The Con in the Neo-con

Alternet: No Money for the Halliburton Development Fund

"There are good reasons for the reluctance to trust Uncle Sam with their money. To begin with, it has taken six months for the U.S. to allow the establishment of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board. The organization is supposed to supervise the allocations made by the Development Fund, which increasingly resembles a Halliburton/Bechtel moneybox.

Faced with the obduracy of the multinational institutions who actually wanted to supervise the development fund spending rather give it the desired Arthur Anderson/Enron rubber stamp, Satrap Bremer finally succumbed on the very eve of the Madrid conference. The U.S. agreed to allow appointments on terms specified by the institutions, which include the stipulation "that export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas from Iraq are made consistent with prevailing international market best practices."

In other words, no sweetheart deals for GOP contributors. But the concession was too little, too late. Most of the donors had already noticed which way the cash was flowing: right into the pockets of U.S. companies..."