Randy wrote:
> Doesn't it seem to you to be, at the very least, a conflict of interest > that Bush Sr. is running around the middle east negotiating weapons > and oil contracts while his son is president? Bush Sr. only gave a few speeches (PR stuff) and was an advisor on an Asian fund on behalf of the Carlyle Group. He did not negotiate weapons and oil contracts. Here from the NY Times (not exactly a Bush friendly newspaper) and the WSJ: "Mr. Bush makes speeches on behalf of Carlyle Group and is senior adviser to its Asian Partners fund, " from The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/01 "Carlyle officials contend that the firm's activities do not present any potential conflicts since Mr. Bush, Mr. Baker and other former Republican officials now at Carlyle - including Mr. Carlucci, who is Carlyle's chairman, and Richard G. Darman, Mr. Bush's former budget director - do not lobby the federal government. Carlyle executives point out that many corporations have former government officials as board members." "Mr. Bush gives us no advice on what do with with the federal government," said David Rubenstein, the firm's founder and a former aide in the Carter White House. "We've gone over backwards to make sure that we do no lobbying." "Mr. Baker is a Carlyle partner, and Mr. Bush has the title senior adviser to its Asian activities." "Carlyle's Asia advisory board, which helps raise money and finds and reviews deals, includes former President Fidel V. Ramos of the Philippines, the former prime minister of Thailand and the executive director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The former South Korean prime minister Park Tae Joon was also an adviser to Carlyle". New York Times, 3/5/01 Even so I would agree it would be best for him to disengage from involvement unless a court decided there was no conflict. I wonder if he did? Many others around Bush II had to cut ties to certain companies when he became Pres. >The US taxpayers and soldiers came to the rescue of Kuwait, which was > drilling diagonal oil wells under Iraqi soil (where all the oil was, and which > was Hussein's cheif complaint). I've read different accounts. They were accused of slant-drilling but the larger conflict went back many years over disputed borders and Saddam's wish for a seaport and a couple of islands. Saddam was also extorting money out of Kuwait and it was thought Kuwait could pay him off and avoid further conflict, but then Saddam invaded anyway. > Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, I've heard and read for years that this number is very false. I watched nearly every hour of that war (even at work). Most of the Iraqi army surrendered right away. Smart bombs targeted military and support installations, not masses of civilians. >hundreds of US vererans are suffering from a mysterious disease, Which they now say is from the chemically-tipped scuds Saddam had fired on them. > and the Persian Gulf has been ravaged by the largest oil spill in history. Oil "spill?" I clearly recall watching hundreds of oil wells on fire as the Saddam's army retreated. It took months of American experts to put out the fires. >The question naturally arises, could any of this have been avoided? Everyone thought that Kuwait could solve the problem by paying off Saddam. Then he suddenly invaded. Saddam was a wild card way back then. No one in the Arab world or beyond quite knew how to deal with him. > Even so, this despute could have been negotiated. But it's hard to > avoid a war when what you're actually doing is trying to provoke > a war. No one was trying to provoke a war except Saddam Hussein. Who was supposed to negotiate with him? The Kuwaiti's were trying but he bulldozed in anyway. >The most famous example of that is the meeting between Saddam > and the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, five days before > Iraq invaded Kuwait. As CIA satellite photos showed an Iraqi > invasion force massing on the Kuwaiti border, Glaspie told Hussein > that "the US takes no position" on Iraq's dispute with Kuwait. OK Again, I have always wanted the US out of there. I'm not for us getting involved with the problems in that part of the world. But we got in and too deep, I suppose. >A month earlier, the Bush administration issued a secret directive > that called for greater economic cooperation with Iraq. This ultimately > resulted in billions of dollars of illegal arms to Saddam. Not true according to my previous link of excerpt of the CR and to the IEAE reports of the UN inspectors' inventory of weapons immedately after that war. > Yes, it costs us, in so many ways. But defense profiteers do not > make any money from peace. Think about it. The largest industry > there is. Do they profit from war? You bet they do. And the > taxpayers pick up the tab, that's true. Here's another way to look at it. The main charge of the Federal government under the constitution is to protect the country. That means to have armies and a defense systems. The defense industry is one huge government jobs program. It is probably one of the most regulated of any government funded program. The taxpayers pick up the tab but they also have thousands of jobs from it from which they pay taxes right back into the system. Many good products and research that benefit everyone in other ways have come out of the defense industry. They don't have to start wars to keep it going. There are plenty of wars going on all the time outside of the US control to warrant their existence. And there are thousands of products other than bombs made (satellites, software, radar, etc.) by defense contractors. > (Harper's index says the US spends 50 billion/year to guard > 19 billion worth of oil. So the military is the bigger business > here, at least until we can seize Iraqi oil). Again the idea that our main motive is to seize Iraqi oil makes no sense to me when the US has only gottens around 10%-20% from the entire mid-east for almost 30 years and the main oil companies are European, and not US, owned. > What were people to think when it wasn't even reported in the > US media? ?!! It was all over the news at the time and reported every day for several weeks while it lasted. Many people were freaking out that he just sprung it out of nowhere. Then many started accusing him of wagging the dog to get Monica off the front page. > History supports the notion that US intervention in foreign countries > has been about $$ interests. The book that spelled this out so > clearly for me was Chomsky's "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" > I recommend it. I cannot think of any enlightenment I would personally get from reading him. I've checked out some of his writings and to me, he is someone who has nothing but contempt for most Americans and their country. Kakki
