War Profiteering

How do they get away with this stuff?

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle briefed an investment seminar on ways to profit from conflicts in Iraq and North Korea just weeks after he received a top-secret government briefing on the crises in the two countries, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Perle, who until March was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisers to the Pentagon, also serves on the board of several defense contractors. The revelation raises concerns about conflicts of interest.

The Times reported that Perle attended a Defense Intelligence Agency briefing in February and three weeks later participated in a Goldman Sachs conference call in which he advised investors in a talk titled "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?"

In a related story, CNN reports that Halliburton's $7 billion contract to rebuild Iraq, "awarded without competition, to make emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure, also gives it the power to run all phases of Iraq's oil industry."

Needless to say, this contract promises to be extraordinarily lucrative.