film or a collaboration between David Hare and the ghost of Brecht. But Chatterjee is content to leave it raw. The Guardian, UK

"Pratap Chatterjee takes us into the fast-spinning revolving door between the government officials who attacked Iraq and the corporations who have profited so handsomely from the war. A powerful combination of investigative research and on-the-ground reporting, Iraq, Inc. is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what has really gone wrong in Iraq." Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and columnist for The Nation

"This book exposes the truly tragic dimensions of the U.S. failure in Iraq, especially how the post-war reconstruction efforts have alienated the Iraqi people even as they've funneled billions of dollars into the pockets of well-connected U.S. companies like Halliburton and Bechtel. David Weir co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), former Managing Editor of Mother Jones, and Visiting Professor in Journalism, Stanford University

Author Bio

Pratap Chatterjee is the program director of the nonprofit Corpwatch. Reporting on the political influence of Enron and Halliburton in the mid-nineties, Chatterjee led the field by more than half a decade. His early coverage of Bechtel was named Best Business Story by the National Newspaper Association, and he is the recipient of four Project Censored awards. His articles have appeared in the New Republic, the Guardian, and the Independent.