Question for DUers

[malaise]

Hasn't the war of a Dick been as wrong on every fugging thing to do with Iraq, as Sarah Palin has been wrong on every fugging thing period?

[n2doc]

1. The Dick wasn't always wrong

In this interview from April 15th, 1994 Dick Cheney reveals the reasons why invading Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein's regime wouldn't be a great idea. He also stipulates that "not very many" American soldiers' lives were worth losing to take out Saddam during the Gulf War.


The Snow Grifter? Probably never has been right about anything.

[malaise]

3. But that was before he had a personal financial interest

in war

[Octafish]

2. From Gulf War 1 when SecDef Dick privatized "warfighting" so cronies' could make a killing.

Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door

News: As Bush Sr.'s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney steered millions of dollars in government business to a private military contractor -- whose parent company just happened to give him a high-paying job after he left the government.

By Robert Bryce
Mother Jones
August 2, 2000

EXCERPT...

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton's election cost Cheney his government job, he wound up in 1995 as CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant -- which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. Since then, Cheney has collected more than $10 million in salary and stock payments from the company. In addition, he is currently the company's largest individual shareholder, holding stock and options worth another $40 million. Those holdings have undoubtedly been made more valuable by the ever-more lucrative contracts BRS continues to score with the Pentagon.

Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/08/cheney.html

[malaise]

4. Oops

A total and complete scumbag.

[Octafish]

5. Dick and his Dickie chums know how to turn a buck.

Take Richard "PNAC Pearl Harbor" Perle, who knew where real returns would lie, seeing how he was working for the government at the same time he was trolling for investors:

Lunch With the Chairman

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

by Seymour M. Hersh
Annals of National Security
The New Yorker
March 17, 2003

EXCERPT...

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact

These are serious people serious about making a serious killing.

[malaise]

6. Octafish

I so enjoy your knowledge about these goons

[Solly Mack]

7. That the man isn't in prison is one of the bloodiest stains on America.

Shame. Pure shame.

And not just him either.

[malaise]

8. You know it's way more than shame

because those goons destroyed s credibility big time.

How are you? Must have been a ball where you are last night.

[Solly Mack]

9. Agreed. More than shame.

I'm OK. I sleep a lot these days and missed whatever was happening.