We Have a Winner The U.N. has traditionally overseen the reconstruction of war zones like Afghanistan or Kosovo. But in keeping with its unilateral, the-world-is-our-sandbox approach to this invasion, the White House has decided to nail a "Made in the USA" sign on this Iraqi fixer-upper. Postwar Iraq will be rebuilt using red, white and blueprints.

Talk about efficiency: Even as the people of Iraq are girding themselves for the thousands of bombs expected to rain down on them during the first 24 hours of the attack, the administration is already picking and choosing who will be given the lucrative job of cleaning up the rubble. It's the hottest auction of the season.

To further expedite matters, the war powers that be invoked "urgent circumstances" clauses that allow them to subvert the requisite competitive bidding process -- the free market be damned -- and, instead, invited a select group of companies to bid on the rebuilding projects.

And just which companies were given first crack at the post-Hussein spoils? Well, given Team Bush's track record, it will probably not fill you with "shock and awe" to learn that the common denominator among the chosen few is a proven willingness to make large campaign donations to the Grand Old Party. Among them, the bidders -- a quartet of well-connected corporate consortiums that includes Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp. and, of course, Vice President Dick Cheney's old cronies at Halliburton -- have donated a combined $2.8 million over the last two election cycles, 68% of which went to Republicans.