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The Bechtel Corporation landed a $680 million dollar contract to rebuild Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Halliburton is operating there under a multi-billion dollar contract that appears to give Vice President Dick Cheney's former company substantial control over Iraqi oil. Back in the 1980s current Bush administration officials were maneuvering to profit from Iraq's oil wealth, but there were some setbacks. Is this now their chance?

On this edition of Making Contact, we look at a controversial pipeline deal that now-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally negotiated with Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bechtel Corporation during the Reagan administration. We also examine Halliburton's $7 billion dollar oil contract in Iraq.

FEATURING: Jim Vallette (Sustainable Energy and Economy Network) and Daphne Wysham (Institute for Policy Studies), co-authors of the investigative report "Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured US Focus on Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein;" Jonathon Marshall, spokesperson for Bechtel; Bill Hartung, director of the Arms Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute, and author of The Hidden Costs of War.