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ALEXANDRIA, Va. --Rhode Island-based defense contractors Custer Battles were "war profiteers" and "war whores" who filed phony claims for some of the millions of dollars they made in Iraq, an attorney for two whistleblowers told a federal jury during final arguments in a civil lawsuit Tuesday.

"It's not like stealing from a bank, because people's lives are at stake," said attorney Alan Grayson. "They let you down. They let down America. You should do something about that."

Between 2002 and 2005, St. Augustine, Fla., exercise equipment vendor Raul Espinosa watched mystified as, one after another, a series of Air Force contracts he had placed bids on were given to other companies. Of the 14 bids that Espinosa has documented, his company, FitNet International, did not win one. To his surprise, Espinosa learned that some of the competitors he was losing contracts to had never even bothered to bid on them.

Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a co-sponsor of the new bill, said the legislation would set new standards to "restore integrity to a federal contracting process that has too often been operated in a manner that neither ensures confidence nor that taxpayers get a fair return for what they have paid."

MARK Vaile will press Iraq to buy Australian wheat even if the nation's monopoly wheat exporter AWB is excluded from the deal.

The Deputy Prime Minister, who will lead a mission to Iraq to save hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wheat sales, said yesterday he wanted a "clear indication" Iraq would "consider Australian wheat through another exporter if necessary to go into that tendering process".

A defense contractor admitted Friday he paid a California congressman more than $1 million in bribes in exchange for millions more in government contracts in a scandal that prosecutors say reached into the Defense Department.

Kevin Carter, a Warwick accountant, says he reconciled most of the $12.8 million spent by the company that now stands accused of war profiteering.

Climate Justice means holding fossil fuel corporations accountable for the central role they play in contributing to global warming.

Thanks to Halliburton, U.S. taxpayers are getting an expensive lesson in the costs of private contractors.

The UK has failed to act on promises to plug loopholes that allow the sale of arms to countries with poor human rights records, aid agency Oxfam says. It says that military vehicles were sold to Uganda by a South African subsidiary of the UK firm BAE Systems.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the centre of a growing controversy over its proposed management of U.S. port terminals, is one of the world's most prolific arms buyers and a multi-billion-dollar military market both for the United States and Western Europe.

Houston's Halliburton Co. earned nearly $100 million from its controversial no-bid contract to repair Iraq's oilfields and import fuel into that violence-torn country, Pentagon records show.

Even though the Pentagon auditors identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially unjustified, the Army has decided to reimburse Halliburton for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq.

The ports of Dubai make up some of the busiest commercial hubs in the world for the "global war of terrorism." Conveniently located between the Afghanistan and Iraq, Dubai is the ideal jumping-off point for military contractors and a lucrative link in the commercial supply chain of goods and people.

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter directed millions of dollars to companies represented by a lobbying firm headed by the husband of a top Specter aide.

Trade Minister Mark Vaile will lead the trip with AWB boss Brendan Stewart, despite news overnight that the Iraqi Grains Board will stick to its decision to suspend trade with AWB.

An Australian government appointee to the US-led occupation government in Iraq attended a secret meeting with a businessman who had offered to bribe "influential people" in the new regime to secure wheat contracts.

Nothing could be more concrete - though less generally discussed in our media - than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has been building in Iraq. Quite literally, multibillions of dollars have gone into them.

Last week I tried to visit Canada. Flying in from the San Francisco area where I live, I was on my way to give a speech about human rights and the environment in Calgary. I didn't get past the immigration desk.

The UN Volker Report (2005) has disclosed that the monopoly Australian Wheat Board (AWB) was responsible for kickbacks totalling over US$250 million out of an estimated US$1.8 billion of illicit payments to Saddam Hussein's régime during the US$35 billion UN Oil For Food program in 1997-2003 (see:http://www.iic-offp.org/story27oct05.htm).

Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, who defended the AWB's monopoly during a World Trade Organization gathering of trade ministers in Hong Kong in December, has attempted to separate the wheat exporter's privileged sales position from the ongoing inquiry into its business dealings with the former Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.