U.S.Crusade | RaceandHistory | RastaTimes | HowComYouCom | News Links | Trini Soca | Africa Speaks
Trinicenter.com Trinicenter.com Trinidad and Tobago News
Online Forums
Create an AccountHome | Account | World News  

International Watch
  • Home
  • AvantGo
  • Feedback
  • Search
  • Stories Archive
  • Submit News

  • Categories
  • Africa Focus
  • Arab Spring
  • Audio & Video
  • Book Review
  • Caribbean
  • Inside U.S.A.
  • Invasion of Iraq
  • Israel-Palestine
  • Latin America
  • Medical
  • Pakistan
  • Pandora's Box
  • Racism Watch
  • Satire
  • US War on Iran
  • US War on N Korea
  • War and Terror
  • War on Russia
  • War on Syria
  • World Focus
  • Zimbabwe

  • Old Articles
    Friday, February 08
    ·
    Wednesday, February 06
    ·
    Tuesday, February 05
    · Savage Capitalism or Socialism: A Conversation with Luis Britto Garcia
    Sunday, February 03
    · Canada vs. Venezuela: The Background Gets Even Murkier
    Thursday, January 31
    ·
    Monday, January 28
    · The History - and Hypocrisy - of US Meddling in Venezuela
    · Canada Is Complicit in Venezuela's US-Backed Coup D'état
    Wednesday, September 26
    · Why Israel Demolishes: Khan Al-Ahmar as Representation of Greater Genocide
    Friday, September 21
    · US Disregard for International Law Is a Menace to Latin America
    Saturday, August 25
    · How Long is the Shelf-Life of Damnable Racist Capitalist Lies?
    Thursday, August 09
    · Martial Law By Other Means: Corporate Strangulation of Dissent
    Wednesday, August 08
    · North Korea and The Washington Trap
    · Venezuela Assassination Attempt: Maduro Survives but Journalism Doesn't
    Sunday, May 20
    · The British Royal Wedding, Feelgoodism and the Colonial Jumbie
    Friday, May 04
    ·
    Monday, April 09
    · The Bayer-Monsanto Merger Is Bad News for the Planet
    Tuesday, March 20
    · Finally, Some Good News
    Thursday, March 15
    · Zimbabwe Open for Business, Code for International Finance Capitalism
    Friday, January 12
    · Shadow Armies: The Unseen, But Real US War In Africa
    Wednesday, December 13
    · The U.S. is Not a Democracy, It Never Was

    Older Articles

    Features

    Sudan''s Crisis

    Zimbabwe: Land Reform and Mugabe

    U.S Coup in Haiti

    Venezuela and Chavez


      
    War and Terror: Blood and Gravy
    Posted on Friday, August 05 @ 20:42:23 UTC
    Topic: Corporate Rule
    Corporate Ruleby Chris Floyd

    It's easy to forget sometimes -- amid all the lofty talk of geopolitics, of apocalyptic clashes between good and evil, of terror, liberty, security and God -- that the war on Iraq is "largely a matter of loot," as Kasper Gutman so aptly described the Crusades in that seminal treatise on human nature, "The Maltese Falcon." And nowhere is this more evident than in the festering, oozing imposthume of corruption centered around the Gutman-like figure of Vice President Dick Cheney.

    Yes, it's once more unto the breach with Halliburton, the gargantuan government contractor that still pays Cheney, its former CEO, enormous annual sums in "deferred compensation" and stock options -- even while he presides over a White House war council that has steered more than $10 billion in no-bid Iraqi war contracts back to his corporate paymaster. This is rainmaking of monsoon proportions. Indeed, the company's military servicing wing announced a second-quarter profit spike of 284 percent last week -- a feast of blood and gravy that will send Cheney's stock options soaring into the stratosphere.

    But although Halliburton has already entered the American lexicon as a byword for rampant cronyism, the true extent of its dense and deadly web of graft is only now emerging, most recently in a remarkable public hearing that revealed some of the corporation's standard business practices in Iraq: fraud, extortion, brutality, pilferage, theft -- even serving rotten food to U.S. soldiers in the battle zone.

    By piecing together bits from the fiercely suppressed reports of a few honest Pentagon auditors and investigators, a joint House-Senate minority committee (the Bushist majority refused to take part) has unearthed at least $1.4 billion in fraudulent overcharges and unsourced billing by Cheney's company in Iraq. Testimony from Pentagon whistleblowers, former Halliburton officials and fellow contractors revealed the grim picture of a rogue operation, power-drunk and arrogant, beyond the reach of law, secure in the protection of its White House sugar daddy.

    One tale is particularly instructive: Halliburton's strenuous efforts to prevent a company hired by the Iraqis, Lloyd-Owen International, from delivering gasoline into the conquered land from Kuwait for 18 cents a gallon. Why? Because LOI's cost-efficient operation undercuts Halliburton's highway-robbery price of $1.30 a gallon for the exact same service.

    But how is Halliburton able to interfere with the sacred process of free enterprise? Well, it seems that Cheney's firm, a private company, has control over the U.S. military checkpoint on the volatile Iraq-Kuwait border, and it also has the authority to grant -- or withhold -- the Pentagon ID cards that are indispensable for contractors operating in Iraq. (Even contractors who, like LOI, are working for the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government.) Halliburton used these powers to block LOI's access to the military crossing -- which provides quick, safe delivery of the fuel -- for months. Then the game got rougher.

    In June, Cheney's boys blackmailed LOI into delivering some construction materials to a Halliburton project in the friendly confines of Fallujah: no delivery, no "golden ticket" Pentagon card, said Halliburton. They neglected to tell LOI that convoys on the route had been repeatedly hit by insurgents in recent days. And sure enough, LOI's delivery trucks were ripped to shreds just outside a Halliburton-operated military base. Three men were killed and seven wounded. But that's not all. An e-mail obtained by investigators revealed that Halliburton brass had expressly prohibited company employees from offering any assistance to the shattered convoy.

    Halliburton extended this milk of human kindness to its food services as well. The firm had to bring in Turkish and Filipino guest workers to feed U.S. soldiers, because the happily liberated Iraqis couldn't be trusted not to blow up their benefactors. The Cheneymen treated these coolies as befitted their lowly station: They packed them into tents with sand floors and no beds, and literally fed them scraps from the garbage. When the peons complained, Halliburton sacked the subcontractor, who had been buying bargain produce and meat from the locals, and hired an American crony to ship in food all the way from Philadelphia.

    U.S. soldiers weren't treated much better. Employees testified that Halliburton brass had ordered them to serve spoiled and rotten food to soldiers, day in and day out. Meanwhile, Halliburton brass were reserving choice cuts for the big beer-soaked barbecues they threw for themselves two or three times a week. They also billed the taxpayer for 10,000 "ghost meals" per day at a single base: The food was phantom, but the rake-off was real. Meanwhile, any employee who made noises about exposing the fraud to auditors was threatened with transfer to a red-hot fire zone, like Fallujah or Saddam's hometown, Tikrit.

    All of this criminal katzenjammer -- and much, much more -- was authorized at the highest levels, as top procurement brass and Pentagon officials confirmed. Cheney's office kept tabs on Halliburton's bids while Pentagon warlord Don Rumsfeld "violated federal law," the committee noted, by directly intervening in the procurement process to eliminate all possible rivals and to make sure Cheney's employer got the guaranteed-profit gig. Rumsfeld's office also removed oversight procedures for the dirty deals and ignored repeated warnings from Pentagon auditors about Halliburton's blatant, persistent, pervasive fraud. And the money keeps rolling in. Just last month, Don and Dick ladled another $1.75 billion dollop of pork gravy into Halliburton's bowl.

    For this they have made a holocaust in the desert sands, sacrificing tens of thousands of innocent lives: for cheap, greasy graft; for grubby pilfering; for the personal profit of Richard B. Cheney and the whole pack of Bushist jackals gorging themselves on blood money.

    Annotations

    Halliburton's Questioned and Unsupported Costs in Iraq Exceed $1.4 Billion
    House-Senate Minority Staff Repot, June 27, 2005

    Halliburton Overcharges in Iraq: Transcript of Hearing
    Federal News Service, June 27, 2005

    Halliburton announces 284 percent increase in war profits
    Halliburton Watch, July 25, 2005

    Contract Abuse Alleged in Iraq
    Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2005
    www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/special_packages
    /laci_peterson/12003346.htm


    Cheney's Boundless War Profiteering
    The Age (Australia), July 30, 2005

    The original address of this article is:
    context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/05/120.html

     
    Related Links
    · More about Corporate Rule
    · News by ZeberuS


    Most read story about Corporate Rule:
    Empire and Oligarchy: Whatever Happened to "We the People"?


    Article Rating
    Average Score: 5
    Votes: 2


    Please take a second and vote for this article:

    Excellent
    Very Good
    Good
    Regular
    Bad


    Options

     Printer Friendly Printer Friendly



    Homepage | Trinidad News | Africa Speaks | U.S.Crusade | Fair Use Notice


    Copyright © 2002-2014 Trinicenter.com
    Trinicenter.com is a 100% non-profit Website
    You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php or ultramode.txt
    All logos, trademarks, articles and comments are property of their respective owners.
    PHP-Nuke Copyright © 2004 by Francisco Burzi. This is free software, and you may redistribute it under the GPL.
    PHP-Nuke comes with absolutely no warranty, for details, see the license.
    Page Generation: 0.20 Seconds