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Recent Stories
March 26, 2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz----------------Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
29, 2003
Bushist Party Feeds on Fear and War
Blood
on the Tracks
By CHRIS FLOYD
Before
the first cruise missile crushed the first skull of the first child
killed in the first installment of George W. Bush's crusade for world
dominion, the unelected plutocrats occupying the White House were already
plying their corporate cronies with fat contracts to "repair"
the murderous devastation they were about to unleash on Iraq. There
was, of course, no open bidding allowed in the process; just a few "selected"
companies--selected for their preponderance of campaign bribes to the
Bushist Party, that is - "invited" to submit their wish lists
to the War Profiteer-in-Chief.
It
should come as no surprise that one of the leading beneficiaries of
this hugger-mugger largess is our old friend, Halliburton Corporation,
the military-energy servicing conglomerate. Halliburton, headed by Vice
Profiteer Dick Cheney until the Bushist coup d'etat in 2000, is already
reaping billions from the Bush wars--which Cheney himself tells us "might
not end in our lifetime."
Cheney
is an old hand at this kind of death merchanting, of course. In the
first Bush-Iraq War, Cheney, playing the role now filled by Don Rumsfeld--a
squinting, smirking, lying Secretary of Defense - directed the massacre
of some 100,00 Iraqis, many of whom were buried alive, or machine-gunned
while retreating along the "Highway of Death," or annihilated
in sneak attacks launched after a ceasefire had been called. When George
I and his triumphant conquerors were unceremoniously booted out of office
less than two years later by that radical fringe group so hated by the
Bushists--the American people--Cheney made a soft landing at Halliburton.
There
he grew rich on government contracts and taxpayer-supported credits
doled out by his old pals in the military-industrial complex. He also
hooked up with attractive foreign partners - like Saddam Hussein, the
"worse-than-Hitler" dictator who paid Cheney $73 million to
rebuild the oil fields that had been destroyed by, er, Dick Cheney.
And while the Halliburton honcho became a multimillionaire many times
over, some of his employees were not so lucky - Cheney ashcanned more
than 10,000 workers during his boardroom reign. (At least he didn't
bury them alive.)
Old
news, you say? Irrelevant to the current crisis? Surely, now that Cheney
has been translated to glory as the nation's second-highest public servant,
he is beyond any taint of grubby material concerns? Au contraire, as
those ever-dastardly French like to say. At this very moment, while
the smoke is still rising from the rubble of Baghdad, while the bodies
of the unburied dead are still rotting in the desert wastes, Dick Cheney
is receiving one million dollars a year in so-called "deferred
compensation" from Halliburton. That's a million smackers from
a private company that profits directly from the mass slaughter in Iraq,
going into the pockets of the "public servant" who is, as
the sycophantic media never tires of telling us, the power behind George
W.'s throne - and a prime architect of the war.
This
is money that Cheney wouldn't get if Halliburton went down the tubes--a
prospect it faced in the early days of the Regime, due to a boneheaded
merger engineered by its former CEO, a guy named, er, Dick Cheney. In
a deal apparently sealed during a golf game with an old crony, Cheney
acquired a subsidiary, Dresser Industries--a firm associated with the
Bush family for more than 70 years--which was facing billions of dollars
in liability claims for its unsafe use of asbestos. Dresser's bigwigs
doubtless made out like bandits from the deal, and Cheney left the mess
behind when the grateful Bushes put him on the presidential ticket,
but there was serious concern that Halliburton itself would be forced
into bankruptcy - unless it found massive new sources of secure funding
to offset the financial "shock and awe" of the asbestos lawsuits.
Then
lo and behold, after September 11, Halliburton received a multibillion-dollar,
open-ended, no-bid contract to build and service U.S. military bases
and operations all over the world. It also won several shorter-term
contracts, such as expanding the concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay,
where the Regime is holding unnamed, uncharged suspected terrorists
in violation of the Geneva Convention. With this fountain of federal
money pouring into its coffers - and Bushist operatives in Congress
pushing legislation to restrict asbestos lawsuits--Halliburton was able
to hammer out a surprisingly favorable settlement deal with the asbestos
victims. The company--and Cheney's million-dollar paychecks--were saved.
Praise Allah!
Halliburton
is just the tip of the slagheap, of course. Daddy Bush's popsicle stand,
the Carlyle Group - which controls a vast network of defense firms and
"security" operations around the world - is also panning gold
from the streams of blood pouring down the ancient tracks of Babylon.
Junior Bush - who like a kept woman made his own influence-peddling
fortune through services rendered to a series of sugar daddies--has
conveniently gutted the national inheritance tax, swelling his own eventual
bottom line when his father joins the legions of Panamanian, Iranian,
Afghan, Iraqi--and American--dead he and his son have sent down to Sheol.
Never
in American history has a group of government leaders profited so directly
from war--never. Like their brothers-in-arms, Saddam's Baathists, the
Bushists treat their own country like a sacked town, looting the treasury
for their family retainers and turning public policy to private gain.
Like Saddam, they feed on fear and glorify aggression. Like Saddam,
they have dishonored their nation and betrayed its people.
But
the money sure is good, eh, Dick?
Chris
Floyd is a columnist for the Moscow Times and is a regular
contributor to CounterPunch.
Yesterday's Features
Daniel Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris and
Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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