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WASHINGTON,
D.C. – U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) issued today’s “Bush
Administration’s Misstatement of the Day” on U.S. contractors in Iraq
Responding
to a report by the Center
on Public Integrity, which found that President Bush received $500,000
for his 2000 election campaign from contractors now performing work in
Iraq, a State Department spokesman said:
“There's
a separation, a wall, between them (career civil servants) and political-level
questions when they're doing the contracts.” (New York Times,
10/31/03)
However,
the Center’s report stated:
More
than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in
contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years…
Those companies contributed more money to the presidential campaign of
George W. Bush—more than $500,000—than to any other politician over the
last dozen years.
The
Associated Press on 10/30/03 also reported:
Some
of the firms working in Iraq are huge, politically connected conglomerates
like Halliburton - corporate parent of Kellogg, Brown & Root and formerly
headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Iraq contractors DynCorp, Bechtel
and Halliburton donated more than $2.2 million - mainly to Republican causes
like the 2000 Bush presidential campaign - between 1999 and 2002, according
to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In
the case of Halliburton, the U.S. government hired the company in Iraq
without a competitive bid, after the company recommended itself in a study.
Halliburton's Iraq oil services contract, worth $1.59 billion so far, will
be extended until December or January. The company reported Wednesday that
its government work in Iraq and elsewhere helped boost yearly third-quarter
earnings by 39 percent, to $4.14 billion.
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