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The Bigger Picture
2.02.02
CHENEY's & US INDUSTRIES' WAR PROFITEERING
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http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=17478
VP CHENEY & US INDUSTRIES WAR PROFITEERING
From: William Douglas, Jr.
U.S. companies, including VP Cheney's Halliburton, make cool millions
off of supporting so called "terrorist" nations, while making money by
selling US Govt. weapons to bomb people in those same nations.
When will the world get sick enough of this to take action?!
If you would like an Activist Kit, reply with "Send Kit," and it will be
freely sent. Please pass it on to all you know, and others as well. If
you wonder why there aren't more reports on the following, realize that
General Electric mentioned below as one of the conspirator companies
that makes money off both sanctions and wars OWNS MUCH OF THE U.S. MEDIA INDUSTRY.
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Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Hussein
San Francisco Bay Guardian
November 13, 2000
by Martin A. Lee
Here's a whopper of a story you may have missed amid the cacophony of
campaign ads and stump speeches in the run- up to the elections. During
former defense secretary Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief
executive of Halliburton, Inc., his oil services firm raked in big bucks
from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq. Cheney left Halliburton with
a $34 million retirement package last July when he became the GOP's
vice-presidential candidate.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with
Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an
oil tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals with the
Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through several Halliburton
subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein
retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1998 and
last winter, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of
business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services
to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and
Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged
petroleum-production infrastructure. The combined value of these
contracts exceeded those of any other U.S. company doing business with Baghdad.
Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that supplied
Iraq's petroleum industry with spare parts and retooled its oil rigs
when U.N. sanctions were eased in 1998. Cheney's company utilized
subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria so as not to draw
undue attention to controversial business arrangements that might
embarrass Washington and jeopardize lucrative ties to Iraq, which will
pump $24 billion of petrol under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food
program this year. Assisted by Halliburton, Hussein's government will
earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through black-market
channels. With Cheney at the helm since 1995, Halliburton quickly grew
into America's number-one oil-services company, the fifth-largest
military contractor, and the biggest nonunion employer in the nation.
Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had absolutely nothing
to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success, State Department
documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that U.S. officials
helped Halliburton secure major contracts in Asia and Africa.
Halliburton now does business in 130 countries and employs more than
100,000 workers worldwide. Its 1999 income was a cool $15 billion.
In addition to Iraq, Halliburton counts among its business partners
several brutal dictatorships that have committed egregious human rights
abuses, including the hated military regime in Burma (Myanmar).
EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights watchdog, condemned
Halliburton for two energy-pipeline projects in Burma that led to the
forced relocation of villages, rape, murder, indentured labor, and other
crimes against humanity.
A full report (this is a 45 page pdf file - there is also a brief
summary) on the Burma connection, "Halliburton's Destructive
Engagement," can be accessed on EarthRights' Web site.
Human rights activists have also criticized Cheney's company for its
questionable role in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda,
Somalia, Indonesia, and other volatile trouble spots. In Russia,
Halliburton's partner, Tyumen Oil, has been accused of committing
massive fraud to gain control of a Siberian oil field. And in oil-rich
Nigeria, Halliburton worked with Shell and Chevron, which were
implicated in gross human rights violations and environmental calamities
in that country. Indeed, Cheney's firm increased its involvement in the
Niger Delta after the military government executed several ecology
activists and crushed popular protests against the oil industry.
Halliburton also had business dealings in Iran and Libya, which remain
on the State Department's list of terrorist states. Brown and Root, a
Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8 million for reexporting U.S.
goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions. But in terms of sheer
hypocrisy, Halliburton's relationship with Saddam Hussein is hard to
top. What's more, Cheney lied about his company's activities in Iraq
when journalists fleetingly raised the issue during the campaign.
Questioned by Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week program in August, Cheney
bluntly asserted that Halliburton had no dealings with the Iraqi regime
while he was on board.
Donaldson: I'm told, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Halliburton,
through subsidiaries, was actually trying to do business in Iraq?
Cheney: No. No. I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq
even arrangements that were supposedly legal. And that was it! ABC News
and the other U.S. networks dropped the issue like a hot potato. As
damning information about Halliburton surfaced in the European press,
American reporters stuck to old routines and took their cues on how to
cover the campaign from the two main political parties, both of which
had very little to say about official U.S. support for abusive corporate
policies at home and abroad.
But why, in this instance, didn't the Democrats stomp and scream about
Cheney's Iraq connection? The Gore campaign undoubtedly knew of
Halliburton's smarmy business dealings from the get-go. Gore and
Lieberman could have made hay about how the wannabe GOP veep had been in
cahoots with Saddam. Such explosive revelations may well have swayed
voters and boosted Gore's chances in what was shaping up to be a close
electoral contest.
The Democratic standard-bearers dropped the ball in part because
Halliburton's conduct was generally in accordance with the foreign
policy of the Clinton administration. Cheney is certainly not the only
Washington mover and shaker to have been affiliated with a company
trading in Iraq. Former CIA Director John Deutsch, who served in a
Democratic administration, is a member of the board of directors of
Schlumberger, the second-largest U.S. oil-services company, which also
does business through subsidiaries in Iraq.
Despite occasional rhetorical skirmishes, a bipartisan foreign-policy
consensus prevails on Capital Hill, where the commitment to human
rights, with a few notable exceptions, is about as deep as an oil slick.
Truth be told, trading with the enemy is a time-honored American
corporate practice or perhaps "malpractice" would be a more appropriate
description of big-business ties to repressive regimes. Given that
Saddam Hussein, the pariah du jour, has often been compared to Hitler,
it's worth pointing out that several blue-chip U.S. firms profited from
extensive commercial dealings with Nazi Germany.
Shockingly, some American companies -- including Standard Oil, Ford,
ITT, GM, and General Electric -- secretly kept trading with the Nazi
enemy while American soldiers fought and died during World War II. Today
General Electric is among the companies that are back in business with
Saddam Hussein, even as American jets and battleships attack Iraq on a
weekly basis using weapons made by G.E. But the United Nations sanctions
committee, dominated by U.S. officials, has routinely blocked medicines
and other essential items from being delivered to Iraq through the
oil-for-food program, claiming they have a potential military "dual
use." These sanctions have taken a terrible toll on ordinary Iraqis, and
on children in particular, while the likes of Halliburton and G.E.
continue to lubricate their coffers.
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