full circle

[pynchonoid]

May 12, 2003

Group Therapy

Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel and Baghdad

By CHRIS FLOYD

Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that has,
lazar-like, long encrusted the American body politic
were not surprised to see the hoary name of the
Bechtel Group bobbing up in the swill of sweetheart
deals now being doled out by the Corrupter-in-Chief
for the "reconstruction" of his new fiefdom in Iraq.
Decades before its comrade in cronyism, the Carlyle
Group, made its meteoric, Bush-assisted ascent to
global prominence, Bechtel had already perfected the
dark art of milking intimate government connections
for fat, risk-free contracts.

Last week, while the notorious coward George W. Bush
--who walked away from his National Guard duty during
the Vietnam War, a criminal act known as "desertion"
when committed by lesser mortals --was basking in the
man-musk of a shipload of sailors, reciting his usual
lies about al Qaeda's "alliance" with Saddam Hussein,
and weasel-wording his "victory" declaration to avoid
taking full legal responsibility for the consequences
of the war of aggression he had unleashed, Bechtel was
quietly pocketing a secret, closed-bid, open-ended
Iraq contract that could give them almost $700 million
in taxpayer money before the 2004 election --with the
alluring prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother
Jones reports. 

What's more, as the New Yorker reports, this public
largess will also fill the coffers of a key Bechtel
partner in Saudi Arabia --a well-connected global
conglomerate that has also been a long-time financial
partner of both George Bush I and George Bush II: the
Bin Laden Group.

Bechtel, which has served Saudi royalty for more than
60 years, bristles with heavyweight kleptoplute
connections. During the 1980s, current Bush warlord
Don Rumsfeld acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel
pipeline project in the Middle East, operating with
the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration's
secretary of state, George Schultz --Bechtel's former
president (and now "senior counsel" to the company).
Rummy conducted a passionate two-year courtship of a
certain Saddam Hussein, plying him with trinkets,
blandishments and sweetmeats to win his lordly favor
for a Bechtel-built line from Iraq to Jordan,
according to national security archives obtained by
the Institute for Policy Studies. 

Rumsfeld's strenuous attempt to lay pipe with Saddam
happened to coincide with the latter's most extensive
use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war --gassing
carried out with the exemplary assistance of U.S.
military intelligence and technology provided by the
Reagan-Bush administration and its "special envoy" to
Baghdad: Don Rumsfeld. Meanwhile, another Reagan-Bush
crony, Attorney General Ed Meese, tried to bribe the
Israeli government with $700 million in secret funds
to put the kibosh on their opposition to the Bechtel
deal, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. This
skullduggery earned Meese an investigation by a
special prosecutor, but as the case lacked the key
element of any serious government crime --oral sex
with an intern --the probe was soon dropped.

In the end, Saddam --who first went on the CIA payroll
back in the early 1960s, Reuters reports --balked at
Bechtel's billion-dollar price tag and rejected the
project. Now of course, in a fitting bit of historical
symmetry, the son of the CIA's most famous director,
George Bush, has handed Iraq to Bechtel on a silver
platter.

This move will delight --and enrich --the Bush/Bechtel
buddies in the Bin Laden Group. As oft noted in these
pages, in the 1980s George W. Bush received a helping
hand for his floundering oil businesses from the Saudi
group's front man, Khalid bin Mahfouz, who secretly
cast bin Laden bread upon American waters to win
influence with well-connected kleptoplutes --like,
say, the wayward son of the former CIA director and
then-current Vice President.

Today, Mahfouz is under house arrest in Saudi Arabia
for allegedly financing the holy-war hijinks of the
bin Ladens' own wayward son, Osama. Or to be
completely accurate, he's accused of financing those
holy-war hijinks after the Reagan-Bush CIA finally
stopped financing them. But despite his confinement,
Mahfouz (who is also Osama's brother-in-law) is still
a player in the kleptoplute nexus: for example, he's
currently a business partner of former New Jersey
Governor Thomas Kean --the very man whom George W.
Bush has appointed to chair the investigation of the
September 11 terrorist attacks allegedly ordered by,
yes, that ex-CIA employee and former executive of the
Bin Laden Group: Osama bin Laden.

The Bin Laden Group was also heavily invested in the
Carlyle Group, the "private equity" firm (and major
arms merchant) that, like Bechtel, specializes in the
sell-off of public services and other
government-insider deals. Carlyle's best-known bagman,
George Bush I, used to make ritual pilgrimages to bin
Laden family headquarters in Saudi Arabia to procure
their potent baksheesh. When Carlyle's post-Sept. 11
orgy of war-profiteering began drawing unwanted
attention, however, the bin Ladens cashed in their
Carlyle chips and, officially, ended the partnership.

But they remain welded to Bechtel and will now reap
the fruits of the latest installment of the War of the
Wayward Sons --a conflict driven on both sides by
ludicrous and primitive religious passions coupled
with a voracious lust for power and loot. Yet although
this war has now engulfed the entire planet, it is no
"clash of civilizations" or grand agon of
world-historical forces. As shown by the small
sampling of connections above, it's more of a dust-up
in the boardroom, a falling-out at the country club, a
bit of bad blood amongst a tiny clique of vicious
predators threaded together in a Byzantine web of
kinship, corporate ties --and complicity in
generations of murderous crime.

Chris Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and a
regular contributor to CounterPunch. He can be reached
at: cfloyd72 at hotmail.com

<http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd05122003.html>



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