Americans Are Dying for Dick Cheney's OIL WAR

[Stephanie]

Edwards did an excellent job last night of exposing the two-faced lies of Dick Cheney. Now's the time to go further and expose the greed and corruption that led Cheney to lie America into war.

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http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact

CONTRACT SPORT
What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?
by JANE MAYER
Issue of 2004-02-16 and 23
Posted 2004-02-09

<snip>

For months there has been a debate in Washington about when the Bush Administration decided to go to war against Saddam. In Ron Suskind’s recent book “The Price of Loyalty,” former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney’s newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were links between Cheney’s Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam. But Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, told me that he regards the document as potentially “huge.” He said, “People think Cheney’s Energy Task Force has been secretive about domestic issues,” referring to the fact that the Vice-President has been unwilling to reveal information about private task-force meetings that took place in 2001, when information was being gathered to help develop President Bush’s energy policy. “But if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.”

<snip>

After months spent trying to obtain more information about the classified Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman’s staff discovered that the original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a full restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. “We thought it was supposed to be a short-term, small contract, but now it turns out Halliburton is restoring the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq,” Waxman said. The Defense Department’s only public acknowledgments of this wide-ranging deal had been two press releases announcing that it had asked Halliburton to prepare to help put out oil-well fires. The most recent budget request provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq mentions the building of a new oil refinery and the drilling of new wells. “They said originally they were just going to bring it up to prewar levels. Now they’re getting money to dramatically improve it,” Waxman complained. Who is going to own these upgrades, after the United States government has finished paying Halliburton to build them? “Who knows?” Waxman said. “Nobody is saying.”

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http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

Project for a New American Century
Letter to President Clinton on Iraq
January 26, 1998

<snip> Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml?cmp=EM8707

<excerpt> And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

<snip> He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. "There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, 'Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,'" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001.

Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

"It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions," says Suskind. "On oil in Iraq."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39500-2003Aug9?language=printer%C2%A0

Cheney raised the alarm about Iraq's nuclear menace three times in August. He was far ahead of the president's public line. Only Bush and Cheney know, one senior policy official said, "whether Cheney was trying to push the president or they had decided to play good cop, bad cop."

On Aug. 7, Cheney volunteered in a question-and-answer session at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, speaking of Hussein, that "left to his own devices, it's the judgment of many of us that in the not-too-distant future, he will acquire nuclear weapons." On Aug. 26, he described Hussein as a "sworn enemy of our country" who constituted a "mortal threat" to the United States. He foresaw a time in which Hussein could "subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

"We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons," he said. "Among other sources, we've gotten this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law."

That was a reference to Hussein Kamel, who had managed Iraq's special weapons programs before defecting in 1995 to Jordan. But Saddam Hussein lured Kamel back to Iraq, and he was killed in February 1996, so Kamel could not have sourced what U.S. officials "now know."

And Kamel's testimony, after defecting, was the reverse of Cheney's description. In one of many debriefings by U.S., Jordanian and U.N. officials, Kamel said on Aug. 22, 1995, that Iraq's uranium enrichment programs had not resumed after halting at the start of the Gulf War in 1991. According to notes typed for the record by U.N. arms inspector Nikita Smidovich, Kamel acknowledged efforts to design three different warheads, "but not now, before the Gulf War."

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92372,00.html

Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Detail Iraqi Oil Industry
Friday, July 18, 2003

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.

Judicial Watch (search), a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."

The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.<more>

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[Stephanie]

1. Center for American Progress: "Cheney's Continued Links to Halliburton"

Cheney's Continued Links to Halliburton

Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say that he has no ties to Halliburton since joining the GOP ticket in 2000. He also promised to clear himself from any conflict of interest should he become Vice President. In each of his claims, the facts tell a very different story.

CLAIM: “But what I'll have to do, assuming we're successful , is divest myself, that is, sell any remaining shares that I have in the company.”
– Dick Cheney, 7/30/00

FACT: A congressional report found that Cheney still owns “more than 433,000 Halliburton stock options,” including “100,000 shares at $54.50 per share, 33,333 shares at $28.125 and 300,000 shares at $39.50 per share.”
– CNN, 9/25/03

CLAIM: “I severed my ties with Halliburton when I became a candidate for Vice President in August of 2000.”
– Dick Cheney, 1/22/04

FACT: Along with the 433,000 stock options, “ Cheney still receives about $150,000 a year” from Halliburton.
– CNN, 10/25/03

CLAIM: “What happens financially , obviously, is I take a bath , in one sense.”
– Dick Cheney, 7/25/00

FACT: Halliburton “has agreed to let Mr. Cheney, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, retire with a package worth an estimated $20 million, according to people who have reviewed the deal.”
– NY Times, 8/12/00

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=23898

[Stephanie]

2. "Halliburton: A handy guide"

Halliburton: A handy guide
Halliburton Watch, October 5, 2004

Editor's note: Keeping track of all of Halliburton's corporate woes can be a full-time job. That's why our friends at Halliburton Watch have put together this handy guide just in time for tonight's debate:

1) Conflict of interest: Cheney continues to receive income from Halliburton

In 2003, Cheney said, “I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind.” But he continues to receive a salary of over $150,000 from Halliburton each year and holds 433,333 shares of unexercised stock options in the company. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) of the House Government Reform Committee has asked Cheney to provide further information.

2) Cheney’s involvement in awarding no-bid contract to Halliburton

Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press, "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government." But an internal Pentagon email contradicts Cheney's denial, explaining that months before the war "action" on the Iraqi oil contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office.

3) Iraq contracts: Criminal investigations and rampant waste, fraud and abuse

As the recipient of contracts worth an estimated $18 billion, Halliburton is the biggest war profiteer in the Iraq reconstruction debacle and the Army’s number one contractor.

a) The Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that Halliburton gouged the taxpayers for $61 million for gasoline; a separate criminal investigation is ongoing into charges that two employees took kickbacks from a subcontractor.

<much more>

http://www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_terrorism/doc5371.html

[Stephanie]

3. "The Deceivers" - Chris Floyd on PNAC's Iraq Plan

Chronicle of a Quagmire Foretold
The Deceivers
By CHRIS FLOYD

<excerpt>

The Telegraph exposé centered on papers prepared for Blair's March 2002 summit with the true ruler of the United States: Dick Cheney. As often noted here, Cheney was a key figure in the corporate/militarist faction Project for the New American Century, along with Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other bloodthirsty elites. In September 2000 before Bush was installed as the faction's White House frontman PNAC issued the final version of a plan, years in the making, to ensure American geopolitical and economic "dominance" through military control of key oil regions and strategic pipeline routes, either directly or via client states. This would be accompanied by a "revolutionary" transformation of American society into a more war-like state: a transformation that PNAC said could only be accomplished if the American people were "galvanized" by "a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor."

The conquest of Iraq was a vital cog in this long-range plan, and the depredations of the Baath Regime the worst of which occurred with the full support of PNAC's top players during the Reagan-Bush years had nothing to do with it. The Cheney-Rumsfeld group put it plainly in 2000: the need to establish a military presence in Iraq "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Likewise, 9/11 and "the new threats in a changed world" evoked so often as a justification by the warmongers were equally irrelevant to an invasion planned years before the CIA's ex-ally Osama bin Laden obligingly provided that longed-for "new Pearl Harbor."

What's more, the warmakers knew that Saddam's WMD arsenal and weapons development programs had been dismantled at his order in 1991. This was confirmed in 1995 by crateloads of documentary evidence supplied by top defector Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and WMD chieftain as Time Magazine reported years ago. It was confirmed again by UN inspectors, who independently verified the elimination of 95 percent of Iraq's WMD arsenal before they were summarily pulled out of the country ahead of a US-UK punitive strike in 1998.

Any remaining questions about Iraqi WMD stoked by false intelligence provided by paid agents of the Pentagon's war clique (Ahmad Chalabi), the CIA's hired terrorist leader (Iyad Allawi), and assorted Iranian and Israeli agents were carefully hedged with doubts, caveats and qualifications from U.S and UK intelligence officials. But Cheney and his frontman were having none of that sissy caveat stuff. As one CIA officer revealed to investigator James Bamford: "We were told if the president wants a war, it's your job to give him a reason to go to war." As ordered, cooked intelligence was then served up piping hot.

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd09292004.html

[Stephanie]

4. "Stretching Cheney"

Stretching Cheney
By Pepe Escobar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FJ07Aa01.html

<snip>

Bush created the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) in January 2001, right after his inauguration. The group was directed by Cheney. As soon as it published the so-called Cheney Report, its point was made: the priority for the Bush administration was never the "war on terror", but America's dependence on energy sources. The Cheney Report was not strategic analysis. But it was published during the Enron scandal - with Bush-supporting Enron executives working as NEPDG members. Something really fishy was afoot. In July 2003 the Department of Commerce was forced by the US Supreme Court to unveil the documents used by the Cheney Energy Task Force. Among these documents were maps of oilfields in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as well as charts detailing which foreign companies had closed deals with Saddam for oil exploitation in Iraq. These documents are definitive proof that long before September 11, 2001, regime change in Iraq was the No 1 priority on the Bush administration agenda. Edwards would have made a killing establishing this connection - if only a relevant question had been on the table.

<snip>

The eighth chapter of the Cheney Report, titled "Strengthening Global Alliances", says it's imperative for the US to get rid of strategic, political and economic obstacles in its quest to ensure the extra 7.5 million barrels of oil a day it will need by 2020. This is the equivalent of the current total consumption of India and China put together. As most of the countries that are part of these "obstacles" are politically and socially unstable, this means that secure supplies to the US imply the presence of US troops. Thus the Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the bases in Central Asia, the pressure on Iran.

The Cheney Report makes no bones about stressing the crucial, and growing, US - as well as Asian and Western European - dependence on Middle East oil. As the solution for the energy problem, it proposes a military option. This is the ultimate meaning of retired General Tommy Franks saying on the record that "we will be in Afghanistan for years", and the meaning of the 14 US military bases to be built in Iraq.

At the time, the Cheney Energy Task Force also had to refer to the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq. Lifting the sanctions on Iraq would mean the go-ahead for contracts frozen by the sanctions - most with Russian and European companies and not with US companies, since Saddam was not in business with the US. So war was the only option to get the big prize - the second-largest oil reserves in the world, which come as well with very low production costs (if the Iraqi resistance allows it ...).

[Stephanie]

5. 'Oil War' Questions Surround Cheney Energy Group

'Oil War' Questions Surround Cheney Energy Group
September 12, 2003
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0912-01.htm

<excerpt>

Early in the Bush presidency the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) had joined with the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy to draft an energy proposal for the new administration.

'Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century' was the result. It forecast critical energy shortages unless oil and gas production was substantively boosted or conservation measures pursued, calling upon the administration to admit ''these agonising truths to the American people''.

The report also saw both Caspian and Iraqi oil as answers to the projected crisis, additionally citing the possible need for ''military intervention'' to secure energy supplies.

Following in the footsteps of the Pentagon's ''oil war'' policy, the report's authors went on to urge that Cheney's task force include participation by the Department of Defence.

The Task Force's recommendations were being delivered at about the same time that the U.S. Army War College featured a paper by Jeffrey Record, a former staff member of the Senate armed services committee, whose work has been promoted on the CFR website.

Record argued the legitimacy of ''shooting in the Persian Gulf on behalf of lower gas prices'', additionally advocating that a president paint over such actions with a high-minded veneer, transforming them into a ''principled crusade''.

[Stephanie]

6. I know I'm the only one interested in this

but I'll kick anyway for new DU'ers. CHENEY is why we're in Iraq. Cheney & his pals.

[AirAmFan]

7. GREAT links, Stephanie! Please keep 'em coming. Cheney is the weakest

link in the mafia that has taken over the White House, IMO. His activities include pathological lying, secret government, warmongering that sacrifices poor soldiers, belligerency toward Congress, corruption of the Supreme Court, trading with the enemies of our country, and organized corporate theft. Maybe a few brave journalists will explore some of this rich material during the next month. There's enough here for SEVERAL books!