corrente

As long as we're talking about impunity, it is worth looking at the works of the guy who assured us today that a vote for Kerry makes it more likely that we will be attacked by terrorists.

Via Juan Cole

Cheney, Halliburton and Iraq:
The Purloined Letter

Why was Dick Cheney so eager to invade Iraq? Why did he repeatedly link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda after September 11, and why did he maintain that not only did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction but that he, Cheney, knew exactly where they were?

Cheney clearly came into office wanting a war on Iraq, as revealed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil.

Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton in 1995-200. Halliburton is a corporation that does a number of things, including energy and oil and military contracting.

In 2001, Halliburton won a contract from the Department of Defence to provide "emergency services" to the Pentagon. The contract was above-board. Bids were taken from five competitors, and Halliburton won with the low bid. There was nothing illegal or irregular about such a process. But that contract may explain Cheney and his gang on Iraq.

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the blackmail note that the police are looking for is in plain sight. It isn't hidden, just crumpled as though it were trash. The police don't bother to examine it for that reason.

It is the contract itself that is the scam. It is quite simple. A standing contract to provide "emergency services" to the Pentagon is a potential gold mine under exactly one circumstance. If a major war breaks out, the need for "emergency services" will inevitably be enormous. The contract was worth billions. But only if there was a war. If there was peace, the need for "emergency services" would be small. Halliburton was not doing that well. It needed the big bucks.(snip)

Part two of the scam is also in plain view. It is the very idea that "emergency services" should and could be supplied to the US military by a private company.

The fact is that civilian employees of private firms cannot be ordered into a war zone. Halliburton, and its subsidiary Kellog, Root and Brown, was to supply air-conditioned quonset huts to the US troops for summer, 2003. It did not do so. It could not do so. Once the guerrilla war broke out, it was impossible to get enough civilian workers out to the troop positions to build the quonset huts and put in airconditioning. As a result, US troops "looked like hobos and lived like pigs" in the words of one, with their shaving cream cans exploding in the 140 degrees heat.

If, on the other hand, US troops had been assigned to build the quonset huts and put in the airconditioning, that could easily have been accomplished.

So, the "emergency services contract" was a boondoggle only in the case of a war, but in case of a war, many of the services contracted for could not actually be supplied, at least in a timely manner.

Do go read the whole thing. Professor Cole has links in great abundance, many dots are connected. If you should be talking to anyone, particularly one old enough to remember World War II, about the basic goodness of the Bush/Cheney team, just ask them how they could bring themselves to vote for a war profiteer.