"Spoils of War," by Bob Herbert, NYT: Follow the money. Former Secretary of State George Shultz is on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group, the largest contractor in the U.S. and one of the finalists in the competition to land a fat contract to help in the rebuilding of Iraq. He is also the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a fiercely pro-war group with close ties to the White House. The committee, formed last year, made it clear from the beginning that it sought more than the ouster of Saddam's regime. It was committed, among other things, "to work beyond the liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy." War is a tragedy for some and a boon for others. I asked Mr. Shultz if the fact that he was an advocate of the war while sitting on the board of a company that would benefit from it left him concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest. "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it," he said. "But if there's work that's needed to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel. He's also a member of the Defense Policy Board, a government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon on major defense issues. Its members are selected by the under secretary of defense for policy, currently Douglas Feith, and approved by the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Most Americans have never heard of the Defense Policy Group. Its meetings are classified. The members disclose their business interests to the Pentagon, but that information is not available to the public. The Center for Public Integrity, a private watchdog group in Washington, recently disclosed that of the 30 members of the board, at least 9 are linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Richard Perle was the chairman of the board until just a few weeks ago, when he resigned the chairmanship amid allegations of a conflict of interest. He is still on the board. Another member is the former C.I.A. director, James Woolsey. He's also a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm that, as the Center for Public Integrity noted, is soliciting investments for companies that specialize in domestic security. Mr. Woolsey is also a member of the Committee to Liberate Iraq and is reported to be in line to play a role in the postwar occupation. The war against Iraq has become one of the clearest examples ever of the influence of the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against so eloquently in his farewell address in 1961. This iron web of relationships among powerful individuals inside and outside the government operates with very little public scrutiny and is saturated with conflicts of interest. Their goals may or may not coincide with the best interests of the American people. Think of the divergence of interests, for example, between the grunts who are actually fighting this war, who have been eating sand and spilling their blood in the desert, and the power brokers who fought like crazy to make the war happen and are profiting from it every step of the way. There aren't a lot of rich kids in that desert. The U.S. military is largely working-class. The power brokers homing in on $100 billion worth of postwar reconstruction contracts are not. The Pentagon and its allies are close to achieving what they wanted all along, control of the nation of Iraq and its bounty, which is the wealth and myriad forms of power that flow from control of the world's second-largest oil reserves. The transitional government of Iraq is to be headed by a retired Army lieutenant general, Jay Garner. His career path was typical. He moved effortlessly from his military career to the presidency of SYColeman, a defense contractor that helped Israel develop its Arrow missile-defense system. The iron web. Those who dreamt of a flowering of democracy in Iraq are advised to consider the skepticism of Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush. He asked: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We're surely not going to let them take over." Why do average Americans fight to make way for their plutocratic masters? Because they have been absolutely, comprehensively fooled, buying into the FEAR and the hype. And while average Americans get shot in the head or heart, or lose legs and arms, or hope for the best case scenario - that they get to come back to a life of busting their ass for the right to live check to check and watch on the tele sporting events they cannot afford to actually attend - the rich get richer, on their backs, and its a goddamned disgrace. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; its paved BY the average Joe, just trying to do the right thing. Problem is, today's Joe (and Jane) can't afford to rest replete in ignorance, or in false, mythic belief anymore; their leaders, OUR leaders, are soulless cash whores... Again, take your notions of "left" and "right" and shove them up the ass closest to you. ALL the F.U.s (Financial Unicrats) should be held criminally accountable...
It's funny when Bob's confronted with a rout of the evil Hussein regime in Baghdad, he resorts to the tried & true Herbert conspiracy column. The New York Times op-ed columnists just cut & paste the same old, same old when it comes to the Bush administration. I hope their crow is tasting good this week. Even IF people with ties to the administration made money off of Iraq (and that's yet to be seen), for Bob it would be far better if French or German conglomerates got all the action. That's why you hear people of his ilk already saying "we can't shut out France, Germany & Russia in post-war Iraq." Why not? They can have a limited role. But we didn't sacrifice lives & billions of dollars so Jacques & Wolfgang can barge in and reap the benefits. "Old Europe" indeed. The 2 countries with first-hand knowledge of the effects of a brutal dictator sat on their hands when confronted with a modern day one. They can continue to sit on their hands until they show true commitment, not empty rhetoric.
I didn't know pizza-boys made good revisionist historians...now I do. Keep rolling that dough, and keep dreaming those dreams...maybe one day they'll all come true for ya, and shots like the one with Saddam and Rumsfeld shaking hands (and the implications thereof, among other soulless cash whorishness) will go away...in your mind.
I'm sure you blew up the picture of Jimmy Carter happily shaking Fidel's hand or the one of him kissing Arafat. Looks good taped on your Che wallpaper.
Herbert strings together a list of maybes in his mind and asserts them as facts. Exactly what people accused Bush of doing before going into Iraq. I happen to think that a president has greater information gathering ability than a person who doesn't leave Manhattan.
Please point specifically in the article something that Herbert asserted as a fact that is, in fact, not factual.
That works better when it's a conservative writer, dawg, but I'd hate to get in the way of your distorted world view.
They are all try to play us for fools. To add to Universal's initial thought, many right wingers on these boards think that Dick Cheney gains nothing from his on-going relationship with Halliburton. Here are a few nuggets. Dick Cheney receives almost $1M per year in deferred salary from Halliburton. Dick Cheney held $13.6M in stock options in 2000 that should have been retired when he left the company. However, the board allowed him to retain these options and since he is no longer an inside officer of the company, he does not have to publicly report his transactions. It is not likely that he has divested his interests in the company, but we don't know that. The Cheney-Halliburton story is the classic revolving door story. As Secretary of Defense under Bush I, Cheney paid Brown and Root services (now Kellogg Brown and Root, aka KBR) $3.9 million to report on how private companies could help the U.S. Army as Cheney cut hundreds of thousands of Army jobs. Then Brown and Root won a five-year contract to provide logistics for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers all over the globe. In 1995, Cheney became CEO and Halliburton jumped from 73rd to 18th on the Pentagon's list of top contractors, benefiting from at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans, according to the Center for Public Integrity. This is a company that has been accused of cost overruns, tax avoidance, and cooking the books and has a history of doing business in countries like Iraq, Iran and Libya. KBR now has the no-bid contract for putting out the oil fires. There don't seem to be a lot of fires to put out, some maybe this one is a wash. However, 7% mandated cost-plus profit margin is a joyful business to be in. Just stuff all your G/A expenses into the Iraq-fire program, and you are set. Remember, the government auditors work for a guy that was CEO, is a major shareholder, and is still on the payroll. Yeah, that picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand is beautiful. And Carter shook Fidel's hand, but Carter never told us that Fidel = Hitler.