"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" benefit film screening

Director Robert Greenwald's previous film, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price", showed the effects of 'Godzilla capitalism' on ordinary people across the U.S. and around the world.

This time, "IRAQ FOR SALE: The War Profiteers" tells the story of what happens to ordinary Americans — and Iraqis — when corporations go to war. The film takes viewers inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows, and children who have been changed forever as a result of corporate profiteering in post-invasion Iraq.

The film uncovers the connections between a small group of private U.S. companies, and the decisionmakers who have enabled them to make billions of dollars in Iraq through no-bid contracts to perform jobs that the military used to do itself — and that Iraqis, who are desperate for income to feed their families, could do better, faster, and cheaper.

Though the privatization of the Pentagon is hardly a new phenomenon, the sheer extent and brazenness of the profiteering in Iraq — and the total lack of oversight on these well-connected American corporations — have resulted in the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians; alienated most of the Iraqi population; and turned Iraq into a recruitment and training center for Muslim militants, and a full-blown sectarian civil war that threatens the stability of the whole region.

Among the fraud and abuse documented in the film:
-- Halliburton executives living in five-star hotels, while their company fails to deliver drinkable water to U.S. troops; burning perfectly good cars and trucks so they can buy new ones, and claiming to have “lost” $9 billion in cash.
-- Blackwater, a private mercenary army masquerading as a “security company” and operates with near-total impunity in Iraq, cut corners in order to make even more money, and ended up causing the deaths of four of its own employees in Faluja.
-- CACI and Titan, two corporations virtually unknown in the United States, provided untrained guards and nearly useless translators who ultimately brought about the humiliation, torture, and international disgrace known as the Abu Ghraib scandal.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion, and preceded by a demonstration at the headquarters of war profiteer Bechtel Corporation at 50 Beale Street in San Francisco (Embarcadero BART) from 4:00-6:00 p.m. The protest will be led by Global Exchange/CodePINK and other members of the Declaration of Peace coalition.

Tickets are $10, and are available online at http://www.countercorp.org or at the door starting at 7:00 p.m. There will also be refreshments available for purchase at the theater (cash only). Proceeds benefit the 2006 CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival in November.