Winning Hearts and Minds

As usual, W and company are taking situations that while not necessarily good, could have some potential for improving things in the future, and instead are taking the road that will lead to the most resentment of us in the future. Good job!

Jobs for the boys—and for foreigners (Economist)

The mass import of migrants to service the American-led armies further fuels resentment. Saudi caterers contracted by Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, an American oil-services company, have shipped in hundreds of Indian and Bangladeshi cooks to avoid, they say, the risk that Iraqis might poison the food. Filipina maids hired in Jordan do the cleaning. […] To cap it all, a new investment law lets foreign contractors bring in labour from abroad but export all profits. Those Iraqis who do get contracts are often just back from exile. A recent tender for a mobile-phone franchise for southern Iraq was won by a consortium led by the son of the media director for Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, who had just returned from Canada. And Iraqis fret at the lack of auditors and openness in Iraq’s Governing Council and over the UN’s Development Fund for Iraq, where Iraq’s oil revenues are supposed to go.

(via Nathan Newman)