From the Los Angeles Times:
Snow-covered Alaska is a long way from the deserts of Iraq, but that doesn’t worry Janet Reiser, the president of an Anchorage-based company planning to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Because of the efforts of Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Native-owned businesses like Reiser’s are allowed to receive government contracts of unlimited size without going through the normal bidding process. Pentagon officials are turning to them to speed up the rebuilding of Iraq.
“If you exchange snow for sand, work in Iraq is similar to the work we’ve done in Alaska,” said Reiser, whose Nana Pacific engineering company is in the final stages of negotiating a multimillion-dollar contract that will be awarded without competitive bidding. “We know how to do logistics in remote areas.”