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Cheney/Bush steal $7B from the US

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posted on Apr, 11 2003 @ 01:29 PM
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Innocent Question #29383750... Now that the General Accounting Office has revealed the sordid details behind the formerly Cheney-run Halliburton's two-year/seven billion dollar no-bid/no-take-backs/no-questions-asked contract with the Pentagon to put out oil well fires - and taking into account the fact that there are currently no oil well fires waiting to be put out in Iraq - would it be too cynical to assume that the crews will make work for themselves by planting WMD throughout the desert? Or that they're probably doing that right this very moment? I mean, they gotta earn that money somehow, right? And they're real tight with the executive branch, so they'd be naturally inclined to help a brother out, right? So why not kill two birds with one rocket-propelled depleted uranium fragmentation device?

Extra bonus rhetorical question: Where do they get the balls?!



Details Given on Contract Halliburton Was Awarded
By ELIZABETH BECKER


WASHINGTON, April 10 The Pentagon contract given without competition to a Halliburton subsidiary to fight oil well fires in Iraq is worth as much as $7 billion over two years, according to a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers that was released today.

The contract also allows Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, to earn as much as 7 percent profit. That could amount to $490 million.

The corps released these new details in a letter to Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and one of the two senior lawmakers who asked the General Accounting Office to investigate how the Bush administration is awarding contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.
............

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, Kellogg Brown & Root has won significant additional business from the federal government and the Pentagon. It has built cells for detainees at Guantmo Bay in Cuba and is the exclusive logistics supplier for the Navy and the Army, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation.

READ ABOUT THE DISGRACE HERE


But of course, it's been a well established gravy train route by now...

The War on Terrorism's Gravy Train

Cheney's Former Company Wins Afghanistan War Contracts


By Pratap Chatterjee
Special to CorpWatch
May 2, 2002

Queenstown, Vogaria, West Africa -- On July 16, 2000, United States Army scrambled to deploy troops at the request of the embattled Vogarian government in a top secret mission code named Operation Restore Order.

Political and economic instability, factional fighting outside the capital of Queenstown created large numbers of displaced civilians. Large-scale famine and disease were feared. In five days the U.S. Army teamed up with a private company in Texas to deploy and assemble a military camp out of a pre-fabricated kit known as Force Provider to assist the Vogarians.

Vogaria, of course, is a fictional country but the military exercise -- which took place at Fort McPherson, Georgia and the Diamond Reserve Center in Louisiana -- could not be more real. The Logistics Civil Augmentation Program's War Fighter Exercise 2000 was the first ever Department of Defense simulation of civilian contractors assisting the army in rapid response assembly of military bases in a war situation.

The U.S. military has always relied on private contractors to provide some basic services such as construction, dating back as far as the Civil War. But today as much as 10% of the emergency U.S. army operations overseas are contracted out to private companies run by former government and military officials. These private companies operate with no public oversight despite the fact that these contractors work just behind the battle lines. The companies are allowed to make up to nine percent in profit out of these war support efforts. And experience so far has shown that the companies are not above skimming more profits off the top if they can.



Kellogg, Brown & Root Joins the War on Terrorism
Employees of Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton Corporation of Dallas, Texas, are set to arrive at the Bagram airbase in southern Afghanistan in late April or early May 2002 (the exact date is classified) to take over the support services a Force Provider camp. They are also scheduled to arrive at the Khanabad airbase in Uzbekistan, one of the main military support stations for the war in Afghanistan, to run three Air Force Harvest Eagle camps (an earlier version of Force Provider) for the 1,500 U.S troops based there since October, according to Daniel McGinty, a spokesman at the Defense Contract Management Agency.

Kellogg, Brown & Root will take charge of support services including base camp maintenance, laundry services, food services, airfield services, and supply operations, among others. Gale L. Smith, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Operations Support Command in Alexandria, Virginia refuses to confirm or deny whether Kellogg, Brown & Root would be working on similar bases in Manas, Kyrgyzstan or other sites in Afghanistan and Pakistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom. The new job is one of the first examples of a lucrative, new ten-year contract that Kellogg, Brown & Root won from the Pentagon on December 14, 2001 titled Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). The contract is what the Pentagon calls a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service," which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Kellogg, Brown & Root anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for profit.



The Revolving Door
Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root's parent company, is a Fortune 500 construction corporation working primarily for the oil industry. In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement privatization of routine army functions under Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense.

When Cheney quit his job at the Pentagon, he landed the job as chief executive of Halliburton, bringing with him, his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton's government business until they quit in 2000 when Cheney was elected vice-president, taking multi-million dollar golden parachutes with them. Since then, another former military office and Cheney confidante, Admiral Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for U.S. forces in southern Europe, took over Gribbin's former job of go-between the government and the company, according to Kellogg, Brown & Root's own press releases. Other close friends include Richard Armitage, the assistant secretary of state, who worked as a consultant to Halliburton before taking up his present job.


more...

www.corpwatch.org...



posted on Apr, 15 2003 @ 10:25 AM
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Invading, occupying and rebuilding Iraq will cost American taxpayers more than $100 billion. But for some lucky companies, Iraq is emerging as a profit center. The administration has begun farming out contracts, and politically connected firms like Halliburton are among the early winners. This looks like naked favoritism and undermines the Bush administration's portrayal of the war as a campaign for disarmament and democracy, not lucre.

Despite the limited damage of this war, the ravages of earlier conflicts and sanctions have left much of Iraq in ruins. Roads, ports and schools must be rebuilt, the oil industry revived and power grids and communications networks repaired. Some emergency contracts need to be awarded right away. But that does not mean this should be done without competition or that such contracts should be long term. Moreover, by grabbing much of the first year's money, the favored American companies may have a leg up for signing future deals as well. Reconstruction is expected to cost some $20 billion a year for the next three years.

With so much money involved it is vital that bidding be competitive, transparent and open to all. That has not happened so far. Shortly before the war began, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a no-bid contract to fight oil fires for the next two years to a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company Vice President Dick Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000. The deal could be worth as much as $7 billion.

Federal contracting regulations allow normal rules to be bypassed when time is short and national security concerns are involved. Those exceptions may apply to oil fields set aflame during the fighting, but it's hard to see how they justify a multiyear contract. Congress has rightly asked the corps to provide details on the Halliburton contract and on why no competing firms were allowed to bid.

Over at State, the Agency for International Development has limited bidding to a short list composed mainly of government contracting insiders. These include the Bechtel Group, on whose board sits George Shultz, a former secretary of state, and the Fluor Corporation, whose recently retired chief executive is being considered by the Pentagon to run Iraq's oil industry.

Companies unfairly excluded from bidding for these contracts are justifiably upset, including those based in Britain, America's most important military ally in Iraq. Under World Trade Organization rules, procurement contracts are supposed to be open to all bidders, domestic and foreign.

Even if a legal basis can be found for these closed bidding arrangements, they are unacceptable. The Iraq war was fought in the name of high principles. Victory should not turn into an undeserved financial bonanza for companies that have cultivated close ties with the Bush administration.

Funny how the Right Wing avoids these threads like the plague!


Con tinued
www.nytimes.com...



posted on Apr, 15 2003 @ 12:29 PM
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Well, there really isn't much to say about it. If any of it remotely was based in reality, maybe. I guess there will be American companies over there doing work. But are we to defeat Saddam Hussein, put of the money to help rebuild and incur all those cost and then not let our own companies do the work? Who would you prefer? Some outfit from France or Germany who put up a whopping zero % of the cost? I would certainly hope to hell that we would let American companies bid the contracts. I personally think that for all the trouble we've had out of Hussein the last 12 years, we should pump oil for year for free but I know they need the money and we're not France so I guess we'll buy it. Anyway, good work on the research and kudos on putting all that together. It actually confirms what I hoped to happen. I may even end up working over there.



posted on Apr, 16 2003 @ 08:39 AM
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Youve' missed volumes:

ONE COMPANYhas been given a SEVEN $BILLION$ two-year/no-bid/no-take-backs/no-questions-asked contract AND the exclusive logistics supplier for the Navy and the Army worldwide with no end date

Now tell me, there were no other viable American companies competeing in that market niche in each circumstance? ( the answers is "yes" by the way, I've worked with several of them )



posted on Apr, 16 2003 @ 02:26 PM
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Well, I guess I'll have to take your word for it. You're telling me only one company is going to do all the work in rebuilding Iraq. If that happens, I'll agree with you 100% and I'll cry foul too! But before we start crying foul, lets wait and see. The wars is not even over yet. This is something that we can watch and see and finally have some facts one way or another. What do you say?



posted on Apr, 16 2003 @ 02:27 PM
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Oh, and thanks for the tip. Wonder how high stock in haliburton is?



posted on Apr, 16 2003 @ 07:25 PM
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Great research jump off for you! Haliburton accuired another Bush family friend company and absorbed multi-millions in asbestos claims, so I guess this more than makes up for that loss, no?
Quid...........

[Edited on 16-4-2003 by Bout Time]



posted on Apr, 17 2003 @ 07:00 AM
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Those darned Bush's first poor Hussien and now he's picking on asbestos! No War! No Abatement! Asbestos for all.



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