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Today's
Stories
October 12,
2004
Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Israel as Sideshow
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
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.
|
October 12, 2004
Profiting with
the Enemy
Under
Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from UN's Oil-for-Food
Program
By
JASON LEOPOLD
When the Iraqi Survey Group released
its long awaited report last week that said Iraq eliminated its
weapons programs in the 1990s, President George W. Bush quickly
changed his stance on reasons he authorized an invasion of Iraq.
While he campaigned for a second term in office, Bush justified
the war by saying that that Saddam Hussein was manipulating the
United Nation's oil-for-food program, siphoning off billions
of dollars from the venture that he intended to use to fund a
weapons program.
The report on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction,
prepared by Charles Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector
and head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said Saddam Hussein used
revenue from the oil-for-food program and "created
a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign
governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion
in illicit revenue in the decade before the US-led invasion last
year," reports The New York Times.
"Through secret government-to-government trade agreements,
Saddam Hussein's government earned more than $7.5 billion,"
the report says. "At the same time, by demanding kickbacks
from foreign companies that received oil or that supplied consumer
goods, Iraq received at least $2 billion more to spend on weapons
or on Saddam's extravagant palaces."
The oil-for-food program was supervised by the U.N. and ran from
1996 until the war started in Iraq last year. It was designed
to alleviate the effects sanctions had on Iraqi citizens by allowing
limited quantities of oil to be sold to buy food and medicine.
But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food
program in the mid-1990s that wasn't identified in Duelfer's
report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton
at the time of the scheme was Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton
and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign
oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports
from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by skirting
U.S. laws and selling Iraq spare parts so it could repair its
oil fields and pump more oil. Since the oil-for-food program
began, Iraq has sold $40 billion worth of oil. U.S. and European
officials have long argued that the increase in Iraq's oil production
also expanded Saddam's ability to use some of that money for
weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats
estimate that Iraq was skimming off as much as 10 percent of
the proceeds from the oil-for-food program thanks to companies
like Halliburton and former executives such as Cheney.
U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had controversial
dealings with the Iraqi regime during Cheney's tenure at the
company and played a part in helping Saddam Hussein illegally
pocket billions of dollars under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program.
The Clinton administration blocked one deal Halliburton was trying
to push through sale because it was "not authorized under
the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. That
deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co.
and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell nearly $1 million
in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish
an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya. Still, Halliburton used
one of foreign subsidiaries to sell Iraq the equipment it needed
so the country could pump more oil, according to a report in
the Washington Post in June 2001.
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 -- according to the Post,
to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces
destroyed in the Gulf War years earlier.
Cheney's hard-line stance against Iraq on the campaign trail
is hypocritical considering that during his tenure as chief executive
of Halliburton, Cheney pushed the U.N. Security Council, after
he became CEO 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.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney adamantly denied
that under his leadership, Halliburton did business with Iraq.
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 Cheney's denials don't hold up. Halliburton played a major
role in helping Iraq repair its oil fields during the mid-1990s
that allowed Saddam to siphon off funds from the oil-for-food
program to fund a weapons program, which Cheney and President
Bush insist was the case.
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 that changed when it appeared that Halliburton was headed
for a financial crisis in the mid-1990s. Cheney said sanctions
against countries like 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.
Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief
of Dow Jones Newswires where he spent two years covering the
energy crisis and the Enron bankruptcy. He just finished writing
a book about the crisis, due out in December through Rowman &
Littlefield. He can be reached at: jasonleopold@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
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