Subject: [NEXTEL-1] WHITE HOUSE CRONIES CASH IN ON IRAQ WAR

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 00:12:03 -0500

Niagara Falls Reporter
www.niagarafallsreporter.com

November 4 2003

WHITE HOUSE CRONIES CASH IN ON IRAQ WAR
By Bill Gallagher

"To have what we have, we speak not what we mean." -- William
Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure."
DETROIT -- Understand the greed, self-dealing, conflicts of interest,
squandering of taxpayers' money, waste, raids on the public treasury --
all wrapped in a litany of lies -- and you have a handle on how the Bush
administration operates, and how money greases this despicable machine.

It is impossible to keep up with the political-insider maneuvers,
influence-peddling, favoritism and cronyism underway in the slimiest
administration in more than a century.

And for Bush and company, everything is done deliberately and with clear
purpose, controlled or manipulated in fine detail. Accidents,
coincidences and surprises simply don't happen. Only the truth threatens
this operation.
The chaos in Iraq, with its $87 billion price tag for the American
people, has become a feeding trough for corporate pigs with intimate
ties to the Bush administration.

The rebuilding of Iraq is riddled with pork-barrel politics, and Bush
friends and cronies of our Iraqi puppets are wallowing in the slop of
American cash. The "nation-building" is a disgraceful means for a
handful of corporations and individuals to make big, quick bucks and
hide the greed as "necessary" to make Iraq safe and peaceful.

The money drain is staggering. By the end of 2003, the war and
occupation in Iraq and continuing expenses in Afghanistan could top $120
billion, all in direct payments. The U.S.  taxpayers are stuck with that
entire tab, paid with borrowed money and debt our children will have to
endure. Other nations are kicking in a modest $13 billion, mostly in the
form of loans.
When our government ignores and insults most of the rest of the world,
we shouldn't be too surprised when they don't jump in to help our Iraq
protectorate.

Halliburton gets good news from the Pentagon that the company's no-bid
contract to rebuild Iraq's oil production will continue into next year.
The company Vice President Dick Cheney once headed has already raked in
$1.59 billion and Halliburton's future and good fortune in Iraq are
assured.

Cheney and his old outfit insist everything is on the up and up, and
that thoughts of favoritism and collusion are just so unfair.
Halliburton is charging the U.S. government $1.59 for each gallon of
imported fuel. The Iraqi national oil company says it can get the same
stuff for 98 cents a gallon.

Once you get over the incongruous notion that we have to import fuel
into an oil-rich nation, you then have to buy Halliburton's convoluted,
contorted explanation that the price is fair and the company has this
special expertise in buying the imported oil. Profiteering, anyone?
Perish the thought.

Chevron, the oil giant that once named a tanker for Condoleezza Rice, is
now merged with Texaco and the combined company is one of the first to
dip into Iraq's post-war oil wealth.

National Security Adviser Rice, a leading advocate of the war and
propagator of the "Iraq is a nuclear threat" myth, was a Chevron
director between the Bush I and Bush II administrations.  Like many in
the Bush crowd, she sees public service and serving the interests of
corporations, especially in the energy industry, as a seamless garment.
Work a little for one, then the other and back again. It's all
essentially the same interests, and the money's great.

ChevronTexaco was selected by the Iraq State Oil Marketing Organization
as one of six international oil companies to purchase Iraqi oil. Nearly
50 companies competed for the prized purchasing rights for 10 million
barrels. Lucky ChevronTexaco got to suck up 2 million barrels, the first
"Texas Tea" from Iraq to be sold free of sanctions since 1990.
But wait. The Iraqis made their own decision. No favoritism here. It's
just coincidence. Sure. Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon
darling and source of a stream of phony information, has his hands on
all kinds of deals now. From oil to telecommunications networks, Chalabi
is dishing out the goodies for his cronies in Iraq and favored U.S.
corporations. Money and greed are the driving forces. Rebuilding Iraq is
an afterthought.

The Pentagon, through the Coalition Provisional Authority, the colonial
government, handed the contract to build a wireless phone network for
government officials and aid workers in the Baghdad area to MCI.

You recall that MCI used to be called WorldCom and the company went
belly-up in one of those accounting fraud scandals that ruined so many
lives. MCI had next to no experience in building wireless networks, but
got the no-bid contract nonetheless. Chalabi's buddies and Motorola, a
Pentagon pet, got another big chunk of the action for permanent
communications.

The fat cats who are cashing in certainly paid up-front for the
privilege. Major donors to George W. Bush's election campaigns and other
Republican causes are the big beneficiaries of the public dollars being
spent there.
The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group, tracked
more than 70 U.S. firms and contractors involved in reconstruction
projects in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 1990, those companies and their
employees have donated $49 million to national campaigns, with most of
that money going to the GOP.

President Bush topped the list, getting more than $500,000 for his 2000
campaign from the companies that are now sucking up the tax dollars.

The report is the result of a six-month investigation, and notes that
the Pentagon, State Department and Agency for International Development
were hardly eager to provide complete and accurate information about the
contracts. Much of what the Center for Public Integrity did learn was
squeezed out using the Freedom of Information Act.

The New York Times says this first comprehensive look at companies
involved in Iraq "provides evidence that the process for handling big
contracts has often been secretive, chaotic and favorable to companies
with good political contracts."
The difficulty of sorting through the contracts, the Times reports,
"confirms that many, if not most, of the contracts handed out for work
in Iraq were awarded through a process that was inscrutable to outsiders
and often without competitive bidding."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher defended the way our money is
being spent, saying with a straight face, "The decisions are made by
career procurement officials. There is a separation, a wall between them
and political-level questions when they're doing the contracts."

Rewarding their friends and political supporters is what this White
House does best. For example, the deal now being cooked to give Boeing a
contract to lease aircraft for use as refueling tankers, a little
procurement shuffle that could bring the giant weapons manufacturers a
cool $100 billion dollars.

New York Times columnist and conservative pundit David Brooks smells the
pork: "This deal isn't just shady -- it's the Encyclopedia Britannica of
shady. It's as if somebody spent years trying to gather every sleazy
aspect of modern Washington and cram it all into one legislative
effort."

Leasing rather than buying is the key to the deal that will give Boeing
a sweetheart contract and provide jobs in some key congressional
districts, but will stick the taxpayers with a bill $5.7 billion more
costly than actually buying the planes.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert from Illinois, home of Boeing's
headquarters, is a big supporter of the plan to squander billions. Over
in the Senate, Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens included
the lease deal in a defense spending bill. That was one month after he
took in $22,000 in campaign donations from 30 Boeing executives at a
Seattle fund-raiser.
The Office of Management and Budget and Pentagon budget analysts
initially were howling, saying the planes were way too expensive and
leasing a bad precedent.

But then the White House got involved and the opposition went poof. The
Washington Post reports that White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card,
acting under specific instructions from the president, intervened in the
dispute and told the nay-sayers to shut up and sign onto the corporate
welfare deal.

It will take years to sort through it all. But, in the end, we'll find
out just how the Bush administration sacrificed public good for private
gain in Iraq. When and if the violence ever subsides over there, teams
of independent government auditors will have the enormous task of trying
to figure out who got the money and where it was spent.

The downing of an American helicopter from ground fire, resulting in at
least 15 deaths, shows how bad the situation is in Iraq. More have been
killed after the declaration of the end of "major hostilities" than
before.

In a repulsive act of political cowardice, the president disavowed any
connection with the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the deck of an
aircraft carrier when he delivered his end-of-the-war message. Instead,
"Top Gun" turned into pop gun, and he blamed others for his own
triumphalism.

"The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members
of the USS Abraham Lincoln saying their mission was accomplished," the
president smirked. What a pitiful lie, and with Honest Abe's name in the
same sentence!

Later, a spokeswoman admitted the White House, which always controls
every detail of the president's appearances, had produced the banner and
placed it on the deck.

George W. Bush tries to spare himself from political embarrassment by
blaming brave men and women who risk their own lives. What a man!

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city
councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is
[email-masked].