Stiff competition for Iraqi construction contracts

MANILA: It is inaccurate and misleading to say, as some senators have put it, that the administration's plan to send a 500-man humanitarian mission to Iraq would make this country a “gatecrasher” because we have not been invited by anyone. 

The purpose of the mission, as it has been explained to us, is to create goodwill among the Iraqi people while we compete with 50 other countries for sub-contracts for civil works projects in the reconstruction of Iraq.