Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers is the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.

Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

The bottomless pit of sanctioned American greed

A news report today states that the Iraq war will eventually cost the US $2.7 TRILLION. If you are wondering how even a rich a nation can manage to spend so much money in such as small corner of the world, "Iraq for Sale" will provide a few answers.

The Iraq War seems tailor-made for profiteering, with its no-bid contracts, cost plus arrangements and obvious conflict of interest between the companies involved and the executive branch prosecuting the war. The film focuses on the involvement of companies like CACI, Halliburton and Titan in providing contractors for the war effort. The film describes contact language experts who can barely speak English. This makes them useless for translating during interrogations, and positively dangerous if they misunderstand what is being said. The Abu Ghraib scandal seems at least partly due to unaccountable contractors calling the shots in a military situation. Shockingly, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski is interviewed in support of the film's premise that contractors contributed to the scandal.

Iraq for Sale shows contractors literally taking work away from US soldiers. The GIs, many who joined the military to learn technical skills, are required instead to train the contractors, who make many times the wage provided to the soldiers. Cost overruns and predatory charging are rife. Empty trucks drive back and forth on Iraqi roads, racking up profits for every useless mile they drive. Because they refuse to run more expensive 24-hours operations, contractors running mess operations deliberately understaff, exposing the resulting long lines of hungry GIs to insurgents who know just when the largest numbers of soldiers will gather. Equipment that is only slightly damaged is destroyed -- literally burned in pits so that brand new replacements can be ordered, increasing costs to the taxpayer and profits to the contractors. The focus on profits may have cost soldiers their lives. Truck convoys run into ambushes for want of decent military debriefs; contractors (like the 4 killed and burned in Fallujah) die when their escorts are taken away to save money.

Iraq for Sale is a powerful indictment of the treasonous, immoral profiteering that masquerades as the US war on terror. It's hard to believe that this stuff goes on, never mind that it is done intentionally. Never mind that it is done with the blessing of our government. June 13, 2008

Government Contractor / Retired Military

Excellent Documentary!!! However whomever wrote it CLEARLY went straight after the Government Contractor's! I am retired military and I am currently a Government Contractor and I can tell you from being on both sides this ENTIRE show is no more than the military being jealous of what contractors are getting PAID!!! Bottomline is if soldiers don't like their jobs or PAY then they need to be ADULTS and not WHINERS and simply leave the military and be a contractor!!! Bunch of silly Azz-Hater's!!! I love the video though--very ENTERTAINING!!! May 2, 2008

Hurray for this film--the truth of the mistakes made in Iraq

This video contains the truth of the huge mistakes made in Iraq that has caused the debacle that is there now. The first-hand accounts are from those who Bush and Cheney sent to Iraq after "Mission Accomplished."

These brave people are speaking out and correcting the misstatements that we've heard in the media and governmental statements.

A must-see. April 21, 2008

Accurate, Memorable, Scary, Necessary!

This movie should be seen by every politician, and everyone who votes. It tells the sad and scary story of how private companies are ripping off the American people with their warmongering, and their illegally charging for activities they do not perform. For example, a subsidiary of Haliburton, that drives trucks in Iraq, charges for trips it forces its employees to take with empty trucks between cities in Iraq, simply because they charge by the mile traveled. This creates tremendous life threatening risk for the employees, but gets great profits for the company, and does not serve American interests. They frequently do this with empty trucks, and are not transporting empty trucks to the destination because they are needed there, but simply to accumulate the mileage. This situation is attested to by both soldiers, private employees in Iraq, and ones who did work in Iraq and are now back in America. March 24, 2008

Good but not Perfect

This film is an expose on wasteful spending and lack of accountability of private contractors in Iraq. It raises several good questions about the way private companies conduct business during war time. Is there room for profit when people's lives are concerned? Is our current system which gives allows a percentage of profit for everything they bill encourage wasteful spending? What's to stop companies from cutting corners to increase their profit margins at the cost of people's lives?

The film lacked narration and interviews with prominent dissident individuals who have some expertise that may have pulled the film together better. It has a lot of interviews with former employees of contractors in Iraq who are upset and disgruntled about how things were being handled and families who have lost loved ones, combined with people making critical commentary about the situation. Also excerpts from news broadcasts talking about the very issues the film is talking about. These provide a kind of evidence and give the films arguments more credibility.

Because the film relies on non-expert interviews, again and again the great crime is that companies are making profits. Making profits is not a crime per se. We have to give companies incentive to help over there; otherwise they would just conduct business as usual and make more money doing something else. The real crime is what companies are willing to do for a higher profit margin and what the human costs are. This is addressed in the film, but people might get the impression that the film is saying the profits are bad and immoral.

For something that came out in 2006, I thought maybe there would be some discussion about how private contractors might be playing a role in us still being in Iraq. There are alternative ways to influence politics in Iraq other than direct military presence, through the foreign aid programs and military support. We overthrew the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, using this type of low intensity conflict. It's possible that such a campaign might have success in Iraq, but the administration might have some vested interest in a military campaign because of the lucrative contracts it provides for private interests.

Worth seeing. Recommended.
March 18, 2008

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