Body and Soul makes an excellent point about cronyism in Iraq:
[…] The issue isn’t whether there’s a clear and direct connection between campaign contributions and contracts, or whether contributing more gets you more contracts. The question is not, is Bush favoring Halliburton over Bechtel, or Bechtel over a smaller company that gave less to the Republican party? The issue is why the entire game is set up to benefit American companies? Bechtel doesn’t need to nitpick over whether it gets more than Halliburton. If the system assumes American corporations need to do everything, Bechtel, Halliburton, DynCorp, and the rest know they will get a good- sized piece of it. The important thing is to get the pie on the table. Once it’s there, the big guys know they’re not going to have any trouble getting to the table first, and grabbing the biggest slices.