Democracy by the Dollars

Democracy by the Dollars
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch.
Posted July 19, 2004.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/19258/

What can a North Carolina firm teach Iraqis about democracy? Not much, as it turns out – not when it spends millions of dollars making life comfortable for its own staff rather than the Iraqis.
In March 2003, the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International of North Carolina a $167 million contract to help 180 Iraqi cities and towns "foster efficient, transparent, and accountable sub-national government that supports the country's transition to sovereignty."