When GW Bush recently told the press, “I'm pleased with the progress” in Iraq, he wasn’t trying for laughs. He was telling the truth. The war against Iraq has been won—and won big—by backers who continue winning more every day. For profit-driven proponents of “perpetual war”, more destruction and chaos means more money can be scooped from wartime windfalls of unregulated cash.
Second only to banking in concentrating corporate wealth and political control, weapons-making has become as inseparable from Washington’s pathological politics, one analyst asserts, “as the ruling class is from the private ownership and control of the nation's money, wealth and property. The abolition of this single industry alone would free up the resources to end poverty and human misery throughout the world.” But this would hurt profits—and profiteers. CorpWatch documents show the Bush administration “riddled with ties to the weapons, engineering, construction and oil companies that have the most to profit from the Iraq war.”
At least nine of the 30 members dictating US weapons procurement on the Defense Policy Board “have ties to corporations that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.
Under Cheney’s tenure, Halliburton went from paying $302 million in company taxes in 1998 to pocketing an $85 million tax refund the following year—while nearly doubling the amount of business it did with the US government to $2.3 billion. The US Vice-President is also a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing “think tank” that largely hatches US government policy based on a religious ideology as fundamentalist as al-Qaeda’s. Among Cheney’s numerous oil interests are links to Chevron, for whom he negotiated the building of an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan—once the Taliban were removed.
Dick Cheney’s wife Lynne sat on the board of Lockheed Martin. Specializing in nuclear holocaust, radioactive cruise missiles and hypersonic jet fighters incapable of defending against the world’s biggest climate threats, Lockheed is the biggest WMD producer on this plundered planet, with net weapons sales in 2003 of $32 billion.
Lockheed’s roster also includes the new US National Security Adviser. Raking in $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2003 alone, the company's blood-soaked stock has tripled since 2000.DPB member General Jack Sheehan is a senior vice president at Bechtel. Former Secretary of State George Schultz is also on the board of Bechtel, as well as chairing the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq—a group with close ties to the White House committed to the corporate takeover of Iraqi through war.
KILLERS $NC.
Mercenary contractors are also cashing in on a $100 billion market that is rapidly “privatizing” America’s for-profit wars. At least one-third of this year's $87 billion allocated for Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia will be spent on US private military contractors, providing everything from lunch to torture. One of the biggest, DynCorp is linked to former CIA director James Woolsey, who works with Perle in yet another pro-war think-tank.
URBAN RENEWAL
The “Collective” calls the practice of blowing up countries and rebuilding them, “urban renewal”.
Also known as the Carlyle Group, former Scripps Howard editor Dan Thomasson declares, “When I talk about the War Machine, these folks are at the crux of it. They're the war profiteers that keep its wheels greased!”.
The business of this incestuous “Iron Triangle” is death and misery on an unprecedented urban scale. As the Observer noted just before Bush opened the gates of hell on Iraq: “What with the US dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles on Iraq so far and with more to come, there’s going to be a lot of reconstruction. It looks like it could be a bonanza year.”
BANKERS RULE
It’s not the corporations that run the world. It’s the banks. Which banks batten the most on war? Raytheon offers one revealing example. Following its acquisition of Hughes Aircraft Company, the weapons giant was bought in turn by a consortium of global banks eager to cash in on chaos. Raytheon certainly seemed attractive. Though its Patriot air-defense missiles are as notoriously inaccurate as its Tomahawk cruise missiles, they all explode reliably with massive urban destruction.
Bombs and warheads containing radioactive uranium—as well as UN-outlawed cluster bombs that mostly maim small children—are also marketed, produced and sold by America’s fourth largest war-dependent corporation. Dated November 9, 1999, the “Purchase And Sale Agreement” names as “Purchasers” of Raytheon: The Bank Of America, and the Chase Manhattan Bank. Other Raytheon include: Citibank, Credit Suisse, First Boston—and at least 18 other banks cashing in on killing kids.
RIPPING OFF IRAQ
Within weeks of “taking” office in 2001, Bush administration met to plan the hostile take-over of Iraq. Long before the extensively alerted 9/11 attacks and the deliberate stand down of US air defenses that made their plan possible, a Pentagon team led by Under-Secretary of Defense Doug Feith handed Halliburton $1.9 million to develop secret contingency plans for taking over Iraq’s oil industry.
All contracts would be “cost-plus”—meaning KBR, Bechtel and other war-profiteers could submit bills for whatever they spent for reimbursement, plus an additional profit percentage. This ensures that the more taxpayers’ money US corporations waste in Iraq, the more money they make.
Using the State Department’s Agency for International Development as a conduit, the White House initially handed more than $11 billion in contracts to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel—without bothering about mandatory competitive bids.
Still being paid tax-deferred wages by Halliburton, Cheney claimed on national television that he knew nothing in advance of the contracts handed to his former company. But—oops!—an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003 confirmed that the multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was “coordinated” with Cheney’s office under the “authority” of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
BIG BAD WOLF
It was Wolfowitz who predicted explosions of joy instead of RPGs greeting grunts in Iraq. Variously described as “truly evil” and a “junior grade Lucifer", another colleague says, "Hawk doesn't do him justice. What about velociraptor?"
Long before the Downing Street memos confirmed that "Intelligence and facts were being fixed" by the Bush administration to annex Iraq nearly a year before Bush went to the UN, Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair how, in order to justify the invasion, "We settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: ‘weapons of mass destruction’.”
Wolfie cynically went on to hype the mythical might of a shattered country that somehow posed “a threat to the security of our nation and the world." But he later told the British press, “Economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
FILL ‘ER UP
In January 2003, just two months before the invasion of Iraq, officials from the White House, State Department and Department of Defense met repeatedly with executives from Halliburton, Schlumberger, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips to plan the seizure of Iraq’s oilfields.
The scheme was “green-lighted” in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi—convicted embezzler and recently chosen head of Iraq’s Oil Ministry. Ignoring warnings of untenable logistics and a prolonged urban guerrilla war, White House planners turned their attention to nullifying Iraqi laws and quickly selling off that nation’s banks, bridges and all other state enterprises.
“Annex D” detailed a 360-day schedule for the complete corporate takeover of Iraq. Beginning on page 73, their “Economy Plan” stipulated that this supposedly sovereign nation would have to sell its “oil and supporting industries” to Royal-Dutch Shell, ChevronTexaco and other corporations that helped draft a 300-page hit list of Iraq’s most vital assets.
OPEN FOR LOOTING
In May 2003 replacement ruler Paul Bremer declared Iraq “open for business”. A single meeting of the US-controlled Program Review Board charged with managing Iraq’s finances handed nearly $2 billion in stolen Iraqi funds to US corporations. “I’ve never seen corruption like this by expatriate businessmen. It’s like a feeding frenzy,” said a company director for a British firm doing business in Baghdad.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13303
In a move Tom Devine, legal director for the non-profit legal firm, the Government Accountability Project, condemned as “a blank check for corporate anarchy,” Bush formed Iraq Inc. by signing Executive Order 13303 into law on May 22, 2003. “Judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void with regard to the Development Fund for Iraq, as well as for any commercial operation conducted by US corporations involved in the Iraqi oil industry,” reads the document signed by Bush. [www.whistleblower.org]
IRAQ INC.
After canceling early elections and appointing the government himself, coalition provisional potentate Paul Bremer spent 14 months issuing 100 orders remaking Iraq’s regulatory and legal frameworks according to the “Economy Plan”.
In just one devastating example, Cargill, the world’s largest grain merchant, flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat, wiping out Iraqi farmers already devastated by a dozen years of US-led sanctions, and unceasing attacks on irrigation flues and dams. The occupation’s agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz had chaired a Cargill-funded company.
According to Iraq Revenue Watch, these advisors “are expected to maintain their influence on future economic decisions”—regardless of who is allowed in power.
# # #
Second only to banking in concentrating corporate wealth and political control, weapons-making has become as inseparable from Washington’s pathological politics, one analyst asserts, “as the ruling class is from the private ownership and control of the nation's money, wealth and property. The abolition of this single industry alone would free up the resources to end poverty and human misery throughout the world.” But this would hurt profits—and profiteers. CorpWatch documents show the Bush administration “riddled with ties to the weapons, engineering, construction and oil companies that have the most to profit from the Iraq war.”
At least nine of the 30 members dictating US weapons procurement on the Defense Policy Board “have ties to corporations that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.
Under Cheney’s tenure, Halliburton went from paying $302 million in company taxes in 1998 to pocketing an $85 million tax refund the following year—while nearly doubling the amount of business it did with the US government to $2.3 billion. The US Vice-President is also a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing “think tank” that largely hatches US government policy based on a religious ideology as fundamentalist as al-Qaeda’s. Among Cheney’s numerous oil interests are links to Chevron, for whom he negotiated the building of an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan—once the Taliban were removed.
Dick Cheney’s wife Lynne sat on the board of Lockheed Martin. Specializing in nuclear holocaust, radioactive cruise missiles and hypersonic jet fighters incapable of defending against the world’s biggest climate threats, Lockheed is the biggest WMD producer on this plundered planet, with net weapons sales in 2003 of $32 billion.
Lockheed’s roster also includes the new US National Security Adviser. Raking in $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2003 alone, the company's blood-soaked stock has tripled since 2000.DPB member General Jack Sheehan is a senior vice president at Bechtel. Former Secretary of State George Schultz is also on the board of Bechtel, as well as chairing the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq—a group with close ties to the White House committed to the corporate takeover of Iraqi through war.
KILLERS $NC.
Mercenary contractors are also cashing in on a $100 billion market that is rapidly “privatizing” America’s for-profit wars. At least one-third of this year's $87 billion allocated for Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia will be spent on US private military contractors, providing everything from lunch to torture. One of the biggest, DynCorp is linked to former CIA director James Woolsey, who works with Perle in yet another pro-war think-tank.
URBAN RENEWAL
The “Collective” calls the practice of blowing up countries and rebuilding them, “urban renewal”.
Also known as the Carlyle Group, former Scripps Howard editor Dan Thomasson declares, “When I talk about the War Machine, these folks are at the crux of it. They're the war profiteers that keep its wheels greased!”.
The business of this incestuous “Iron Triangle” is death and misery on an unprecedented urban scale. As the Observer noted just before Bush opened the gates of hell on Iraq: “What with the US dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles on Iraq so far and with more to come, there’s going to be a lot of reconstruction. It looks like it could be a bonanza year.”
BANKERS RULE
It’s not the corporations that run the world. It’s the banks. Which banks batten the most on war? Raytheon offers one revealing example. Following its acquisition of Hughes Aircraft Company, the weapons giant was bought in turn by a consortium of global banks eager to cash in on chaos. Raytheon certainly seemed attractive. Though its Patriot air-defense missiles are as notoriously inaccurate as its Tomahawk cruise missiles, they all explode reliably with massive urban destruction.
Bombs and warheads containing radioactive uranium—as well as UN-outlawed cluster bombs that mostly maim small children—are also marketed, produced and sold by America’s fourth largest war-dependent corporation. Dated November 9, 1999, the “Purchase And Sale Agreement” names as “Purchasers” of Raytheon: The Bank Of America, and the Chase Manhattan Bank. Other Raytheon include: Citibank, Credit Suisse, First Boston—and at least 18 other banks cashing in on killing kids.
RIPPING OFF IRAQ
Within weeks of “taking” office in 2001, Bush administration met to plan the hostile take-over of Iraq. Long before the extensively alerted 9/11 attacks and the deliberate stand down of US air defenses that made their plan possible, a Pentagon team led by Under-Secretary of Defense Doug Feith handed Halliburton $1.9 million to develop secret contingency plans for taking over Iraq’s oil industry.
All contracts would be “cost-plus”—meaning KBR, Bechtel and other war-profiteers could submit bills for whatever they spent for reimbursement, plus an additional profit percentage. This ensures that the more taxpayers’ money US corporations waste in Iraq, the more money they make.
Using the State Department’s Agency for International Development as a conduit, the White House initially handed more than $11 billion in contracts to companies like Halliburton and Bechtel—without bothering about mandatory competitive bids.
Still being paid tax-deferred wages by Halliburton, Cheney claimed on national television that he knew nothing in advance of the contracts handed to his former company. But—oops!—an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003 confirmed that the multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was “coordinated” with Cheney’s office under the “authority” of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
BIG BAD WOLF
It was Wolfowitz who predicted explosions of joy instead of RPGs greeting grunts in Iraq. Variously described as “truly evil” and a “junior grade Lucifer", another colleague says, "Hawk doesn't do him justice. What about velociraptor?"
Long before the Downing Street memos confirmed that "Intelligence and facts were being fixed" by the Bush administration to annex Iraq nearly a year before Bush went to the UN, Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair how, in order to justify the invasion, "We settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: ‘weapons of mass destruction’.”
Wolfie cynically went on to hype the mythical might of a shattered country that somehow posed “a threat to the security of our nation and the world." But he later told the British press, “Economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
FILL ‘ER UP
In January 2003, just two months before the invasion of Iraq, officials from the White House, State Department and Department of Defense met repeatedly with executives from Halliburton, Schlumberger, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips to plan the seizure of Iraq’s oilfields.
The scheme was “green-lighted” in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi—convicted embezzler and recently chosen head of Iraq’s Oil Ministry. Ignoring warnings of untenable logistics and a prolonged urban guerrilla war, White House planners turned their attention to nullifying Iraqi laws and quickly selling off that nation’s banks, bridges and all other state enterprises.
“Annex D” detailed a 360-day schedule for the complete corporate takeover of Iraq. Beginning on page 73, their “Economy Plan” stipulated that this supposedly sovereign nation would have to sell its “oil and supporting industries” to Royal-Dutch Shell, ChevronTexaco and other corporations that helped draft a 300-page hit list of Iraq’s most vital assets.
OPEN FOR LOOTING
In May 2003 replacement ruler Paul Bremer declared Iraq “open for business”. A single meeting of the US-controlled Program Review Board charged with managing Iraq’s finances handed nearly $2 billion in stolen Iraqi funds to US corporations. “I’ve never seen corruption like this by expatriate businessmen. It’s like a feeding frenzy,” said a company director for a British firm doing business in Baghdad.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13303
In a move Tom Devine, legal director for the non-profit legal firm, the Government Accountability Project, condemned as “a blank check for corporate anarchy,” Bush formed Iraq Inc. by signing Executive Order 13303 into law on May 22, 2003. “Judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void with regard to the Development Fund for Iraq, as well as for any commercial operation conducted by US corporations involved in the Iraqi oil industry,” reads the document signed by Bush. [www.whistleblower.org]
IRAQ INC.
After canceling early elections and appointing the government himself, coalition provisional potentate Paul Bremer spent 14 months issuing 100 orders remaking Iraq’s regulatory and legal frameworks according to the “Economy Plan”.
In just one devastating example, Cargill, the world’s largest grain merchant, flooded Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat, wiping out Iraqi farmers already devastated by a dozen years of US-led sanctions, and unceasing attacks on irrigation flues and dams. The occupation’s agriculture chief, Dan Amstutz had chaired a Cargill-funded company.
According to Iraq Revenue Watch, these advisors “are expected to maintain their influence on future economic decisions”—regardless of who is allowed in power.
# # #
