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The New Yorker, The Talk of theTown, DEPT. OF CONNECTIONS
"THE CONTRACTORS"
http://newyorker.com/printable/?talk/030505ta_talk_mayer
Now there is a new and demonstrable connection, but it is not the kind that
the Bush Administration had in mind. In fact, it is more likely to fuel the
speculations of conspiracy theorists than it is to put their fears to rest.
It turns out that a money trail runs—albeit rather circuitously—from the
lucrative business of rebuilding Iraq to the fortune behind Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden’s estranged family, a sprawling, extraordinarily wealthy Saudi
Arabian dynasty, is a substantial investor in a private equity firm founded
by the Bechtel Group of San Francisco. Bechtel is also the global
construction and engineering company to which the U.S. government recently
awarded the first major multimillion-dollar contract to reconstruct
war-ravaged Iraq. In a closed competitive bidding process, the United States
Agency for International Development chose Bechtel to rebuild the major
elements of Iraq’s infrastructure, including its roads, railroads, airports,
hospitals, and schools, and its water and electrical systems. In the first
phase of the contract, the U.S. government will pay Bechtel nearly
thirty-five million dollars, but experts say that the cost is likely to
reach six hundred and eighty million during the next year and a half.
[edit: no comment except to remind you to reread your De Sade]
-- Hop-Frog
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