The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity has released a report focusing on the contracts awarded to U.S. companies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to a look at the money changing hands over these two countries as well as ties to the Administration and others in government, there us an overview of general trends over the past decade or so when it comes to the government's outsourcing of work.

It took a while to get through all of the info, but it's a good read (well, depending on what you think is "good"). Although all of the links below are available from the link above, I've gone ahead and broken most of them out anyway.

This article gives an overview of a lot of the contractors being awarded government money, as well as the Center's difficulty in obtaining info on all of the contracts.

This article goes a little more in-depth into the challenges the center ran into trying to collect info under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Discussed here is the increased trend over the past decade to outsource government work to the private sector.

Executive Order 13303, which is related to Iraqi oil and was signed back in May is discussed here. If you are interested in reading the Order itself, you can find it on this page.

A closer look at one company, Sullivan Haave with government ties is covered in this article.

Another company of interest doing work in Iraq is Science Applications International Corporation, and discussion of there contracts is found here. In addition to the stuff about them from the "Winning Contractors" article (that is, how IRDC members are on SAIC's payroll), I found it interesting that SAIC's contracts were awarded in February, well before the war actually started.

Here is a look at some contracts that were handed out directly by provisional authorities in the two countries, instead of by the Defense Department, the State Department, or USAID.

Here is a table summarizing contractors and what information the Center was able to piece together about what they were paid to do and how much they were paid to do it.

Finally, contractors are ranked by total contract value, campaign contributions, and contract history.

War is good, isn't it? Well, if you're a well-connected American company, it is.