The Top Ten at the trough

The Center for Corporate Policy brings us the top 10 in corporate cronyism and war profiteering. This is always big business but is really big with guys like Cheney at the helm. I'm just going to give a brief description of each, go to the source above for the grisly details.

• Coming in a surprising first at 293 million we have AEGIS, a British firm contracted to do security coordination in Iraq. It's founder is suspected of being an illegal arms dealer.


• At 240 million we have BearingPoint, the former consulting division of KPMG. It was awarded a contract to develop Iraq's "competitive private sector". I have no idea what that means but Bearing Point must since they helped write the contract.


• At number three we have the company that everyone in the world loves to hate, Bechtel. They were tasked with repairing the Iraqi infrastructure. After the lemon nuclear power plant Bechtel built for our local utility it's not hard to see why the Iraqis' still don't have electricity.


• BKSH & Associates comes in at number four. This is a PR firm who's chairman is an old Bush family friend and a big Bush fund raiser. They make their war profits by representing the likes of the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader Ahmed Chalabi was called the "George Washington of Iraq" by certain Pentagon neoconservatives. They also represent many of the other war profiteers.


• At number five we have CACI and Titan. This is the company that supplied interrogators to Abu Ghraib prison. As civilians they can't be punished under existing US law for torture even though Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba reported in an internal Army report that two CACI employees "were either directly or indirectly responsible" for abuses at the prison.


• Number six, Custer Battles, has had their gravy train come to the end of the line. At the end of September, the Defense Department suspended Custer Battles and 13 associated individuals and affiliated corporations from all federal contracts for fraudulent billing practices involving the use of sham corporations set up in Lebanon and the Cayman Islands. They are in the security business.


• At a disappointing seventh we have Halliburton. We already know about these guys, no need elaborate.


• The king of war profiteers, Lockheed Martin came in at eight. These guys have Rummy in their pocket and raked in 21.9 billion in contracts in 2003.


• Number nine, Loral Satellite, saved themselves from bankruptcy by selling the Pentagon access to their satellites.


• Qualcomm at number ten is trying to get a lock on the Iraqi cell phone business. Two CPA officials resigned this year after claiming they were pressured by John Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for technology security to change an Iraqi police radio contract to favor Qualcomm's patented cellular technology, a move that critics say was intended to lock the technology in as the standard for the entire country. It certainly helps to have friends in high places.

Gives new meaning to bringing home the bacon.