Caught in Amber

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Late last week, I returned to one of the my old hobby horses, New Bridge Strategies, the ‘make big money in Iraq’ consultancy that big GOP lobbying outfit Barbour Griffith & Rogers set up with Bush crony and former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh. BGR, you’ll remember, is now in the news as the outfit that got the contract from Iyad Allawi to help him boot Prime Minster Maliki and take over as Prime Minister again.

As I mentioned yesterday, the New Bridge Strategies website has since disappeared into oblivion. But TPM Reader DR managed to find the last sign of the site at the Way Back Machine Internet library from 2006.

And I just had to reproduce the frontpage intro paragraph which you can read here.

New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the United States Government. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that companies seeking to work in that environment must have the very best advice and guidance available. The New Bridge Strategies team has been carefully constructed to fill that need.

It seemed pretty ridiculous when I first checked out the site back in September 2003. But not quite for the same reasons as now. And not quite as jarring.

It’s all there, the hubris, arrogance, the hot house imperialism of the post-9/11 euphoria.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: