Global Eye - Royal Flush
By Chris Floyd
Out of the blood and murk of Iraq, yet another sinister connection is
emerging, a skein of corruption tying ***** Cheney's Halliburton, the Bush
Family fortunes -- and a mysterious Kuwaiti company that peddles material
for building weapons of mass destruction.
Last week, Pentagon auditors called for a formal investigation of
"overcharges" by Cheney's Halliburton hirelings. The well-connected
corporation -- which has been the chief beneficiary of the Bush Regime's
looting of the American treasury to pay for its ravaging of Iraq -- is
accused of skimming $61 million in excess cream from a shady deal to import
Kuwaiti gasoline into the conquered land.
To carry out this choice bit of war profiteering, Halliburton hooked up with
Altanmia Marketing of Kuwait. Altanmia was given exclusive rights to ship
Kuwaiti gasoline to Iraq -- "even though it had no prior experience
transporting fuel," U.S. Congressional investigators report. So what is the
firm's actual expertise? Investments, real estate -- and acting as
"representative agents for companies trading in military and nuclear,
biological and chemical equipment," The Wall Street Journal reports.
In other words, Halliburton's new partner traffics in the essential elements
of WMD -- the very stuff whose spread and sale the United States is
ostensibly dedicated to stopping around the world. Ostensibly. But as always
with the Bushists, the rhetoric of "security" is a thin rag to cover their
unquenchable thirst for state-supported brigandage.
After grabbing the gasoline subcontract -- before the bidding process was
closed, naturally -- Altanmia proceeded to charge Halliburton more than
twice the price that other exporters were getting for moving gasoline into
Iraq. Luckily, the White House has given Halliburton a "cost-plus" contract
to lord it over Iraq's energy sector. Thus, the higher Altanmia's costs, the
more "plus" Halliburton gets for its coffers -- and all of it paid for by
those eternal suckers, the American people. It's crony capitalism at its
finest: The suckers shoulder the financial risk, the American military
serves as company muscle; all Halliburton has to do is sit back and rake in
the dough -- minus a few campaign contributions and "retirement packages"
for their political operatives, of course.
Strangely enough, Kuwaiti energy officials had never heard of Altanmia
before the Halliburton deal. They had recommended several experienced
distributors -- with far cheaper rates -- to the Americans, but were told
that Altanmia was the only choice, The Wall Street Journal reports. Stout
yeomen down in the military contracting ranks, under the mistaken impression
that they were supposed to broker an honest deal, complained of heavy
pressure from American and Kuwaiti government officials to keep Altanmia on
the gravy train, Congress reports. One stalwart, contracting officer Mary
Robertson, tried to stem the tide, declaring in a letter to Halliburton, "I
will not succumb to the political pressures ... to go against my integrity
and pay a higher price for fuel than necessary."
But integrity to a Bushist is like garlic to a vampire. Robertson was
ignored. Indeed, even as the overcharging scandal was breaking last month,
Richard Jones, Bush's ambassador to Kuwait (and deputy to Baghdad viceroy
Paul Bremer) implored Halliburton and its military overseers to make a deal
with Altanmia for even more gasoline imports -- even if the company refuses
to lower its extortionate rates, the WSJ reports.
So who are these guys at Altanmia, meriting such special favor? That's the
$61 million question. The official owners are members of powerful Kuwaiti
business clans, but Congressional investigators are probing "multiple
allegations" that Kuwait's royal family -- the al-Sabahs -- has
"off-the-books" connections to the firm.
It would be unusual indeed if they didn't. Like the House of Saud, the
Kuwaiti royals are normally cut in for a taste of any heavy action going
down in their domains. The House of Bush has similar aspirations, of
course -- they too have long regarded their own country as a private fiefdom
to milk for their personal enrichment. Thus it was a marriage of true minds
when George Bush I first hooked up with the Al-Sabahs in the 1960s, in a
business venture to exploit Kuwait's offshore oil reserves.
That long and profitable association paid off handsomely in 1991, when Bush,
like any good feudal lord, sent his private army -- the U.S. military -- to
fight for his royal Kuwaiti brethren in their dispute with Iraq over war
debts and oil rights. Tens of thousands of people perished in that
intramural squabble between Bush's Kuwaiti business partners and Bush's
wayward protege, Saddam (whom Bush had favored with weapons, money, trade
concessions and -- shades of Altanmia! -- "dual-use" nuclear, biological and
chemical equipment, including anthrax, as the U.S. Senate reported in 1994).
Perhaps a million more people died in the squabble's bloody aftermath: first
in Saddam's murderous crackdown on Kurdish and Shiite rebels -- abetted by
Bush, who ordered his vast army in the region not to interfere with the
slaughter -- then from the vicious UN sanctions regime -- likened to
genocide by not one but two of its top administrators.
But so what? The important thing is that Bush investments were protected and
the groundwork laid for more lucrative adventures in the years to come --
like the sweet skim job with Altanmia, and the hundreds of other
huggermugger deals now pouring through the sleazepipe from Crawford to
Baghdad.
Oh, and that Pentagon "investigation" of Halliburton overcharges? Forget it.
Two days after the probe request, Bush gave Cheney's boys a new $1.2 billion
contract for yet more Iraqi oil "reconstruction."
Remember, always, when dealing with the Bushes: Follow the money, not the
mouthing.
http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/stories/2004/01/23/120.html
--
A pattern of deception
A hard truth appears to have escaped the notice of the public and received
scant attention from the media: Bush is the first president in American
history to use deceptive propaganda as his main means of communications in
selling his policies. His pattern of deception continues unabated and in
direct conflict with the notion of the public's informed consent that is
central to American democracy.
Walter Williams is professor emeritus at the University of Washington's
Evans School of Public Affairs.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6378746.htm
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