US COMPLICITY AND CORPORATE INTERESTS
The first article reveals the astonishing associations of the members of George W. Bush's administration. It will become apparent very quickly whose interests they genuinely represent. The second details one member in particular, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the frankly shameful dealings of his company Halliburton Inc.
A Cabinet That Looks Like Corporate
America
by
Molly Ivins
Boulder Daily Camera
February 9th, 2001
AUSTIN, Texas - Jim Hightower, an invaluable public citizen, once suggested that
politicians be forced to wear the corporate logos of their biggest donors in the fashion
of NASCAR race drivers so we'd know who they'd sold out to. Hightower once again has his
eye on the shell with the pea under it when it comes to President Bush's Cabinet.
The pundit corps has been swooning over the diversity of Bush's picks - four women, a
Cuban-American, two African-Americans, a Japanese-American, a Lebanese-American, a
Chinese-American and a Democrat.
President Inclusive chooses a Cabinet that looks like America. Just one catch: Every
member is a corporate creature. In fact, the corporations have just taken over the
government. Why hire lobbyists when your CEOs and board members are running the show?
Who's left to lobby?
Until recently, Real President Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton Inc., the giant oilfield
services firm that has been making money and trading with Iraq, despite the sanctions,
through its subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump.
Courtesy of the Hightower newsletter, here are some of those now running the country:
- Elaine Chao (Labor): an investment banker and corporate director, former vice president
of Bank of America and board member for Northwest Airlines, Dole Food, Clorox and Columbia
/ HCA Health Care.
- Norman Mineta (Transportation): corporate VP for Lockheed Martin; also former chairman
of the House Transportation Committee, where his major contributors were the American
Trucking Association, Boeing, General Electric, Greyhound, Lockheed, Northwest Airlines,
UPS, Union Pacific and United Airlines.
- Paul O'Neill (Treasury): CEO of Alcoa, the aluminum giant, and previously CEO of
International Paper Co., and on the boards of Eastman Kodak and Lucent Technologies.
- Gale Norton (Interior): formerly with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, an
anti-environmental group funded by oil companies. Prominent member of "property
rights" groups funded by Boise Cascade, DuPont and Louisiana Pacific; national
chairwoman of the Coalition for Republican Environmental Advocates, funded by the American
Forest Paper Association, Amoco, ARCO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association and Ford.
- John Ashcroft (Attorney General): sponsor of last year's Senate bill to extend the
patent on the super-profitable allergy pill Claritin, owned by the giant pharmaceutical
firm Schering-Plough, which gave him $50,000 for his last Senate campaign. He also got
$1.7 million from oil, chemical and paper companies that were grateful for Ashcroft's
opposition to funding environmental enforcement, voting for rollback of clean water
protections and letting mining companies dump cyanide and other wastes on public land.
As Hightower has observed, if you wonder why these issues didn't come up in his
confirmation hearings, consider the state of the Democratic Party and the effects of
campaign contributions.
- Rod Paige (Education): formerly Houston school superintendent, where he promoted
corporatisation. Food service went to Aramark Inc., payroll to Peoplesoft and accounting
to SAP. Last year, he cut an exclusive marketing deal with Coca-Cola to put machines in
the school hallways. He also brought in Primed Corp.'s Channel One, the (so-called)
"educational channel" that spends two out of every 10 minutes of broadcast time
selling M&Ms, Mars, Pepsico, Reebok and Nintendo.
- Colin Powell (State): on the board of America Online and was recipient of $100,000 a
speech to a list of corporations too long to believe.
- Anthony Principi (Veterans Affairs): heir to family-owned real-estate company, also
former president of QTC Medical Services Inc.; later with Lockheed Martin and most
recently president of the airless technology firm Federal Network.
- Donald Rumsfeld (Defense): formerly CEO of General Instrument Corp. and drug giant G.D.
Searle & Co., also on the boards of Asea Brown Boveri, a huge Swedish engineering
firm, and the Rand Corp. Also on the advisory board of Salomon Smith Barney, the Wall
Street investment firm.
- Ann Veneman (Agriculture): lawyer with a firm specializing in representing agribusiness
giants and biotech corporations. On board of Calgene Inc., a subsidiary of Monsanto, the
first firm to market genetically altered food. Also a participant in the International
Policy Council of Agriculture, Food and Trade, a group funded by Monsanto, Cargill,
Archer-Daniels-Midland, Kraft and Nestle.
- Tommy Thompson (Health and Human Services): former governor of Wisconsin whose major
contributors were HMOs, hospital chains, nursing homes, clinics, doctors and insurance
companies. [Tobacco giant] Phillip Morris gave him $72,000 in campaign
contributions.
- Spencer Abraham (Energy): one-term senator from Michigan who once sponsored a bill to
abolish the Energy Department. Especially active in fight over requiring greater fuel
efficiency from SUVs, giving him special brownie points with the energy and auto
industries.
- Mel Martinez (HUD): no corporate connections; formerly the top manager of Orange County,
Fla. That's Orlando/Disney World, and if you have visited, you know that ending urban
sprawl is not his specialty.
Copyright 2001 The Daily Camera
Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals With
Hussein
by
Martin A. Lee
San Francisco Bay Guardian
26th October 2001
Here's a whopper of a story you may have missed amid the cacophony of
campaign ads and stump speeches in the run-up to the elections. During former defense
secretary Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc., his
oil services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq. Cheney
left Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package last July when he became the GOP's
vice-presidential candidate.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But
thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton
profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through
several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam
Hussein retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1988 and last winter,
Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of
oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of itssubsidiaries, Dresser Rand
and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production
infrastructure. The combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other U.S.
company doing business with Baghdad.
Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum
industry with spare parts and retooled its oil rigs when U.N. sanctions were eased in
1998. Cheney's company utilized subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria so as
not to draw undue attention to controversial business arrangements that might embarrass
Washington and jeopardize lucrative ties to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of petrol
under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program this year. Assisted by Halliburton,
Hussein's government will earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through
black-market channels.
With Cheney at the helm since 1995, Halliburton quickly grew into America's number one
oil-services company, the fifth-largest military contractor, and the biggest non-union
employer in the nation. Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had
absolutely nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success, State
Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that U.S. officials helped
Halliburton secure major contracts in Asia and Africa. Halliburton now does business in
130 countries and employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide. Its 1999 income was a cool
$15 billion.
In addition to Iraq, Halliburton counts among its' business partners several brutal
dictatorships that have committed egregious human rights abuses, including the hated
military regime in Burma (Myanmar). EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights
watchdog, condemned Halliburton for two energy-pipeline projects in Burma that led to the
forced relocation of villages, rape, murder, indentured labor, and other crimes against
humanity.
A full report (this is a 45 page pdf file - there is also a brief summary) on the Burma
connection, "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement," can be accessed on
EarthRights' Web site:
http://www.earthrights.org
Human rights activists have also criticized Cheney's company for its' questionable role in
Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Indonesia, and other volatile
trouble spots. In Russia, Halliburton's partner, Tyumen Oil, has been accused of
committing massive fraud to gain control of a Siberian oil field. And in oil-rich Nigeria,
Halliburton worked with Shell and Chevron, which were implicated in gross human rights
violations and environmental calamities in that country. Indeed, Cheney's firm increased
its' involvement in the Niger Delta after the military government executed several ecology
activists and crushed popular protests against the oil industry.
Halliburton also had business dealings in Iran and Libya, which remain on the State
Department's list of terrorist states. Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined
$3.8 million for re-exporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions.
But in terms of sheer hypocrisy, Halliburton's relationship with Saddam Hussein is hard to
top. What's more, Cheney lied about his company's activities in Iraq when journalists
fleetingly raised the issue during the campaign.
Questioned by Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week program in August, Cheney bluntly asserted
that Halliburton had no dealings with the Iraqi regime while he was on board.
Donaldson:
"I'm told, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Halliburton, through
subsidiaries, was actually trying to do business in Iraq?"
Cheney:
"No. No. I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq even
arrangements that were supposedly legal."
And that was it!
ABC News and the other U.S. networks
dropped the issue like a hot potato. As damning information about Halliburton surfaced in
the European press, American reporters stuck to old routines and took their cues on how to
cover the campaign from the two main political parties, both of which had very little to
say about official U.S. support for abusive corporate policies at home and abroad.
But why, in this instance, didn't the Democrats stomp and scream about Cheney's Iraq
connection? The Gore campaign undoubtedly knew of Halliburton's smarmy business
dealings from the get-go. Gore and Lieberman could have made hay about how the wannabe GOP
vice preseident had been in cahoots with Saddam. Such explosive revelations may well have
swayed voters and boosted Gore's chances in what was shaping up to be a close electoral
contest.
The Democratic standard-bearers dropped the ball in part because Halliburton's conduct was
generally in accordance with the foreign policy of the Clinton administration. Cheney is
certainly not the only Washington mover and shaker to have been affiliated with a company
trading in Iraq. Former CIA Director John Deutsch, who served in a Democratic
administration, is a member of the board of directors of Schlumberger, the second-largest
U.S. oil-services company, which also does business through subsidiaries in Iraq. Despite
occasional rhetorical skirmishes, a bipartisan foreign-policy consensus prevails on
Capital Hill, where the commitment to human rights, with a few notable exceptions, is
about as deep as an oil slick.
Truth be told, trading with the enemy is a time-honored American corporate practice
or perhaps "malpractice" would be a more appropriate description of big-business
ties to repressive regimes. Given that Saddam Hussein, the pariah du jour, has often been
compared to Hitler, it's worth pointing out that several blue-chip U.S. firms profited
from extensive commercial dealings with Nazi Germany. Shockingly, some American companies,
including Standard Oil, Ford, ITT, GM, and General Electric, secretly kept trading with
the Nazi enemy while American soldiers fought and died during World War II.
Today General Electric is among the companies that are back in business with Saddam
Hussein, even as American jets and battleships attack Iraq on a weekly basis using weapons
made by General Electric. But the United Nations sanctions committee, dominated by U.S.
officials, has routinely blocked medicines and other essential items from being delivered
to Iraq through the oil-for-food program, claiming they have a potential military
"dual use." These sanctions have taken a terrible toll on ordinary Iraqis, and
on children in particular, while the likes of Halliburton and General Electric continue to
lubricate their coffers.
Martin A. Lee is author of 'The Beast
Reawakens', a book about resurgent fascism.
His column, Reality Bites, appears every Monday on
http://www.sfbg.com
Source: www.sfbg.com/reality/04.html
My note: Cheney was the US Defence Secretary at the time of the Gulf war. It was he who had responsibility for target lists, which included all of Iraq's oil facilities. To cut a long story short: first you blow it up, then you sell it back to them.