devastating New Yorker piece on Cheney-Halliburton

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

There's lots about the sleazy veep, his less than honorable "former" company and the cascade of GOP ties to other commercial interests in the "rebuilding" of Iraq.

But look at what may lie in the Scalia-protected energy task force papers:

<http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact>

...
For months there has been a debate in Washington about when the Bush Administration decided to go to war against Saddam. In Ron Suskind’s recent book “The Price of Loyalty,” former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney’s newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were links between Cheney’s Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam. But Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, told me that he regards the document as potentially “huge.” He said, “People think Cheney’s Energy Task Force has been secretive about domestic issues,” referring to the fact that the Vice-President has been unwilling to reveal information about private task-force meetings that took place in 2001, when information was being gathered to help develop President Bush’s energy policy. “But if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.”

[macedc]

1. This is Almost Certainy True

I've said all along that this is the real reason they are fightimg so hard to keep this under wraps.

The lefties are right about this one.

One of the big reasons they went to Iraq is the oil.

But in defense of that reason, if the america citizenry does not want to start riding the green wave, cutting major consumption of oil, then they are effectively voting for this oil based foreign policy.

We need a president who will lead, but ordinay americans (this means you) must walk the walk.

[NJCher]

2. I know what you mean

A lot of people here, at least, do "walk the walk." Meaning they actually walk or bike to work.

Others, such as myself, want to work in a "green" industry. I have had many ideas for such businesses but am perplexed about getting them off the ground when the culture as a whole does not support these types of ideas. The government no longer provides funding or impetus for such businesses, either.


Cher

[Cassandra]

3. And then there's also the question...

of whether destruction in Iraq was planned with an eye towards maximizing the profit to Halliburton and others; i.e., were unstrategic targets hit to provide excuses for rebuilding?

[indepat]

5. Surely you jest: none but the most corrupt could ever be so heinous

[enough]

4. Lots of interesting stuff here.

Just one snip>

Halliburton’s efforts in the field were considered highly effective. Yet Sam Gardiner, the retired Air Force colonel, told me that the success of private contractors in the battlefield has had an unforeseen consequence at the Pentagon. “It makes it too easy to go to war,” he said. “When you can hire people to go to war, there’s none of the grumbling and the political friction.” He noted that much of the scut work now being contracted out to firms like Halliburton was traditionally performed by reserve soldiers, who often complain the loudest.

There are some hundred and thirty-five thousand American troops in Iraq, but Gardiner estimated that there would be as many as three hundred thousand if not for private contractors. He said, “Think how much harder it would have been to get Congress, or the American public, to support those numbers.”

more>

[starroute]

9. So if there were 500,000 troops in Vietnam . . .

that's equivalent to roughly 225,000 troops today.

Which means that if they went ahead and put 100,000 troops into Afghanistan (which I saw somebody claiming was what it would take to really pacify the country), we'd be up to Vietnam-equivalent troop levels in the Middle East right there.

Interesting thought.

[priller]

6. Accountability -- Repugs love to talk about it, hate to do it

Unlike government agencies, private contractors can resist Freedom of Information Act requests and are insulated from direct congressional oversight. Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic representative from Illinois, told me, “It’s almost as if these private military contractors are involved in a secret war.” Private companies, she noted, can conceal details of their missions from public scrutiny in the name of protecting trade secrets. They are also largely exempt from salary caps and government ethics rules designed to protect policy from being polluted by politics. The Hatch Act, for example, forbids most government employees from giving money to political campaigns.

Halliburton has no such constraints. The company made political contributions of more than seven hundred thousand dollars between 1999 and 2002, almost always to Republican candidates or causes. In 2000, it donated $17,677 to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Indeed, the seventy or so companies that have Iraq contracts have contributed more money to President Bush than they did to any other candidate during the past twelve years.

In O'Neill's book he expresses surprise at how dedicated Bush is to the notion of privatization, that he talks about it with almost religious fervor. And no wonder! It embodies all those principles Bush's crony conservative hold dear: corruption and lack of accountability.

[littlejoe]

7. Cheney looks and acts like Montgomery Burns.

Enough said.

[Snappy]

8. 100% of the Dems in Congress....

must demanmd that Scalia recuse himself.

[BeHereNow]

10. Dream on!

The Dems said NOTHING while Lady Liberty was RAPED.
It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
AND, it can only get better by cleaning the house-
literally.
Throw ALL of them out. With a few exceptions that is.
BHN