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NPR's "Fresh Air", Cheney & Halliburton, today: Jane Mayer

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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 08:37 AM
Original message
NPR's "Fresh Air", Cheney & Halliburton, today: Jane Mayer
http://freshair.npr.org

Thursday

Jane Mayer, Staff Writer for The New Yorker. She'll discuss Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton, where he was chief executive for five years. Halliburton is the world's largest oil-and-gas-services company, and it is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq. Mayer's article "Contract Sport: What Did the Vice-President Do for Halliburton?" is in the current issue of the magazine. (Feb. 16 and 23 issue).
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 09:41 AM
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1. kick
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 10:07 AM
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2. Her New Yorker article, with this amazing smoking gun:
Old thread on this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1125619

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

CONTRACT SPORT
by JANE MAYER
What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?
Issue of 2004-02-16 and 23
Posted 2004-02-09

<snip>

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.”

<snip>

After months spent trying to obtain more information about the classified Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman’s staff discovered that the original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a full restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. “We thought it was supposed to be a short-term, small contract, but now it turns out Halliburton is restoring the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq,” Waxman said. The Defense Department’s only public acknowledgments of this wide-ranging deal had been two press releases announcing that it had asked Halliburton to prepare to help put out oil-well fires. The most recent budget request provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq mentions the building of a new oil refinery and the drilling of new wells. “They said originally they were just going to bring it up to prewar levels. Now they’re getting money to dramatically improve it,” Waxman complained. Who is going to own these upgrades, after the United States government has finished paying Halliburton to build them? “Who knows?” Waxman said. “Nobody is saying.”

<snip>

It is not surprising that Cheney, after five years of running Halliburton, a company that considers war as providing “growth opportunities,” regards winning the peace in Iraq as a challenge for private enterprise as well as for government. Yet it is reasonable to ask if Cheney’s faith in companies like Halliburton contributed to his conviction that the occupation of Iraq would be a tidy, easily managed affair. Now that Cheney’s vision has been shown to be overly optimistic, and Iraqis and American soldiers are still getting killed ten months after Saddam’s overthrow, critics are questioning the propriety of a reconstruction effort that is fuelled by the profit motive. “I’m appalled that the war is being used by people close to the Bush Administration to make money for themselves,” Waxman said. “At a time when we’re asking young men and women to make perhaps the ultimate sacrifice, it’s just unseemly.” Many of those involved, however, see themselves as part of a democratic vanguard. Jack Kemp’s spokesman, P. J. Johnson, told me, “We’re doing good by doing well.” Joe Allbaugh, Bush’s former campaign manager, who has established New Bridge Strategies, a firm aimed specifically at setting up for-profit ventures in Iraq, makes no apologies. “We are proud of the leadership the American private sector is taking in the reconstruction of Iraq,” he said.

<more>
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Midwest_Doc Donating Member (548 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 10:11 AM
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3. Bravo NPR!
Another example of how NPR is the only legitimate source of mass-media news left in the United States. SUPPORT NPR!
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1gobluedem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 12:51 PM
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5. Yes!
As the development director of an NPR affiliate, I have to agree! Fresh Air was fantastic today.
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Az Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 12:54 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. Careful
We have some here that are angry with NPR's apparent turn to the dark side. They should be arriving soon.
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 12:30 PM
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4. kick
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Bandit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 01:10 PM
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7. It is apparent there are Brave Democrats working in the background
trying to get the word out that War Profiteering is the Main Agenda of this Administration. I am optimistic for our side.
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maxsolomon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 01:31 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. securing the oil supply for america to guzzle
is the main agenda of this administration.

that's why they think they're the good guys. they know what's coming. the spice must flow!
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diamond14 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 01:34 PM
Response to Reply #7
9. yes ! but we need to keep working...it's very important not to slack
off now....

a new world is possible and we can make it happen....


STAND UP...and keep fighting...don't give up....(Paul Wellstone)
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 02:42 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. kick
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chookie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 05:07 PM
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11. A couple of points
I urge every one to listen to this.

I don't think she did so intentionally, but she certainly bolstered the case of those of us who believe that this was a war for profit, above all.

She said that Halliburton was chosen, because it *exists* to quickly respond to military situations, like invasions and occupations. So just a coincidence that Cheney is linked to this corporation, and has profited enormously from it -- and the rush to war? Just "one of those things" that a massive military response to Iraq's alleged dangers to the world community was the road taken, and not sanctions.

She said that competitive bidding was not considered, and the massive cost overruns we see now as well, because the corporation needed to respond when the administration was in a hurry to begin the war, and only Halliburton was able to get it all in order in order to meet their timetable. Makes me conclude that this was deliberate -- they rushed to war simply so Halliburton could get maximum profits.
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diamond14 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 07:28 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. IMO, both women hammered cheney right to the wall....they
Edited on Thu Feb-19-04 07:35 PM by amen1234


covered every aspect of the cheney BILLION DOLLAR rip off of OUR money...including cheney 'the man to contact' if you want work in Iraq....cheney 'the no experience at all in oil work', yet suddenly made a VP at Halliburton when he leaves his pentagoon job...the cheney 'all deals are done on golf-courses and hunting trips' evasion of government rules and regs, cozy insider operations with BILLIONS of dollars of OUR money...and the cheney 'war is a growth industry right in Halliburton's corporate report'....even linked to to cheney 'will not allow us to see the Energy meeting minutes' and revealed memos showing cheney's call to war at the Energy meetings way before 9/11.....they named names, cited memos and meetings...added lots of pertinent details, like why cheney's resume fails always to list his 5 years as the VP at Haliburton...no mention, just disappeared....

they got a statement from the pentagoon's own war college, a professor, who noted how much EASIER it is now for America to go to war...since there are NO grunt army guys peeling potatoes and cleaning latrines...it all looks real like a minor inconvenience to most Americans...the total number of people required appears much much smaller, since contractors do lots of the grunt work...Haliburton is a private company, so nobody can look at it's records, unlike 'freedom of information' for government work...and lots less people getting military retirements/benefits...contractors are just those 'invisible military people' and makes us all think the war is just a small effort...only 150,000 troops....dead contractors don't even make the body count...

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anarchy1999 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-19-04 08:43 PM
Response to Original message
13. "War is a Racket" - Smedley Butler
Reading all these posts, I came to the last two and it just flashed into my mind. Dear General Butler called it, didn't he?

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

and then next came Eisenhower's farewell speech to the nation where he warned of the "military industrial complex".

Woe unto us the citizens, we ignored their warnings. We have, our parents did and our parents, parents. It's up to all of us now. We've got a short amount of time to change it and we are having to fight on MANY fronts. The Patriot Act, our elected officials, the right wing Christian fundamentalists, electronic voting. We're in a war of our very own, right here. I think this is what Osama wanted to see happen. The US will be it's own destruction. Empires fail, historically, period. As an empire, we're not doing very well, and we are very young. Sad state of affairs.
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