All In The Family

[pynchonoid]

No War profits in this economy, no sir!  First,
Business Week, now even CBS gets it....

(CBS) Almost as soon as the last bomb was dropped over
Iraq, the United States began the business of
rebuilding the country. As it turns out, it's very big
business. 

The U.S. will spend approximately $25 billion to
repair Iraq by the end of next year - and billions
will be needed after that. 

Almost all of that money will go to private
contractors who vie for lucrative government deals to
rebuild Iraq's roads, retrain its police force and
operate its airports. 

[...] Lewis says the trend towards privatizing the
military began during the first Bush administration
when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. In 1992,
the Pentagon, under Cheney, commissioned the
Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to do a classified
study on whether it was a good idea to have private
contractors do more of the military's work. 

“Of course, they said it's a terrific idea, and over
the next eight years, Kellogg, Brown & Root and
another company got 2,700 contracts worth billions of
dollars,” says Lewis. 

“So they helped to design the architecture for
privatizing a lot of what happens today in the
Pentagon when we have military engagements. And two
years later, when he leaves the department of defense,
Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Thank you very much.
It's a nice arrangement for all concerned.” 
During the five years that Cheney was at Halliburton,
the company nearly doubled the value of its federal
contracts, and the vice president became a very rich
man. 

Lewis is not saying that Cheney did anything illegal.
But he doesn't believe for a minute that this was all
just a coincidence. 

“Why would a defense secretary, former chief of staff
to a president, and former member of congress with no
business experience ever in his life, not for a day,
why would he become the CEO of a multibillion dollar
oil services company,” asks Lewis 

“Well, it could be related to government contracts. He
was brought in to raise their government contract
profile. And he did. And they ended up with billions
of dollars in new contracts because they had a former
defense secretary at the helm.” 

Cheney, Lewis says, may be an honorable and brilliant
man, but “as George Washington Plunkett once said, ‘I
saw my … seen my opportunities and I took them."

[...] the best example of these cozy relationships is
the defense policy board, a group of high-powered
civilians who advise the secretary of defense on major
policy issues - like whether or not to invade Iraq.
Its 30 members are a Who's Who of former senior
government and military officials. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, but as the Center For
Public Integrity recently discovered, nine of them
have ties to corporations and private companies that
have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts.
And that's just in the last two years. 

“This is not about the revolving door, people going in
and out,” says Lewis. “There is no door. There's no
wall. I can't tell where one stops and the other
starts. I'm dead serious.” 
 
“They have classified clearances, they go to
classified meetings and they're with companies getting
billions of dollars in classified contracts. And their
disclosures about their activities are classified.
Well, isn't that what they did when they were inside
the government? What's the difference, except they're
in the private sector.” 

Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the defense
policy board last month after it was disclosed that he
had financial ties to several companies doing business
with the Pentagon. 

But Perle still sits on the board, along with former
CIA director James Woolsey, who works for the
consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. The firm did
nearly $700 million dollars in business with the
Pentagon last year. 

Another board member, retired four-star general Jack
Sheehan, is now a senior vice president at the Bechtel
corporation, which just won a $680 million contract to
rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq. 

That contract was awarded by the State Department,
which used to be run by George Schultz, who sits on
Bechtel's board of directors. 

“I'm not saying that it's illegal. These guys wrote
the laws. They set up the system for themselves. Of
course it's legal,” says Lewis. 

“It just looks like hell. It looks like you have folks
feeding at the trough. And they may be doing it in red
white and blue and we may be all singing the "Star
Spangled Banner," but they're doing quite well.” 

[...] As for Vice President Cheney, he says he had
nothing to do with the Army Corp's decision to give
the no bid contract to Halliburton. Cheney also
insists he cut all financial ties to the company three
years ago. 

But this week, Senate democrats challenged that
assertion. They say the vice president still gets
hundreds of thousands of dollars from his former
company each year - and they called for congressional
hearings on Halliburton's contract. 

<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/25/60minutes/main551091.shtml>



__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com