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CounterPunch
March 19,
2003
As Bombs Drops, Hypocrisy
(& Profits) Prevail
Cheney's Lies
About Halliburton & Iraq
By JASON LEOPOLD
This is my last ditch effort to show the hypocrisy
within President Bush's administration regarding its policies
toward Iraq and its President, Saddam Hussein, just as the United
States and Britain prepares to invade the country.
It was only five years ago when Vice
President Dick Cheney, as chief executive of the oil-field supply
corporation, Halliburton Co., was engaged in secret business
dealings with Saddam's regime by selling Iraq oil production
equipment and spare parts to get the Iraqi oil fields up and
running, according to confidential United Nations records.
During the 2000 presidential campaign,
Cheney adamantly denied such dealings. While he acknowledged
that his company did business with Libya and Iran through foreign
subsidiaries, Cheney said, "Iraq's different." He claimed
that he imposed a "firm policy" prohibiting any unit
of Halliburton against trading with Iraq.
"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't
do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal,"
Cheney said on the ABC-TV news program "This Week"
on July 30, 2000. "We've not done any business in Iraq since
U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing
policy that I wouldn't do that."
But it turns out that Cheney was lying.
It's only through the sale of Iraqi oil that Saddam would be
able to afford to obtain such weapons. If Saddam was in fact
building nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, which
some news reports allege could be used against American and British
troops, Cheney is partially responsible.
The Washington Post first reported Halliburton's
trade with Iraq in February 2000. But U.N. records obtained by
The Post two years ago showed that the dealings were more extensive
than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.
As secretary of defense in the first
Bush administration, Cheney helped to lead a multinational coalition
against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War and to devise a comprehensive
economic embargo to isolate Saddam Hussein's government. After
Cheney was named chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, he promised
to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.
But his stance changed when it appeared
that Halliburton was headed for financial disaster in the mid-1990s.
Cheney said sanctions against countries
such as Iraq were hurting corporations such as Halliburton.
"We seem to be sanction-happy as
a government," Cheney said at an energy conference in April
1996, reported in the oil industry publication Petroleum Finance
Week. "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit
to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic
governments," he observed during his conference presentation.
Sanctions make U.S. businesses "the
bystander who gets hit when a train wreck occurs," Cheney
told Petroleum Finance Week. "While virtually every other
country sees the need for sanctions against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's
regime there, Cheney sees general agreement that the measures
have not been very effective despite their having most of the
international community's support. An individual country's embargo,
such as that of the United States against Iran, has virtually
no effect since the target country simply signs a contract with
a non- U.S. business," the publication reported
"That's exactly what happened when
the government told Conoco Inc. that it could not develop an
oil field there," Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week. Total
S.A. "simply took it over."
In 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's
acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., the unit that sold oil
equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture
with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.
The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand
and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment
pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment
to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997
to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump
also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States --
to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces
destroyed in the GGulf War, the Post reported in a June 2001
story.
The Halliburton subsidiaries and several
other American and foreign oil supply companies helped Iraq increase
its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion
in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth
more than $40 billion.
U.S. and European officials have argued
that the increase in production also expanded Saddam's ability
to use some of that money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces.
Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming
off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food
program, according to the Post.
During his tenure as chief executive
of Halliburton, Cheney pushed the U.N. Security Council, after
he became vice president; to end an 11-year embargo on sales
of civilian goods, including oil related equipment, to Iraq.
Cheney has said sanctions against countries like Iraq unfairly
punish U.S. companies.
Earlier this year, Halliburton was chosen
as one of the companies to rebuild Iraq's dilapidated oil fields
following a U.S. led attack on the country.
U.N. documents show that Halliburton's
affiliates have had controversial, dealings with the Iraqi regime
during Cheney's tenure at the company. The Clinton administration
blocked one of the deals Halliburton was trying to push through.
That deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump
Co. and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell $760,000
in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish
an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya.
The Clinton administration blocked the
sale because it was "not authorized under the oil-for-food
deal," according to U.N. documents. Under the oil-for-food
program, Iraq is allowed to export crude oil and the money is
supposed to be used to help remove some of the hardships on Iraqi
civilians affected by the U.N. sanctions.
Jason Leopold
broke the story (later taken up by the LA Times, Nightline and
the Sunday Herald without credit) for CounterPunch on the Project
for a New American Century's push for war with Iraq.
He can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
Yesterday's
Features
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream (Interview)
Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Opposed 1989 UN Investigation of Saddam
for Human Rights Violations
Josh Ruebner
An
Open Letter to My Former Dean, Paul Wolfowitz (and Other "Court"
Jews)
Mitchel Cohen
The
Gulf War 12 Years Later: Why Class Matters
Carlos Fuentes
The Insulting Insinuations of the Bush Regime
Fareed Marjaee
The Road to Jerusalem Goes Through Baghdad
Rick Giombetti
The Savagely Soft Underbelly
of the Anti-War Movement: Misquided Faith in the UN
Rich Procter
Rove Memo: How to Launch a War
Ritt Goldstein
Oil
War: the Smoking Guns
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Give
War a Chance: the Anti-Peace Anthem
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