Group Therapy
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel and Baghdad
By CHRIS FLOYD
Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that has, lazar-like, long
encrusted the American body politic were not surprised to see the hoary name
of the Bechtel Group bobbing up in the swill of sweetheart deals now being
doled out by the Corrupter-in-Chief for the "reconstruction" of his new
fiefdom in Iraq. Decades before its comrade in cronyism, the Carlyle Group,
made its meteoric, Bush-assisted ascent to global prominence, Bechtel had
already perfected the dark art of milking intimate government connections
for fat, risk-free contracts.
Last week, while the notorious coward George W. Bush --who walked away from
his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War, a criminal act known as
"desertion" when committed by lesser mortals --was basking in the man-musk
of a shipload of sailors, reciting his usual lies about al Qaeda's
"alliance" with Saddam Hussein, and weasel-wording his "victory" declaration
to avoid taking full legal responsibility for the consequences of the war of
aggression he had unleashed, Bechtel was quietly pocketing a secret,
closed-bid, open-ended Iraq contract that could give them almost $700
million in taxpayer money before the 2004 election --with the alluring
prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother Jones reports.
What's more, as the New Yorker reports, this public largess will also fill
the coffers of a key Bechtel partner in Saudi Arabia --a well-connected
global conglomerate that has also been a long-time financial partner of both
George Bush I and George Bush II: the Bin Laden Group.
Bechtel, which has served Saudi royalty for more than 60 years, bristles
with heavyweight kleptoplute connections. During the 1980s, current Bush
warlord Don Rumsfeld acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel pipeline project in
the Middle East, operating with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush
administration's secretary of state, George Schultz --Bechtel's former
president (and now "senior counsel" to the company). Rummy conducted a
passionate two-year courtship of a certain Saddam Hussein, plying him with
trinkets, blandishments and sweetmeats to win his lordly favor for a
Bechtel-built line from Iraq to Jordan, according to national security
archives obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Rumsfeld's strenuous attempt to lay pipe with Saddam happened to coincide
with the latter's most extensive use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war
--gassing carried out with the exemplary assistance of U.S. military
intelligence and technology provided by the Reagan-Bush administration and
its "special envoy" to Baghdad: Don Rumsfeld. Meanwhile, another Reagan-Bush
crony, Attorney General Ed Meese, tried to bribe the Israeli government with
$700 million in secret funds to put the kibosh on their opposition to the
Bechtel deal, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. This skullduggery earned
Meese an investigation by a special prosecutor, but as the case lacked the
key element of any serious government crime --oral sex with an intern --the
probe was soon dropped.
In the end, Saddam --who first went on the CIA payroll back in the early
1960s, Reuters reports --balked at Bechtel's billion-dollar price tag and
rejected the project. Now of course, in a fitting bit of historical
symmetry, the son of the CIA's most famous director, George Bush, has handed
Iraq to Bechtel on a silver platter.
This move will delight --and enrich --the Bush/Bechtel buddies in the Bin
Laden Group. As oft noted in these pages, in the 1980s George W. Bush
received a helping hand for his floundering oil businesses from the Saudi
group's front man, Khalid bin Mahfouz, who secretly cast bin Laden bread
upon American waters to win influence with well-connected kleptoplutes
--like, say, the wayward son of the former CIA director and then-current
Vice President.
Today, Mahfouz is under house arrest in Saudi Arabia for allegedly financing
the holy-war hijinks of the bin Ladens' own wayward son, Osama. Or to be
completely accurate, he's accused of financing those holy-war hijinks after
the Reagan-Bush CIA finally stopped financing them. But despite his
confinement, Mahfouz (who is also Osama's brother-in-law) is still a player
in the kleptoplute nexus: for example, he's currently a business partner of
former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean --the very man whom George W. Bush
has appointed to chair the investigation of the September 11 terrorist
attacks allegedly ordered by, yes, that ex-CIA employee and former executive
of the Bin Laden Group: Osama bin Laden.
The Bin Laden Group was also heavily invested in the Carlyle Group, the
"private equity" firm (and major arms merchant) that, like Bechtel,
specializes in the sell-off of public services and other government-insider
deals. Carlyle's best-known bagman, George Bush I, used to make ritual
pilgrimages to bin Laden family headquarters in Saudi Arabia to procure
their potent baksheesh. When Carlyle's post-Sept. 11 orgy of
war-profiteering began drawing unwanted attention, however, the bin Ladens
cashed in their Carlyle chips and, officially, ended the partnership.
But they remain welded to Bechtel and will now reap the fruits of the latest
installment of the War of the Wayward Sons --a conflict driven on both sides
by ludicrous and primitive religious passions coupled with a voracious lust
for power and loot. Yet although this war has now engulfed the entire
planet, it is no "clash of civilizations" or grand agon of world-historical
forces. As shown by the small sampling of connections above, it's more of a
dust-up in the boardroom, a falling-out at the country club, a bit of bad
blood amongst a tiny clique of vicious predators threaded together in a
Byzantine web of kinship, corporate ties --and complicity in generations of
murderous crime.
Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a regular contributor to
CounterPunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd05122003.html
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"We are not in the construction and engineering business.
We are in the business of making money."
--Steve Bechtel Sr.
http://www.nv.doe.gov/about/bn.htm
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