Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation

by Pratap Chatterjee

More than one year after the "fall of Baghdad," the reconstruction of Iraq was failing terribly. Ordinary Iraqis waited in line for basic necessities like clean water and fuel, while the number of civilians and soldiers killed escalated in tandem with the billions of U.S. tax dollars spent. In Iraq, A Profitable Occupation, Pratap Chatterjee delivers an on-the-ground account of the occupation business, exposing private contractors as the only winners in this war.
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. In Iraq, Inc. Chatterjee contrasts the employment boom of mercenaries--more than 20,000 soldiers of fortune from apartheid-era South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, and elsewhere in Iraq--with the crowds of unemployed locals ripe for recruitment to the resistance.
Drawing on years of research and first-hand experience in the region including his live reporting from post-invasion Iraq as he traveled around the country first in December 2003 when Saddam Hussein was captured and in April 2004 during the height of the siege of Fallujah, Chatterjee brings us the dilapidated hospitals, looted ministries, and guarded corporate enclaves that mark the plunderous road to America's free Iraq.

Genres: Nonfiction, Middle East

248 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

Reviews

[Haroon Haider]

First and the best book exposing war Profiteering, waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq war.

[Divyesh Sheth]

This is a fine price of writing documenting the waste and lack of planning and at times incompetent companies awarded contracts in a hurry resulting in a failed nation building exercise in Iraq.

[Fátima López Sevilla]

We all know that the Iraq war was not about freedom and democracy.
Now this book unveils other possible reasons behind it and the profits US companies made from it.
A really good read to open some eyes and to look with more horror at this oil war and to try to understand why Iraq today's situation is the one it is.

[Kathleen McRae]

This book was a very astute insight into the Iraq war and the politics that made it. Follow the money and it leads to the reason most wars are fought The fallout was civilians robbed of their lives and their country in ruins.Education and the right to live in peace are gone and in their place are people with a great anger and a great need to control something by any means

[Jung]

Journalism like this is public service.