april fools

Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraq National Congress is up for a cushy post in the new post war Iraq. But as he was sentenced in absentia in Jordan on an embezzlement charge, I wonder how the neighbors will take the news.

Washington Post reports James Woolsey has hit the big bureaucratic bingo. Those Defense Policy Board connections probably aren't hurting things a bit.

The next biggest commodity after oil in the Middle East is water Is Chevron lining up or will this one be a Halliburton Bechtel gig?

More reconstruction mania and a small tid bit about Halliburton's no-bid-needed contract:

Halliburton’s Brown & Root Services won an Army Corps of Engineers contract to put out oil-well fires and handle other emergency on March 9 -- two weeks before the war began. Halliburton never had to bid on that contract. It grew out of a classified study the company had done on putting out oil-well fires for the Army Materiel Command under a 10-year Army logistics contract Brown & Root won in December 2001, according to Corps of Engineers spokesman Lt. Col. Gene Pawlik.

What made the most sense was to use the same company that had done the contingency study, Pawlik said. The contract that is in place right now is a limited-duration, limited-scope emergency-services contract.

Anyone going to ask why a study was being done on putting out oil well fires in the first place?