still no War profits in this economy, sir!

[pynchonoid]

This Iraq war be shaping up as a major corporate
welfare scam.  One set of companies profits when you
blow it up, another rakes it in on the reconstruction.
 Having the Vice President's fingers so obviously in
the bloody gravy train seems a bit much; Bush's war
profiteering happens a bit more discreetly.

"Don't forget the real business of the War is buying
and selling. The murdering and the violence are
self-policing, and can be entrusted to
non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is
useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as
diversion from the real movements of the War. It
provides raw material to be recorded into History, so
that children may be taught History as sequences of
violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared
for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a
stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to
try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still
here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
markets."
Gravity's Rainbow, p. 105


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,912515,00.html

Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor 

Bush deputy gets up to $1m from firm with Iraq oil
deal 

Robert Bryce in Austin, Texas and Julian Borger in
Washington
Wednesday March 12, 2003
The Guardian 

Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded
the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field
fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar
construction contracts, is still making annual
payments to its former chief executive, the
vice-president Dick Cheney. 

[...] The company would not say how much the payments
[to Cheney] are. The obligatory disclosure statement
filled by all top government officials says only that
they are in the range of $100,000 and $1m. Nor is it
clear how they are calculated. 

Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the
others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons
Corp, and the Louis Berger Group - invited to bid for
contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest
reconstruction project since the second world war. 

It is estimated to be worth up to $900m for the
preliminary work alone, such as rebuilding Iraq's
hospitals, ports, airports and schools. 

[...] In the five years Mr Cheney was at the helm,
Halliburton nearly doubled the amount of business it
did with the government to $2.3bn. The company also
more than doubled its political contributions to
$1.2m, overwhelmingly to Republican candidates. [...] 

<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2356295>

 U.S. Invites Bids for Iraq Reconstruction Work 
Mon March 10, 2003 03:56 PM ET 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has invited
at least five engineering companies to submit bids for
a contract to do reconstruction work in Iraq, U.S. and
company officials said on Monday.

The winning company would get about $900 million to
repair Iraqi health services, ports and airports, and
schools and other educational institutions, they said.

"Because of the urgent circumstances and the unique
nature of this work, USAID will undertake a limited
selection process that expedites the review and
selection of contractors for these projects," said a
spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for International
Development.

The Wall Street Journal said invitations also went to
Parsons Corp., Louis Berger Group Inc. and Kellogg
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Co. once
headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The USAID spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified,
said the invitation was part of the U.S. government's
contingency planning for Iraq, which the United States
has threatened to invade with or without U.N.
approval.

Asked to explain the narrow selection of companies for
such a large contract and the secrecy of the
procedure, she said, "These are not companies which
are new to this type of work."

Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root has already won a
government contract to oversee firefighting operations
at Iraqi oilfields after any U.S.-led invasion, a
Defense Department source told Reuters last week.
Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive officer from
1995 to 2000. [...]

"[...] this ex-refinery, Jamf Olfabriken Werke AG, is
not a ruin at all. It is in perfect working order.
Only waiting for the right connections to be set up,
to be switched on . . . modified, precisely,
deliberately by bombing that was never hostile, but
part of a plan both sides -- "sides?"-- had always
agreed on . . . [...] if what the IG built on this
site were not at all the final shape of it, but only
an arrangment of fetishes, come-ons to call down
special tools in the form of 8th AF bombers [...] It
means this War was never political at all, the
politics was all theater, all just to keep the people
distracted . . . secretly, it was being dictated
instead by the needs of technology . . . by a
conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by
something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying,
'Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of
Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn
is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding,
funding, ahh more, more. . . . The real crises were
crises of allocationa nd priority, not among firms--it
was only staged to look that way--but among the
different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics,
Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by
the ruling elite . . . " 
(Gravity's Rainbow, p. 520-521)

...enjoy!

-Doug



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