[Peace-discuss] Cheney's blood-soaked money

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I've argued for a while that the looters and the killers in
Bush's second term are getting in each other's way, but they
can still do a lot of damage.  In spite of the illiteracy in
the closing lines, here's a good account of what one of the
major looters-killers is doing.  --CGE] 

    See Dick Loot
    By Dahr Jamail
    03/08/06 "t r u t h o u t"  

    Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root
(KBR) have been making hay in the burning Iraqi sun for years
now. It is, of course, no coincidence that the man sitting as
vice president played a key role with his influence in
obtaining the lion's share of contracts in Iraq for the
company he was CEO of prior to his self-appointed position.
Yet none of this is news.

    What is news, however, is that the ties that bind Cheney
to Halliburton also link him to groups with even broader
interests in the Middle East, which are causing civilians on
the ground there, as well as in the US, to pay the price.

    Cheney had much more at stake than pure altruism in making
sure Halliburton/KBR obtained so many no-bid contracts in
occupied Iraq. Despite his claims of not having any financial
ties to Halliburton, the fact is that in both 2001 and 2002 he
earned twice as much from a deferred salary from his "old"
company as when he was CEO.

    But that wasn't the beginning. When Cheney was US
Secretary of Defense in the early 1990's under Big Bush,
Halliburton was awarded the job of studying, then
implementing, the privatization of routine army functions such
as cleaning and cooking meals.

    Following this study, when Cheney was finished with his
job at the Pentagon, he scored the job as CEO of Halliburton,
which he held until nominating himself for the position of
Little Bush's running mate in 2000. Remember, it was Cheney
who was given the task of finding a running mate for Bush.
After searching far and wide across the US, Cheney ended up
generously offering his own services for the job.

    As if Cheney didn't already have enough conflicts of
interest, it is important to note that he assisted in founding
the neo-conservative think tank, the "Project for the New
American Century (PNAC)," whose goal is to "promote American
global leadership," which entails acquiring Iraqi oil.
Complimenting this, Cheney was also part of the board of
advisers to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
(JINSA) along with John Bolton, Richard Perle and Paul
Wolfowitz (all PNAC members) before becoming vice president.
JINSA, self-described as a "nonsectarian educational
organization," does things like nominate John Bolton for the
2006 Nobel Peace Prize and works to "explain the role Israel
can ... play in bolstering ... the link between American
defense policy and the security of Israel."

    Their Mission Statement adds, "The inherent instability in
the region [Middle East] caused primarily by inter-Arab
rivalries and the secular/religious split in many Muslim
societies leaves the future of the region in doubt. Israel,
with its technological capabilities and shared system of
values, has a key role to play as a US ally in the region,"
which happens to be quite similar to the stated goals of the
PNAC for the region, but I digress.

    By the end of 2002, Cheney owned at least 433,000
unexercised Halliburton stock options worth over $10 million.
And that was before the invasion of Iraq, when the games
really began.

    In March 2003, the month the invasion began, Halliburton
was awarded a no-bid contract worth $7 billion from the
Pentagon. The blatant awarding of this "reconstruction"
contract to Halliburton even led Representative Henry Waxman
to comment, "The administration's approach to the
reconstruction of Iraq is fundamentally flawed. It's a
boondoggle that's enriching private contractors."

    Of course the invasion and occupation of Iraq aren't only
about oil.

    Remember, it was Cheney himself who, at a VFW convention
in August 2002, said "Many of us are convinced that Saddam
will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we
cannot really gauge."

    Cheney then, solely in the interests of protecting the
American and Iraqi people of course, made sure the US would go
into Iraq and take care of that nuclear trouble-maker Saddam
Hussein.

    Just to be safe, Halliburton was paid $40 million for
providing housing and transportation for teams searching for
non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. For with
each contract Halliburton is and was awarded, Cheney's bank
account grows.

    The one place where there were remnants of a nuclear
program in Iraq, albeit over 20 years before the 2003 US
invasion, was the Osirak Nuclear Research Facility on the
outskirts of Baghdad. US-made Israeli warplanes bombed it back
on June 7, 1981, and when I visited the place in January 2004,
all I found were empty warehouses which the American military
wasn't concerned about enough to prevent from being looted.

    Villagers in nearby al-Tuwetha, ignorant of radioactive
waste stored in old drums, looted them in the chaos following
the invasion and had been using them as water containers -
thus irradiating the entire village.

    One example of what it looks like on the ground in Iraq
when Halliburton fails to fulfill its contractual obligations
is the life of Adel Mhomoud. The 44-year-old beekeeper in
al-Tuwetha told me, "I have cancer, and I know I'm dying. My
white blood cell count is 14,000, and I don't have enough red
blood cells. We are all sick; our joints ache, my hips are
killing me, and my blood is bad. But nobody will help us here."

    Certainly not Halliburton.

    Cheney, who received no less than five military deferments
during the Vietnam War despite being a supporter of that war
(Sound familiar?), had shamelessly told the veterans at the
VFW, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now
has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is
amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies,
and against us."

    So that was the door Cheney took to bring Iraq his
Halliburton.

    And of course, once through that door, Halliburton
promptly went to work.

    Aside from the aforementioned awarding of no-bid contracts
worth billions of US taxpayer dollars, as early as December
2003, the US Army found out Halliburton was overcharging the
government $61 million for fuel transportation and $67 million
for food services in Iraq. I remember being in Baghdad when
this occurred - seeing the enormously long gas lines at petrol
stations whilst knowing Halliburton, not only failing to
provide Iraqis with their own petrol, was even charging the US
taxpayer three dollars per gallon for fuel that local
companies could have imported for under one dollar.

    But that was barely the beginning.

    Let's take a brief glance at some of the more recent
Halliburton/KBR rogueries:

    * 27 February 2006 - US Army decides to reimburse KBR
nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid
contract to deliver fuel and repair equipment in Iraq, despite
Pentagon auditors identifying over $250 million in charges as
"potentially" excessive.

       
    * 17 February 2006 - KBR executive hired to fly cargo into
Iraq pleads guilty to inflating invoices by $1.14 million to
cover fraudulent "war risk surcharges."

       
    * 6 February 2006 - KBR employee in Iraq, speaking on
condition of anonymity, says "We pay our locals [in Iraq] $5
to $16 dollars a day and you can see where [KBR] put it down
[on the military requisition] as $60 a day." Military
requisitions reveal KBR to be paying between $5-$16 per day in
wages to third world laborers in Iraq whilst billing US
taxpayers between $50-$80 per day.

       
    * 30 January 2006 - Bush administration settles dispute
between Pentagon and Halliburton by agreeing to pay company
$199 million in disputed gasoline charges in Iraq. To date KBR
has been awarded nearly $16 billion in total revenue from Iraq
contracts.

       
    * 23 January 2006 - Halliburton fails to alert American
troops and civilian contractors at US base in Ramadi that
their water was contaminated. Despite allegations which came
from Halliburton's own water quality experts, the company
denies there was a contamination problem.

       
    * 27 December 2005 - KBR, linked to human
trafficking-related concerns via its work in Iraq (such as
forced prostitution and labor), Halliburton benefits from
Defense Department's refusal to adopt policy barring human
trafficking.

       
    * 1 December 2005 - UPI reports KBR workers in Iraq
("third country" nationals) found to be paid as little as 50
cents an hour.

       
    * 5 November 2005 - UN auditing board finds that US should
repay Iraqi government $208 million from Iraqi oil revenue for
fraudulent contracting work.

    Then there is how these "policies" Halliburton is
following in Iraq affect US soldiers and contractors,
including its own employees.

    With contracts in Iraq now worth up to $18 billion, there
is nothing stopping Halliburton from abusing the lack of
oversight and obvious conflict of interest between their free
reign and their ties to the vice president.

    An example of this is Jim Spiri, who was hired by
Halliburton/KBR in January 2004 to work as a logistics
coordinator. Sent to Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, he worked
the flight line handling passenger movements, as Spiri had 20
years of aviation experience.

    "During my time there, I assisted nightly with medevac
[medical evacuations] operations and was highly respected
among all military medical folks," he told me this week. "I
had a good name throughout the theatre."

    But problems were immediately apparent to him.

    "I witnessed much alcohol abuse, in an environment where
alcohol is strictly prohibited. I made note of this and
reported it to my superiors, who actually were the ones
abusing the system. It was obvious that the fox was guarding
the hen house, so to speak."

    He told me his entire flight line operation was "run in a
gang-like manner" and "the work was never done in an efficient
manner." Instead, according to Spiri, the motto was, "Do as
little as possible for as much as you can, for as long as you
can."

    On February 5th of this year, while working the night
shift which he had for the last two years, Spiri witnessed
something that made the thought of continuing to work for KBR
intolerable.

    After watching a fallen soldier loaded onto a plane
without the proper ceremony of honor, Spiri told me he "wrote
an account of what I experienced that night." After this, "It
was published, and ... all hell broke loose about 36 hours later."

    Spiri was fired by KBR after writing an article detailing
the event and criticizing Halliburton's policies in Iraq.

    Now he wants to shine light on how KBR operates in Iraq.
"What they don't want to let out is the type of workers they
have over there, that it's the largest gravy train operation,
it's the largest welfare system I've ever seen in my life.
It's pathetic," Spiri said in a recent interview while adding
that over half the people KBR employed in Iraq were "grossly
under-qualified and highly over-paid."

    His work entailed three people, but by the time he left
there were 10 people on his team, most of whom "sat around
listening to their iPod's and DVD players."

    Yet firing an employee for raising awareness about
corruption and his questioning of policy is minor compared to
the treatment of Iraqis meted out by the company.

    When I was in Amman last May, I met Ahlam al-Hassan, a
young Iraqi woman who had worked for KBR in Diwaniyah.

    Two gunshots by assailants who attacked her for
collaborating with occupation forces left her blind, and her
former employers would not return her calls or requests for
assistance.

    For her three months of work for KBR she was paid $475,
having taken the job to support her family. "My two bosses at
KBR, Mr. Jeff and Mr. Mark, were very good and gentle with
me," she explained to me in Jordan, "They told me it wasn't
dangerous to work for them." But after spending months in
hospitals for what happened to her on her way to work, "After
this, they have made no attempts to contact me."

    Note that on May 31, 2004, an Army Corps of Engineers
email revealed that Cheney's office "coordinated"
Halliburton's multi-billion dollar Iraq contract. Cheney, like
most common criminals, denied having anything to do with the
no-bid contract.

    More recently, on January 26th of this year, Halliburton
announced that its 2005 profits were the "Best in our 86-year
history," as all six of its divisions posted record results.
Halliburton stock price doubled in the last year, and Dick
Cheney's tax returns indicate that he earned $194,862 from his
Halliburton stock in just the last year.

    Loot Dick, Loot!

    Is that clear enough?

    All of this begs the question: Do you approve of your tax
dollars being used in this fashion?

    If not, then what are you willing to do about it?
 
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