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According to insiders and to documents obtained from the State Department, the neocons, once in command, are now in full retreat. Iraq's system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam Hussein.

The complaints by the families of the new private security recruits forced the Peruvian Foreign Ministry to act. Ambassador Jorge Lázaro, in charge of Offices of Peruvian Communities Abroad, announced that he had launched an investigation to determine whether the contracts violated the rights of the new recruits.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Two environmentalists from opposite ends of the globe, linked by their common experiences with the ecological degradation and human rights abuses associated with oil production, are joining together to tour American towns and cities as part of a Climate Justice Tour.

Footage of 12 of their countrymen executed at the hands of insurgents in Iraq last year set off a panic among Nepalis who didn't want to risk the same fate. But a manager for First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., issued an ultimatum: Agree to travel to Iraq and they would get more food and water. Refuse, and they would get nothing and be put out on the streets of Kuwait City to find their way home.

Federal auditors say the prime contractor, Unisys Corp., overbilled taxpayers for as much as 171,000 hours' worth of labor and overtime by charging up to $131 an hour for employees who were paid less than half that amount while working on a $1 billion technology contract to improve the nation's transportation security system.

The journey of a dozen impoverished men from Nepal to Iraq reveals the exploitation underpinning the American war effort

The American government is hiring private security firms to stabilise Iraq - and paying them a fortune to do it. But many of them are unregulated and operate outside the law.

Then the 61-year-old Greenhouse lost her $137,000-a-year post after questioning the plump contracts awarded to Halliburton in the run-up to the war in Iraq. It has made her easy to love for some, easy to loathe for others, but it has not made her easy to know.

The Army Corps of Engineers has settled payment disputes for six out of 10 task orders costing about $1.4 billion under its Restore Iraqi Oil contract with Houston-based Halliburton. Auditors concluded the military had been overcharged by about $108.4 million for fuel brought into Iraq from Kuwait under the orders.

Scores of illegal immigrants working as cooks, laborers, janitors, even foreign-language instructors working for military contractors have been seized at military bases around the country in the past year, raising concerns in some quarters about security and troop safety.

The United Nations' oil-for-food program was so badly managed and supervised that more than half of the 4,500 companies doing business with Iraq paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, finds an independent investigation into the program.

The new rules mandate background checks and permission from the military before a contractor can carry a weapon, and they spell out conditions for medical care and evacuation. At least 524 U.S. military contract workers, many of them Iraqis, have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

The chief Pentagon agency charged with investigating and reporting fraud and waste in Iraq quietly pulled out of the war zone a year ago -- leaving what experts say are gaps in the oversight of how more than $140 billion is being spent.

MARRAKECH -- The lack of transparency and public participation in the climate negotiations will further worsen conditions for Indigenous Peoples, people of color and workers in the US and US-Mexico border. Speakers from Indigenous Environmental Network, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, CorpWatch and Redefining Progress held a briefing on Tuesday in Marrakech, bringing issues of racial justice and worker's rights to the center of the climate change negotiations.

In a widening scandal at the United States Special Operations Command, federal investigators are looking into a bribery scheme as well as accusations of improper influence involving millions of dollars in battlefield equipment used by Navy Seals and Army Green Berets and Rangers.

Once thought of as little better than mercenaries, Britain's private-security firms are now seen by many as valued and legitimate businesses.

The assessment marks the first time a sitting inspector general -- in this case a former White House deputy assistant to President George W. Bush -- has formally criticized the prewar planning process. Most of the authoritative criticism to date has come from retired military or diplomatic officers or academics who worked in the reconstruction effort.

Jim Bernhard's athletic frame is slightly hunched as he tries to ignore a backache that has cropped up at the worst possible time. "This company was created for this moment. To restore the state I love," he says.

It is barely a week after Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts and Mr Bernhard sits indistinguishable from the rest of his employees at a small table in the cafeteria of the Shaw Group, the Louisiana engineering and construction company he founded 18 years ago.

A private contracting firm flying in Afghanistan for the U.S. military was in violation of numerous government regulations and contract requirements when one of its planes crashed into a mountainside in November 2004, killing all six on board, according to an Army report made public yesterday.

U.S.-hired contractors rely on laborers from impoverished countries, but no one looks out for the rights -- or lives -- of the foreigners.