Why Are We In Iraq?

Evelyn Pringle <e.pringle@sbcglobal.net> 

03/02/04 "ICH" - In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, administration officials convinced us that we had to go to war to get rid of Saddam's WMDs. They used repeated phrases like: "we know," "beyond any doubt," and "these are not assertions, these are facts." But as we all know now, all of their assertion (aka, facts) turned out to be false. In plain language, they lied their way into this war. 

People need to think about this. If it wasn't truly necessary to go to war with Iraq to protect ourselves from Saddam and WMDs, then what other reason would justify a preemptive attack on another country?

For me, the answer was easy. All I had to do was follow the money. Who stood to gain from military action. Look up the main companies that have been awarded defense contracts and then check to see who within the Bush administration has been connected to those companies, past and present.

Everybody has heard of Halliburton. It is the poster child for war profiteering and has gone the full financial circle in Iraq. It was enriched doing business with Saddam when Cheney was running the company. It sold Iraq $73 million in oil-field supplies through subsidiaries in foreign countries.

Then it got richer by preparing to destroy Iraq. On the very day that Congress voted in favor of the resolution, someone in the Pentagon picked up a phone and told Halliburton it had 9 weeks to build an Army base for 7,000 soldiers.

Now it is getting richer through contracts to rebuild the same country it helped destroy. And they owe it all to Cheney. While he was Bush Sr.'s secretary of defense, he directed millions of tax dollars in government business to Halliburton. Then when he left his government job, he cashed in by becoming the company's CEO and the largest individual shareholder, holding stocks and options worth $40 million.

While Cheney was CEO, Halliburton's offshore tax havens went from 9 to 44. In 1998, it subsequently went from paying $302 million in federal taxes in to getting an $85 million refund in 1999. 

Halliburton is a notorious corporate criminal. Under Cheney's watch, it was fined $2 million for persistently over billing the Pentagon. However, they did not learn their lesson. It is once again being investigated for over billing for transporting gasoline by $61 million and $27 million for meals served to our troops that were never served. 

And if that isn't enough, Halliburton was recently forced to acknowledge paying $2.4 million in bribes to a Nigerian tax official under Cheney's watch. It also had to admit that 2 employees accepted $6.3 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor to ignore over billing in a contract. 

Finally, Halliburton is now being investigated, here and abroad, for paying Nigeria government officials $180 million in bribes to gain a $3.8 billion contract (under Cheney's watch). 

It is difficult to understand the media's kid-glove treatment of members of the Bush administration in contrast to how they handled allegations about Clinton involving a 20-year-old land deal, worth about $150,000, in which the Clintons lost money. For some odd reason they've done very little reporting on the scandals involving Cheney. 

When is enough enough? Why are we doing any business with this corrupt company in the first place? 

Halliburton is by far, not the only firm involved in this scheme. Its track record is only part of a larger pattern in which many of Bush's relatives and close associates benefit financially from the Iraq war. 

For instance, former president George H. W. Bush resigned in the fall of 2003 from a company called the Carlyle Group (but he still owns stock). This company is heavily associated with military and security contracts. It received $677 million in contracts in 2002 and $2.1 billion in contracts in 2003.

Bush's younger brother Neil has a $60,000-per-year contract with a principal in Washington-based New Bridge Strategies, a private firm set up by Bush's former campaign manager, to generate contracts in Iraq. 

A $327 million contract that was awarded to the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, benefits Winston Partners, the private investment firm of Bush's other brother Marvin Bush. 

In the history of this country, there has never been a more clear cut example of war profiteering. We may find it difficult to face the truth, that yes, these greedy people not only would, they did, send our young people off to be killed because they stood to gain financially.

The cold hard fact is that war is big business and the Bush administration is top-heavy with CEOs. 

Copyright: Evelyn Pringle <e.pringle@sbcglobal.net>