It's an age old question. So old in fact it even comes in an ancient Latin flavour: "cui bono?"


It's still one we need to ask, however.

Especially as a grateful Iraq populace continues to exchange fire with their "liberators". Especially as the story about the reasons as to why Iraq had to be invaded continues to be revised and changed almost monthly.

The reasons for the invasion of Iraq are getting to look more and more like a high-tech 21st Century version of that famous Stalinist parlour game – the commisar vanishes.

The weapons of mass destruction which seemed so scary last year are now quietly relegated to a secondary reason with the wonderful doublethink: "we never said they were the main reason." Strangely this little revelation only came out after they couldn't find any WMDs. Even more curiously, no one seems to remember exactly what the main reason was – perhaps the US government neglected to tell anyone because they were too busy talking about Iraq's WMDs.

So who does benefit from all this war stuff?
Now that the US has pretty much admitted that there were no WMDs and thus Iraq posed no threat to the US or the UK, and as it quietly emerges that the current scapegoat – the intelligence services – believed Iraq posed little threat. We're left with the big question: why did the US and UK bother?

Cicero argued that to know this you have to look at who profits. And who has profited? The vice-president's last company Halliburton certainly did – a no-bid, no cost limit, open-ended government contract is the corporate equivalent of a blank cheque. Bechtel, International American products, Perini Corp., Contrack, Fluor, Washington Group International, Research Triangle Institute and Creative Associates International Inc have all won big out of Iraq and Afghanistan. You can see the scope of the Iraqi contracts' pork barrel at the Center for Public Integrity.

But Iraqi contracts aren't the only pork barrel in town. The Department of Defense is the largest employer in the US, with more employees than ExxonMobil, Ford, General Motors and GE put together.The US military has a rather larger budget than usual this year too - which is great news for all those companies that supply it.

The Iraqis of course have freedom now – and at the low cost of 8,000 - 10,000 civilian deaths.














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“Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.” —Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois