Cheney Calls Iraq, Afghan Wars Brilliant (For Cheney's Halliburton maybe )

[bigtree]

But, not for the soldiers or the 100,00 civilians. And, who was that whack-a-mole with the long beard mocking us, still at large? Could that be the same bin Laden that Bush said he wanted dead or alive? Alive he is.


MONTOURSVILLE, Pa. - Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) said Friday the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) will go down in history, along with the war in Afghanistan (news - web sites), for its "brilliance."

>>>>At an airport rally at a hangar in Montoursville, Pa., Cheney said the U.S. invasions of "Afghanistan and Iraq will be studied for years for their brilliance."

>>>>"Our troops were doing their job," Cheney said as he called Kerry an "armchair general," a characterization the vice president has been using for several days.

>>>>"He didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down Osama bin Laden," Kerry said in an interview with WISM in Milwaukee. "He outsourced the job."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041029/ap_on_el_pr/cheney_26
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The Associated Press
Oct. 29, 2004

John Edwards said today that the missing explosives in Iraq and an FBI investigation into Halliburton contracts in Iraq prove that new leadership is needed in the White House.

“They’ve been incompetent in Iraq, and here at home they always look out for their powerful friends at the top,” Edwards said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6359960/
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October 29, 2004

Halliburton Contracts Bypassed Objections

Halliburton has become an election-year issue, with Democratic candidate Sen. John F. Kerry criticizing the billions of dollars' worth of work in Iraq awarded to Halliburton without competitive bidding.

But the previously undisclosed documents are part of a growing body of evidence indicating unusual treatment was given to government contracts won by the Houston-based firm.

Career civil servants repeatedly raised objections to contracting decisions that benefited Halliburton, only to be overruled by higher-ups.

A no-bid contract worth as much as $7 billion awarded in secret to Halliburton to protect Iraq's oil assets has been the subject of the most sustained criticism by government employees.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-na-halliburton29oct29,0,7146099.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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The election of George Bush and Dick Cheney was a watershed for the military corporations. Both had been stalwart supporters of the multibillion dollar military industry; Bush in his home state and Cheney, wherever he could exploit his tenure as defense secretary during the first Iraq war, and build on his past deal-making with the coalition members.

During the 2000 campaign Cheney complained that "developments of new military technologies (had) reached all-time lows." But that would only be a concern to the industry, not to the average American. The U.S. arsenal is full of high-tech weapons that don't work or that they don't use.

This call for a new generation of weapons is intended to facilitate the agendas of Bush administration hawks who would project U.S. influence around the globe like mercenary carpetbaggers; through intimidation from the force of our weaponry; with our soldiers; and through the supplying of ‘commercial’ armies whenever a commitment of our forces is politically difficult, or prohibited by Congress.

Cheney's lifetime immersion in governmental affairs has provided him ample opportunity to feather his own nest, and to lay the groundwork for the increased insinuation of his network of corporate partners and associates' pet projects into the military and government appropriations process.

Cheney began his government career in the Nixon administration working under Donald Rumsfeld, who was the improbable director of one of the nation's first anti-poverty programs, the Office of Economic Opportunity.

After a stint in Congress, Cheney was called back into the executive branch to serve as Secretary of Defense for Bush I. The wartime connections that he made with leaders of the Mideast oil countries, made him an attractive candidate for the Halliburton oil corporation, who had recently merged with Kellogg, Burton, and Root.

Kellogg, Brown, and Root was hired in 1992 for $3.9 million by then-Defense Secretary Cheney to present a report on the privatizing of certain army functions, such as building camps and providing food for soldiers. This move opened the door for the private support army which has enabled the Pentagon to (barely) maintain forces for President Bush's expanded military agenda. http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=2471

Halliburton has been a major beneficiary of the expansion of U.S. military operations around the world in the aftermath of September 11. During Cheney's five years of employment there, the company doubled the amount of revenue it received from government contracts.

CorpWatch reported that, in 1998 Cheney took home $4.4 million in salary and benefits and in 1999 he was paid $1.92 million, according to the company's own financial reports. http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=2469

In May 2000, he cashed in 100,000 Halliburton shares to net another $5.1 million and then sold the rest of his shares in August 2000 for $18.5 million, adding up to a total of almost $30 million in just two years. He's still on the payroll there, receiving anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million a year.

Can you say war-profiteer Dick?

[Beaverhausen]

1. what color is the sky in his world?

[liberalmuse]

2. It's kind of like Dr. Evil...

describing Hot Pockets as 'breathtaking'. The banality of evil.