NEWS

TEMPE, Arizona, June 26 (Summary of Arizona Republic article) - A filmmaker and civil rights activist who returned from a two-month trip to Iraq said the Iraqi people are losing faith in the U.S. occupation as violence continues. "A lot of people were hopeful about the American invasion," San Francisco filmmaker Dave Martinez told the Arizona Republic newspaper. "We watched the majority of public opinion shift," he said. Martinez is touring the United States to explain his experiences in Iraq. The Arizona Republic reported that "Martinez said that companies with large government contracts like Halliburton Inc. were not doing an efficient job because they were subcontracting work to local businesses that, in turn, subcontracted the work to someone else." "What was left in the end was very little money and very little work done," Martinez said. His assertions support recent Congressional hearings which exposed Halliburton's overcharges of U.S. taxpayers for its work in Iraq and Kuwait. Martinez is documenting the situation in Iraq for CorpWatch.org, an investigative non-profit organization that opposes "corporate-led globalization" and fosters "democratic control over corporations."