A CHARGE OF IRAQ PROFITEERING.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Robert Greenwald's documentaries often have those on the political right crying foul, particularly ``Outfoxed,'' which cites Fox News for a conservative bias, and ``Uncovered,'' which features Washington insiders detailing the Bush administration's determination to go to war in Iraq.

But ``Iraq for Sale'' is one Greenwald film with an agenda that maybe everybody can get behind. That is, unless you're a stockholder or board member of one of the corporations he accuses of war profiteering.

The documentary opens with mothers of two of the four Blackwater Security guards who were ambushed in Fallujah, their bodies burned, mutilated and hung from a bridge. The mothers say their sons were victimized by Blackwater, which sent them out on a dangerous road, underprotected in manpower, weaponry and armor. An attempt to mount a congressional investigation into the slayings was thwarted by some Republicans, whose party has received millions in donations from the company.

There's the story of C.A.C.I. -- pronounced ``khaki'' -- whose $60 million in interrogation contracts led to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

And Titan collected $2 billion from the defense budget for translation services provided by with linguistic mistakes or deceptions.

Then there's Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, blasted in the film for everything from failure to adequately treat troops' water supplies to exposing them to mass attacks by forcing them to line up by the hundreds outside mess tents because of mismanaged food service.

The companies' no-bid, cost-plus contracts, the film says, are incentives to overspend, resulting in unchecked waste in the form of trucks and other equipment abandoned or burned rather than being easily repaired.

``It was nothing but the money,'' said Bill Peterson, one of a few unarmed drivers who survived an April 2004 convoy ambush on a road they should not have been ordered to travel. ``There's no `honor, duty, country' among anyone at KBR.''

Conservatives seeing ``Iraq for Sale'' can seethe at the atrocious waste of taxpayer dollars. Liberals can decry the unprecedented depth and breadth of privatization in Iraq.

And both sides can get plenty angry about the way these corporations and others claim to be helping troops in the field while apparently doing them harm instead.

The production values are not slick, and Greenwald's choppy interview edits may leave some wondering whether any conciliatory statements were left out to eliminate any perceived heroics on the companies' part.

At the end of ``Iraq for Sale,'' Greenwald shows the repeated attempts he and his staff made to interview the executives. All of them refused.

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

IRAQ FOR SALE - Three stars

(Not rated: some violence, brief nudity of prisoners)

Director: Robert Greenwald.

Running time: 1 hr. 15 min.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills.

In a nutshell: Documentary takes on Halliburton, KBR, Titan and other companies that have gone for the green in Iraq with lucrative construction or service contracts.