Did McCain's foreign-policy advisor profit from the Iraq war?

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In a confidential memo, a company tells investors consultant Randy Scheunemann can help it win Iraqi oil contracts -- because he was a "key player" in getting the U.S. to invade.


Editor's note: The full document is available here.

August 1, 2008

As recently as last year, John McCain's senior foreign-policy and national security advisor, a neoconservative who played a leading role in pushing for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, was trying to use his role in promoting the Iraq war to make money off Iraqi oil. In a confidential memo, a company called World Strategic Energy, for which top McCain aide Randy Scheunemann was an executive consultant, told prospective investors that Scheunemann could help World Strategic Energy win oil contracts in Iraq because he was well-connected in the Iraqi exile community and had been a "key player" in getting the U.S. involved in Iraq. The memo was first published by blogger and Salon contributor Lindsay Beyerstein, who wrote that the 44-page brochure-style "placement memorandum" was being circulated to potential investors as late as 2007.

Scheunemann was pushing for the use of U.S. military force in Iraq a decade ago. He was a director of the Project for the New American Century, the neoconservative group that sent a public letter to President Clinton in 1998 urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In 1998, while working for Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, he helped author a bill that gave close to $100 million to the Iraqi National Congress, the anti-Hussein exile group run by Ahmad Chalabi. The World Strategic Energy document memo includes a photo of Scheunemann with Chalabi. After working on McCain's failed presidential bid in 2000, Scheunemann went on to become the head of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a non-government organization with close ties to the Bush administration that was formed in 2002 and dedicated to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003. "Randy Scheunemann was a key player in the U.S. involvement in the Iraq war," says the memo. "[H]e coordinated the White House's 'Outside the Government' public relations campaign on Iraq while administering relationships with key Iraqi leaders in exile." The brochure says that thanks to Scheunemann, "some of the team's strongest relationships are in Iraq."

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[edit on 2-8-2008 by Dubyakadubla]

I did a little research on Randy Scheunemann, and I found no evidence of him ever being a liberal. Therefore the can't be a neo-conservative.

In a confidential memo, a company tells investors consultant Randy Scheunemann can help it win Iraqi oil contracts -- because he was a "key player" in getting the U.S. to invade.


Editor's note: The full document is available here.

August 1, 2008

As recently as last year, John McCain's senior foreign-policy and national security advisor, a neoconservative

I stopped reading right there, did a little research and found out they are lying about him being a neoconservative, so why would I believe anything else they have to say?

Many people have profited from the war on both side of the aisles. Guess you got to invest your money somewhere. Don't really think I can blame them. The ultimate goal of investment is to make a profit. It might be a conflict of interest with Congress in my view but the all mighty ethical Congress sees it different.

Who profits from the Iraq war? More than a quarter of senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq.

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Whither McCain on Stevens’ Indictment?

July 30, 2008, 5:33 pm

By Michael Cooper

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Senator Ted Stevens, the newly indicted Alaska Republican, made one of his regular unnamed cameos in Senator John McCain’s stump speech on Wednesday – but Mr. McCain did not mention his new troubles.

Mr. McCain regularly rails against the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere” that Mr. Stevens sought to build to a sparsely -populated island in Alaska. And while he brought it up again Wednesday at a campaign stop in Colorado, he did not mention Mr. Stevens or the indictment. Mr. McCain spoke about the bridge – which was not built in the end – while talking about a man he had met who was struggling to pay for fuel.

“He’s not happy, and neither are you, that your gas taxes goes to things like a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it,’’ Mr. McCain said. “That’s 233 million, by the way.’’

Mr. McCain also used a standard line about pork barrel spending in Washington. “We will stop this corrupt practice in Washington D.C., which has caused former members of Congress to reside in federal prison; it’s wrong, and I’ll fix it, my friends, and I know how to fix it,’’ he said. “We’ll stop wasting your tax dollars.’’

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