سودجویی از راه تخریب: بازسازی عراق، حسابرسی و مدیریت کلاهبرداری

While several US corporations have benefited tremendously from the Iraq reconstruction, the Iraqis and US taxpayers have not done as well. This paper argues that the Bush Administration's neoliberal agenda in Iraq created a corrupt, lawless environment in which corporations could reap huge profits through what would normally be called malfeasance. It further demonstrates how the audit reports produced by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction helped to manage the impact of this massive fraud by giving the perception that the laissez-faire policies of the Bush administration were innocent mistakes, making the failures appear to be independent of one another, reconstructing corporate malfeasance as waste while criminalizing low level employees, and blaming the government agencies, the war and the Iraqis for the fraud.

While companies like Bechtel, Parsons and Halliburton have benefitted tremendously from the ostensible reconstruction of Iraq, the Iraqis and US taxpayers have fared far worse. This paper demonstrated that the Bush Administration created a sort of capitalist paradise for predominantly US and UK corporations working on the reconstruction of Iraq. The administration did so by ensuring that corporate profits would not be affected by competition, oversight, or even a requirement that work actually be performed. The prime contractors took advantage of their monopoly position in an anarchic setting with virtually no rules to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. The paper employed Wolin's (2008) notion of managed democracy to argue that the SIGIR audit reports controlled the impact of what would normally be labeled massive corporate malfeasance by managing it. SIGIR did so by attributing the laissez-faire principles to ignorance, making the failures look independent of one another, reconstructing corporate malfeasance as waste while criminalizing low level employees, shifting the blame for fraud to the government agencies, using the war as an excuse, and lastly blaming the Iraqis. Given that a large portion of the $42.23 billion obligated to the Iraq reconstruction has been wasted and no executive from any of the major corporations involved has been prosecuted, it appears as if the SIGIR audits have assisted with controlling the impact of this state-corporate crime against humanity. As corruption becomes more and more institutionalized it is important that critical theorists identify the mechanisms by which this is occurring. This paper demonstrated how the SIGIR audits assisted with institutionalizing fraud in the Iraq reconstruction. However, given the pervasiveness of corruption in the political economy there must be many more means by which this normalization is occurring.