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Today's
Stories
April 1, 2005
Daniel Wolff
Patti
Scialfa's Conversation with America
March 31, 2005
Sharon Smith
Leftwing
Apologists for the Occupation
Ron Jacobs
Rounding Out Iraq's History
Tariq Ali
British
Elections: Punish the Warmongers
Michael Dickinson
Cartoon Capers: Turkey's War on Political Cartoonists
Kanak Mani
Dixit
The Struggle for Nepal's Future
Mitchell Zimmerman
The Bizarre Legal Philosophy of Justice Janice Rogers Brown
Xuan-Trang
Ho
Guatemala and CAFTA: Return to the Bad Old Days?
Dave Zirin
Pay the Damn Players!
Joe Bageant
In
Praise of Holy Madness
Jeff Halper
The
End of a Viable Palestinian State
Website of
the Day
Free Nepal
March 30, 2005
Gary Leupp
Curing
Those People of Their Hatred: Condi's Pitch for a "Different
Kind" of Middle East
Ralph Nader
/ Kevin Zeese
Report
on Iraq Intelligence Failure: No One to Blame
Chase Madar
Wolfowitz's Career Move: From Failed Warrior to Humanitarian
Banker
Toni Solo
Bush in Latin America
Jackie Corr
Blessed are the Rich: George Bush's Montana Visit
Ahmad Faruqui
Much Ado About F-16s
Mike Roselle
Refuting Dave Foreman: Days of Whine and Posers
Jude Wanniski
America's Gunboat Diplomacy
Francis A.
Boyle
Why You Should Boo Illinois
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Downwinders
be Damned
Website of
the Day
Help! Nicaraguan Workers Are Being Poisoned
March 29, 2005
Ralph Nader
Is
the End of the Iraq War / Occupation Near?
Gary Leupp
Terri
Schiavo's Death and the Birth of an "Elected" Iraqi
Government
Sonia Cardenas
A
Pandora's Box of Abuses: the Geneva Trap
Stew Albert
Take Back the Life Force!
Mark Weisbrot
Owning Up to the "Ownership Society"
Dave Lindorff
China's Report on Human Rights in US is No Cariacture
Carl G. Estabrook
The
Subversive Commandments
March 28, 2005
Jeremy Scahill
Sgrena
Sets the Record Straight: "There was No Checkpoint; No Self-Defense"
Sonali Kolhatkar
Forgetting
Afghanistan...Again
Sasha Kramer
The
UN's Betrayal of Haiti
Kevin Zeese
Don't Just Blame the Democrats
Tom Stephens
Sacred
Law; Traditional Wisdom: Environmental Justice and Indigenous
Peoples
Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
We're Walking Into a Trap
Newton Garver
Reflections on Bolivia
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Bail Out Draft for a Cakewalk War?
Website of the Day
Stumped? Ask a Librarian, 24/7
March 26 /
27, 2005
Gary Leupp
God's
Imperialists
Peter Linebaugh
To Render, to Impeach, to Habeas Corpus
Marc Robert
A European Student's Experience at Columbia University
Laura Carlsen
The Threesome in Crawford: Summit as Traveling Stage Show
Saul Landau
/ Puja Patel
The Price of Privatized "Development"
Dave Foreman
Nature's Crisis
Fred Gardner
Will San Francisco Pander to the Prohibitionists?
Jennifer Matsui
Terri Schiavo: America's Most Desperate Housewife?
Dave Lindorff
Provoking Iran
Dharma Adhikari
The Reversal of Democracy in Nepal
Joshua Frank
The Howard Dean Doctrine
Patrick Barr
Have Box Cutter, Will Travel: a True Story
Christopher
Brauchli
F-16s to Pakistan
Ramzy Baroud
Israel's Record is "Not Reassuring"
Jackie Corr
When the Gov. of Montana Declared Martial Law in Butte
Ben Tripp
Off with Your Appurtenances!
Dr. Susan Block
Break a Taboo for Easter: Springtime for Sex and God
Mickey Z.
How Three Unrelated Books Relate
Justin Taylor
Beware of "Beware of God"
Richard Joseph
Cochabamba!: the Water War in Bolivia
Poets' Basement
Martin, Smith, Ford, Bortz and Albert
March 25, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Horror
and Hope at Red Lake Nation
Yoshie Furuhashi
No Troops; No Wars
Pat Williams
How a Town Got Poisoned: Libby, MT and the Labor Movement
Mark Engler
Remembering
Archbishop Romero: 25 Years After His Assassination
Rahul Mahajan
Culture of Life or Culture of Living Death?
Lance Selfa
Can the Democrats be Moved to the Left?
Ralph Nader
Corporate Cyborg: Cal Nurses Take on Schwarzenegger
John R. Llewellyn
Why Utah's Prosecutors are Soft on Polygamy: a Former Sheriff
Speaks Out
Jo Guldi
Beyond
Belief: Holy Week in France
March 24, 2005
Joshua Frank
The
Selling (Out) of the Antiwar Movement
Talli Nauman
Vicente and George: Security by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter
Martin Espada
Why I Refused Coke's Money: a Poet Speaks Out About Colombia
Dave Lindorff
Another Social Security Snow Job
Elaine Cassel
When
Fools Rush In: the Legal Implications of the Schiavo Case
Jack McCarthy
Jeb Bush's Mob: Snatch, Grab, Insert Tube
Jack Random
Juxtaposition: Terri Schiavo and the Red Lake Massacre
Barbara Ferguson
Wolfowitz Dating Muslim Woman and World Bank Employee
Suzan Mazur
Peak Oil: Debate or Vendetta?
Dorreen Yellow Bird
Suffering Red Lake Nation Endures the Worst of Days
Andrew Wimmer
and Mark Chmiel
Torture:
Old Hat or Open Wound?
March 23, 2005
Patrick Bond
A
New War? On Wolfowitz's World Bank
Mike Whitney
Railroading
Moussaoui
Becky White
Why
I Hung from a Bridge to Defend the Wild Forests of the Siskiyou
Mountains
Michael Donnelly
Dissecting the Changeling: How the AuCoin Express Was Really
Derailed
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Remembering
Ram Manohar Lohia: the Che of Non-Violence
Ashley Smith
Bush is What Hypocrisy Looks Like
David Swanson
The More Bush Talks, the Less Popular Privatization Becomes
Derrick O'Keefe
Enter Bono, Stage Right
Paul A. Moore
The Fire This Time: the Bush Bros. Racist Crackdown in Florida
Dalton Walker
My Reservation Will Never Be the Same
Patrick Cockburn
The
US Frees Iraqi Kidnappers to Become Spies
March 22, 2005
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Democracy--or is it the US Military--on the March
Jim Vallette
Cheney's Oil Change at the World Bank
Greg Moses
A Palm Sunday Chat with Sis Levin
John Farley
Bush's Culture of Life: Let the
Insurance Companies Pull the Plug When the Sick Cost Too Much
Ron Jacobs
Halt
the Anniversary Rallies and Stop the Damn War
M. Junaid Alam
How the Democratic Party Fosters Conservatism
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
An
Immoral and Illegal War: Destroying Iraq Isn't Enough for Them
Dave Lindorff
"Saving" Schiavo; Killing the News
James Petras
Fateful
Quadrangle: Cuba and Venezuela Face Off Against the US and Colombia
March 21, 2005
John Walsh
In
the Bars on the Road to Fayettevile: War Support Paper Thin
Werther
The
Legacy of George Kennan, Chief Architect of the Cold War
Mike Stark
Where is the "Culture of Life" in Maryland? Time is
Running Out for Vernon Evans
David Swanson
Feeding
Tubes for the Third World: Put the Hungry into Comas, Then Feed
Them!
James T. Phillips
Happy Meals: Behind the Grill at a Baltimore Diner
Mike Ferner
Serving,
Refusing, Impeaching
Robert Jensen
The World Waits for an Answer
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Threat Greater Than Terrorism
Stew Albert
Vegetable Nation
Website of
the Day
American Press Blotter: Jacko, Terry and Steroids vs. the World
March 19, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Three-Card
Monte and the One-Party State
Tom Reeves
Exposing the Coming Draft: a Draft by Any Other Name is Still
Wrong
Saul Landau
The Grandchildren of Roy Cohn: the Politics of the Repressed
Alan Maass
Making Bankruptcy a Life Sentence
Ron Jacobs
Submit or Else: the Nuclear Demon that Won't Go Awayy
David Green
The Holocaust Industry Comes to the University of Illinois
John Blair
Hey, Dick! I'm Still Free: a Blow for Freedom of Speech in Indiana
Steve Greenfield
The Decline of the Green Party: the Numbers are In
Ben Tripp
Nature isn't Real
Mike Roselle
A History of White People in the Conservation Movement
Joshua Frank
Hope in Red State America: Lessons from the Big Sky Country
Mark Weisbrot
The World Bank: a Bigger Problem Than Wolfowitz
Dave Lindorff
Congress on Steroids
Sarah Schaffer
Lula's Nukes: Bush Bullies Iran, Ignores Brazil's Nuclear Ambitions
Warren Hastings
Why the Queen Should Chop Off Tony Blair's Head for Treason
Poets' Basement
Lodge, Albert. Landau, Engel, Davies, Capaccio
March 18, 2005
Dave Zirin
The
Congressional Urine Testers: Baseball's Theater of the Absurd
Richard Thieme
The
Church Committee Candidate: I was a Victim of the KGB
John Walsh
Misdirecting the Anti-War Movement
David Swanson
Hunger
Striking for a Living Wage at Georgetown
Ben Terrall
In
the Spirit of Rachel Corrie: Confronting Caterpillar in San Leandro
David Boyle
Just Say "No" to Harvard
Dorreen Yellow Bird
Coping with Teen Suicide on the Standing Rock Reservation
Mokhiber /
Weissman
Global Bully Goes to Guatemala
Greg Moses
They
Don't Shoot Donkeys...Do They?
Website of
the Day
800
Protests: Find One Near You
March 17, 2005
Christopher
Brauchli
Rendered
Unto Caesar: the Etymology of Torture
Bill Quigley
The St. Patrick's Four and the Resistance to the War in Iraq
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Herds: Willing to Kick Anyone in the Face
Gary Bass / Adam Hughes
Inside the Bush Budget: Rhetoric vs. Reality
Dave Lindorff
The Incredible Shrinking Coalition
Jude Wanniski
Wolfowitz at the World Bank: a Perfect Fit
Alexander Billet
Irish Republicanism at the Crossroads
John Ross
Wal-Mart
Invades Mexico
Website of the Day
Campus Resistance
March 16, 2005
Ralph Nader
Filling
the Congressional Cop-Out Gap: an Idea for Local Peace Activists
William Cook
Resurrecting the Neo-Con Failures
Kevin Zeese
Two
Years of Occupation: Both US and Iraq are Worse Off
Jackie Corr
Why is Dick Cheney Laughing? The New Tax Cut Patriotism
Alan Maass
Bush's Class War Budget
David R. Kolker
Jailed Without Charges in Haiti
Cindy Ellen
Hill
Speculative Policing in Northern Ireland
Paul Craig
Roberts
America's
Has-Been Economy
March 15, 2005
Gary Leupp
The
Plan is Still on Track
Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh!
Greg Moses
The Fix-It Guys and Their Electoral Filters
Hadas Their
/ Katrina Yeaw
Military
Recruiters Target Campus Activists
Alison Weir
Uprising
on the Anniversary of Rachel Corrie's Death
Matt Koehler
A
Line in the Ancient Forest: 50 Arrested in Blockade to Save the
Siskiyous
Evelyn Pringle
Labeling Kids Mentally Ill for Profit
Harry Browne
War
and Peace in Ireland
March 14, 2005
Ralph Nader
Restarting
the Anti-War Movement
David Miller
Ministry
of Defence in the Control Booth: Did the BBC Broadcast Fake News
Reports?
Stan Cox
Look
Deeper, Mr. Moyers
Mike Roselle
Why Women Should Take Over the Environmental Movement
David Swanson
Nursing Against the Odds: the Workers' View
Simona Sharoni
To End the War, Listen to Soldiers
Dave Lindorff
Corporate Surveillance
Dorreen Yellow Bird
Incidents at Standing Rock: Suicide on the Reservation
Tom Barry
John
Bolton's Baggage
Website of the Day
Spinwatch
March 12 /
13, 2005
David H. Price
The
CIA's Campus Spies
Noam Chomsky
The Toothpaste Election
Laura Carlsen
Women's Rights Eroding in Latin America
Stan Goff
On Revolutionary Optimism: the View from Cumberland Co, NC
Valentina Nicoli
The Game of Role-Playing and the Ambush of Giuliana Sgrena
Michael Leonardi
Head Shot: Lifting the Veil on the Sgrena / Calipari Incident
Saul Landau
/ Sarah Anderson
Blood Money and the Riggs Bank: Pinochet's Bank Finally Pays
Up
Joe Bageant
It Ain't Easy Being White
Manuel García,
Jr.
The Question of American Guilt
Greg Moses
Electoral Lessons from Cuyahoga and Harris Counties
James J. Brittain
Run, Fight or Die in Colombia
Ben Tripp
Communist Watch
Joshua Frank
A Red State Paradox: Montana on the Cusp
Fred Gardner
Pesticides Made Her Sick; Pot Got Her Well
Walter Brasch
Bush's Horse Killers
Ramzy Baroud
Reining in Syria on Behalf of Israel
Christopher
Brauchli
Going All the Way for Usurers
Michael Donnelly
The Humiliation of Les "Timber Toad" AuCoin
Ron Jacobs
ZAP Comics: Still Kicking US Culture in the Ass
Richard Oxman
The Eternal Reciprocity of Tears
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Ford, Louise and Albert
March 11, 2005
Jerry Fresia
Targeting
Giuliana
Ron Jacobs
Making Lebensraum in the Middle East for Tel Aviv's Fears &
Washington's Dollars
Dave Lindorff
America's Magical Kingdom
William James
Martin
Ben Gurion and the Origin of the "Pushing into the Sea"
Myth
Muqtedar Khan
Modi's Operandi: American Business and Genocide Linked Again
Kathryn Ledebur
Bolivia
on the Brink
Mike Whitney
Saddam's Capture: Just Another Bush Lie?
Dave Zirin
Neo-McCarthyism
Slugs Baseball
Website of the Day
William Rivers Pitt, Another Hack for the Occupation
March 10, 2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
So
Much for the New Bush Economy
John Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin
and Ashley Smith
Vermont Vs. the War
Larry Birns
The Pathological John Bolton
Michael Donnelly
The Re-Reinvention of an Oregon Timber Beast
Luis Gomez
In Bolivia, Reality Changes Once Again
Jackie Corr
Whatever Happened to the Social Security Trust Fund?
Uri Avnery
Bush's Guru: Natan Sharansky
Website of the Day
Red Alert in the Siskiyous!
March 9, 2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Dirty
Harry's Fear of Flying: Making Love, War and Profits at Boeing
Ward Churchill
Who's the Terrorist?
Robert Fisk
Another Species of Cedar: a Half Million Lebanese March for Syria
Bernice Powell Jackson
No Justice for America's Nuclear Guinea Pigs in the Marshall
Islands
Mickey Z.
The Revolutionary of Potential Art
Dave Zirin
NHL Says: "Bring On the Scabs!"
Michael Donnelly
Standing Up to Ecocide in Oregon
James Reiss
Stopping by Words in Favor of Privatizing Social Security
Vijay Prashad
Get
Modi: a State Terrorist Visits Florida
March 8, 2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Syrian Delusion
Robert Fisk
Lebanon's Nightmare
Kurt Nimmo
War is Peace: John Bolton to the UN
Suzan Mazur
Time for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Polygamy?
Evelyn Pringle
Neil Bush and Crest: Another Profiteering Scheme
Giuliana Sgrena
My
Truth: "The Americans Don't Want You to Return"
Elaine Cassel
The Appalling Case of Abu Ali
March 7, 2005
Dave Zirin
Bloodlust
in Annapolis: Gov. Ehrlich Wants to Kill Vernon Lee Evans
Brian Cloughley
More War Crimes
John Chuckman
The
Creature Walks Among Us
Mike Whitney
Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments
Mark Weisbrot
Haiti's Torment: Why Are US Human Rights Groups Silent?
Fred Gardner
The Cannabinoid Messenger
Richard Neville
The Italian Job
Uri Avnery
The
Next Crusades
March 5 / 6,
2005
Alexander Cockburn
Arnold
vs. the Nurses
Gary Leupp
What's Happening in Lebanon: an Interview with Fadi Agha, Advisor
to President Lahoud
Ron Jacobs
Lies Military Recruiters Tell
Tom Reeves
Haiti: One Year After the Coup
Jenna Orkin
Memories of Kawaggi, Saudi Arabia
Tom Barry
Negroponte: Intel Czar or Policy Hack?
Joshua Frank
The Trials of Max Baucus
Moshe Adler
When Pfizer Came to New London: Corporate Giveways vs. Eminent
Domain
Jane Stillwater
My Jury Questionnaire: "Do You Agree that a Corporation
is a Person?"
Omar Barghouti / Jacqueline
Sfeir
Double Standards on S. Africa and Israel: an Open Letter to UNESCO
Christopher
Brauchli
Target: Al Jazeera
John Pilger
The Fall of Saigon: 30 Years Later
Raúl
Zibechi
Colombia: Militarism and Social Movements
David Krieger
Saving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement
Three Takes
on Nepal
Surendra R. Devkota
Another Blow to the King of Nepal
Bhishma Karki
Nepal in Twilight
Joseph Pietri
Murder at the Palace
Ben Tripp
The Good Old Days
Poets' Basement
Hassen, Chief Running Late, Wuest, Albert and Collins
Website of
the Weekend
O'Shaughnessy's: All About Medical Pot
March 4, 2005
Frederick Hudson
Caught
in a Cage
March 3, 2005
Pat Williams
"Social Security Protects the Young as Much as the Old"
Brian Cloughley
Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions
Dave Lindorff
Why Do the Democrats Pamper Greenspan?
Amira Hass
Oslo All Over Again
Greg Moses
In Oscar Texas: One Down, One to Go?
Lynne Landes
Exit Poll Madness
Nelson P. Valdés
Rapture Takes Leftists
John Ross
Mexico's
Fox Schemes to Jail Front-Running Leftist
March 2, 2005
Saul Landau
/ Farrah Hassen
The
"Noble Liars" Attack Syria
Mike Roselle
The State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle: Criminalizing Environmental
Dissent
M. Junaid Alam
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
Suzan Mazur
Inside the Polygamy Cults of Southern Utah
Jackson Thoreau
Texas Congressman Calls for "Nuking Syria"
Michael Donnelly
No Love for Teresa Heinz; John Edwards Gets a Pass
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Uncle
Bucky Makes a Killing
Website of the Day
The Ghosts of Karl Marx & Ed Abbey
March 1, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Million
Dollar Bigotry
David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions
Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq
Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled
Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security
Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black
Prince
Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Coming End of the American Superpower
Website of
the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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April 1, 2005
Dancing with the Wolf
The
Next World Bank President's Reputational Risk
By
CHARLIE CRAY and JIM VALLETTE
Washington,
DC
If the World Bank's board had applied
the same kind of "due diligence" to Paul Wolfowitz
that they purport to apply to major development projects, they
might have uncovered a significant conflict-of-interest that
could have led them to rethink their embrace of the architect
of the Iraq war.
Just consider his role in the U.S. occupational authority's (CPA)
looting of the Iraqi people's oil revenues to pay off well-connected
crony contractors like Halliburton. As President of the World
Bank, he will be in a position to quash an important related
investigation.
The President of the World
Bank is a leading member of the International Advisory Monitoring
Board (IAMB) - a multilateral organization established by UN
Security Council Resolution 1483 in May 2003. The IAMB's principle
mission is to oversee U.S. stewardship of the Development Fund
of Iraq (DFI), the successor to the Oil-for-Food Program.
Despite delays and efforts
by the Bush administration to obstruct their work, the IAMB's
auditors have so far uncovered significant financial abuses.
More worrisome for Wolfowitz and the Bank is the potential for
the investigation to lead up the Pentagon's chain-of-command
to Wolfowitz himself.
The evidence for this is a
March 6, 2003 email, first uncovered by conservative watch-dog
group Judicial Watch, which indicates that Wolfowitz authorized
a sole-source contract to Halliburton for Operation Restore Iraqi
Oil (RIO) before the war began.
A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
official, whose name is redacted, writes that he or she secured
"authority to execute RIO" after "DepSecDef [that
is, Wolfowitz] sent us to UnderSecPolicy [Under Secretary of
Policy Douglas] Feith and gave him authority to approve"
a decision to give it to Halliburton without seeking bids from
any other potential contractors.
The coded e-mail added that
the "action has been coordinated with the Vice President's
office." Vice President Dick Cheney, of course, was Halliburton's
boss from 1995 to 2000. Cheney also has been Wolfowitz's political
patron since the first Bush administration.
That contract has become a
source of huge controversy, as allegations have mounted concerning
Halliburton's long series of improprieties in executing it. (For
details see the Halliburton
Watch web site).
As Deputy Secretary of Defense,
Paul Wolfowitz played a major role in the reconstruction program,
which before the war was projected to be a kind of Middle Eastern
Marshall Plan.
If the CPA had finished the
job, perhaps the various tales of cronyism and corruption might
not be a big deal. But pervasive mismanagement and endemic corruption
aggravated many problems that broadened and hardened popular
opposition to the occupation.
For example, at the end of
2003 Wolfowitz barred foreign companies from receiving reconstruction
contracts, a policy that delayed the procurement of spare parts
for machinery and electrical generating equipment. The result:
lower-than-estimated electrical generating capacity, further
civil unrest and increased support for the resistance.
So far, Wolfowitz and Cheney's
friends who control Congress have expressed far less interest
in these matters than the alleged Oil-For-Food Program "scandal"
that Paul Volcker's investigation reveals to be a minor transgression
by comparison. (This week, Newsweek published a photo of CPA
officials holding stacks of cash, with a caption that reads "Free
Fraud Zone.")
"We arguably have a greater
obligation to oversee the DFI than the Oil for Food Program given
that the DFI was under U.S. control," Congressman Henry
Waxman (D-CA) pointed out in a letter to U.S. Rep. Christopher
Shays (R-CT), chair of one of the five committees investigating
the former.
On March 15, Waxman published what he called "evidence that
Administration officials - acting at the request of Halliburton
- intentionally withheld information from international auditors
in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483."
He said this "suggests that the United States used Iraqi
oil proceeds to overpay Halliburton and then sought to hide the
evidence of these overcharges from the international auditors."
Waxman's dogged investigation has so far been met with little
interest by his colleagues.
The IAMB's ongoing investigation
began at a meeting on March 17 2004. The board decided to conduct
a special audit of large, sole-sourced contracts paid out of
the DFI. In April 2004, the IAMB requested further information
from the CPA regarding the $1.4 billion Operation RIO contract
awarded to Halliburton.
In June 2004, and again in September, the IAMB registered its
"regrets" that CPA officials had not complied with
its "repeated requests." Finally, in October 2004,
the Bush/Cheney administration provided the IAMB with the audit,
but only after Halliburton was allowed to redact key information.
Halliburton itself edited the
audit, according to Waxman, who produced a September 28, 2004,
letter from Halliburton's KBR subsidiary to the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers in which contract manager Michael Morrow says KBR
redacted information that "could be used by a competitor
to damage KBR's ability to win and negotiate new work."
Waxman produced two versions
of the audit, before and after Halliburton made the changes.
In the final version, black boxes hide language that specified
over $162 million in "questioned," "unsolved,"
and "unreasonable" payments to KBR. References to many
other KBR "noncompliances and inadequacies" also vanished.
According to Waxman, independent experts said "both the
redactions and the process by which they appear to have been
made would be improper."
On March 15, Waxman requested
that the House National Security Subcommittee, chaired by Rep.
Shays, issue a subpoena for documents related to Halliburton
and government officials' attempts "to conceal the extent
of the overcharges." The potential subpoena would force
hearings and testimony by "Defense Department officials
responsible for reviewing Halliburton's redactions and submitting
the audits to the IAMB."
The underlying questions are those timeless Washington favorites:
What did Wolfowitz know with regard to Halliburton's inside advantage,
and when did he know it?
These are questions that the
world's governments should have considered before acceding to
Wolfowitz's installation as the head of the World Bank.
The fact that they did not is a troubling sign. As Joseph Stiglitz,
the Nobel-winning former chief economist at the World Bank has
suggested, the Bank under Wolfowitz's leadership is likely to
"become an explicit instrument of US foreign policy"
around the world. "It [the Bank] will presumably take a
lead role in Iraqi reconstruction. That would jeopardize its
role as a multilateral development body."
By recusing himself from a
position that will allow him to influence the monitoring board's
investigation, Wolfowitz would be taking a modest first step
toward dispelling such concerns.
Charlie Cray is director of the Center
for Corporate Policy and a collaborator with HalliburtonWatch,
which is tracking the company's war profiteering in Iraq.
Jim Vallette is research director of the Sustainable
Energy and Economy Network, a project of the Institute
for Policy Studies. Vallette is the author of The
Wolfowitz Chronology, and several related articles, available
at the IPS website.
They can be reached at: ccray@corporatepolicy.org
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