Hang on Bobert, as a businessman, surely, you do realise what the scope of this work would be?

The re-build of an entire country's infrastructure - a whole string of multi-facetted and integrated projects. Doing it your way it would take between 3 and 5 years before you would be in a position to award the first contract. What happens in the interim?

Have you any idea how run down the Iraqi oil fields are? Just to get back to pre-war levels of production will require an investment of $7 billion dollars and about three years work - if you want that revenue stream on line and operating efficiently, it is common-sense to give that work to people who know what they are doing - and believe me those guys do, that is the how and why of where they are in the industry today - it certainly cannot be simply put down to any old-boy network and back-room deals - to suggest so is naive in the extreme.