Blood Money
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 27 February 2003

"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military
Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this
combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
- President Dwight Eisenhower, January 1961.

George W. Bush gave a speech Wednesday night before the Godfather of
conservative Washington think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute.
In his speech, Bush quantified his coming war with Iraq as part of a
larger struggle to bring pro-western governments into power in the
Middle East. Couched in hopeful language describing peace and freedom
for all, the speech was in fact the closest articulation of the
actual plan for Iraq that has yet been heard from the administration.

In a previous truthout article from February 21, the ideological
connections between an extremist right-wing Washington think tank
and the foreign policy aspirations of the Bush administration were
detailed.

The Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, is a group founded
in 1997 that has been agitating since its inception for a war with
Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of
the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality
over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The names of every
prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to President Clinton
in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the Act by driving
troops into Baghdad.

PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Hussein opposition
group called the Iraqi National Congress, and to Iraq's heir-apparent,
Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia
by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud.
Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their
cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put
them in power in Iraq.

Most recently, PNAC created a new group called The Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee
has set out to "educate" Americans via cable news connections about
the need for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of
this education.

Who is PNAC? Its members include:

* Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the PNAC founders, who served
as Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr.;

* I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top national security assistant;

* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, also a founding member,
along with four of his chief aides including;

* Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, arguably the ideological
father of the group;

* Eliot Abrams, prominent member of Bush's National Security Council,
who was pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal;

* John Bolton, who serves as Undersecretary for Arms Control and
International Security in the Bush administration;

* Richard Perle, former Reagan administration official and
chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board;

* Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of
Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national security aide and who served as an
advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001;

* Bruce Jackson, Chairman of PNAC, a position he took after serving
for years as vice president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin,
and who also headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for
National Security and Foreign Policy during the 2000 campaign. His
section of the 2000 GOP Platform explicitly called for the removal
of Saddam Hussein;

* William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly Standard,
a magazine owned along with the Fox News Network by conservative
media mogul Ruppert Murdoch.

The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they
call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to
transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary
empire by force of arms. A report released by PNAC in September of
2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan,
which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the
fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish American
dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan,
which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that
was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the
fighting of the wars.

The men from PNAC are in a perfect position to see their foreign
policy schemes, hatched in 1997, brought into reality. They control
the White House, the Pentagon and Defense Department, by way of this
the armed forces and intelligence communities, and have at their feet
a Republican-dominated Congress that will rubber-stamp virtually
everything on their wish list.

The first step towards the establishment of this Pax Americana is,
and has always been, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the
establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq. The purpose of
this is threefold: 1) To acquire control of the oilheads so as to
fund the entire enterprise; 2) To fire a warning shot across the
bows of every leader in the Middle East; 3) To establish in Iraq a
military staging area for the eventual invasion and overthrow of
several Middle Eastern regimes, including some that are allies of
the United States.

Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz, quantified this
aspect of the grand plan in the September 2002 issue of his journal,
'Commentary'. In it, Podhoretz notes that the regimes, "that richly
deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three
singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis
should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends'
of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak,
along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or
one of his henchmen." At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is
about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of
Islam."

This casts Bush's speech to AEI on Wednesday in a completely
different light.

Weapons of mass destruction are a smokescreen. Paeans to the idea
of Iraqi liberation and democratization are cynical in their
inception. At the end of the day, this is not even about oil.
The drive behind this war is ideological in nature, a crusade
to 'reform' the religion of Islam as it exists in both government
and society within the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, the
road to empire will be open, ten lanes wide and steppin' out over
the line.

At the end of the day, however, ideology is only good for bull
sessions in the board room and the bar. Something has to grease
the skids, to make the whole thing worthwhile to those involved,
and entice those outside the loop to get into the game.

Thus, the payout.

It is well known by now that Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice
President, served as chairman and chief executive of the Dallas-based
petroleum corporation Halliburton. During his tenure, according to
oil industry executives and United Nations records, Halliburton did
a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While
working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton were also
moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's removal from power.
In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of Halliburton,
that company announced a deal that would put it first in line should
war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning oil
wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service.

Another corporation that stands to do well by a war in Iraq is Brown
& Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Ostensibly, Brown & Root is in
the construction business, and thus has won a share of the $900
million government contract for the rebuilding of post-war Iraqi
bridges, roads and other basic infrastructure. This is but the tip
of the financial iceberg, as the oil wells will also have to be
repaired after parent-company Halliburton puts out the fires.

More ominously is Brown & Root's stock in trade: the building of
permanent American military bases. There are twelve permanent U.S.
bases in Kosovo today, all built and maintained by Brown & Root for
a multi-billion dollar profit. If anyone should wonder why the
administration has not offered an exit strategy to the Iraq war
plans, the presence of Brown & Root should answer them succinctly.
We do not plan on exiting. In all likelihood, Brown & Root is in
Iraq to build permanent bases there, from which attacks upon other
Middle Eastern nations can be staged and managed.

Again, this casts Bush's speech on Wednesday in a new light.

Being at the center of the action is nothing new for Halliburton
and Brown & Root. The two companies have worked closely with
governments in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti,
Nigeria, Rwanda, and Somalia during the worst chapters in those
nation's histories. Many environmental and human rights groups
claim that Cheney, Halliburton and Brown & Root were, in fact,
centrally involved in these fiascos. More recently, Brown & Root
was contracted by the Defense Department to build cells for
detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill for that one project
came to $300 million.

Cheney became involved with PNAC officially in 1997, while still
profiting from deals between Halliburton and Hussein. One year
later, Cheney and PNAC began actively and publicly agitating for
war on Iraq. They have not stopped to this very day.

Another company with a vested interest in both war on Iraq and
massively increased defense spending is the Carlyle Group. Carlyle,
a private global investment firm with more than $12.5 billion in
capital under management, was formed in 1987. Its interests are
spread across 164 companies, including telecommunications firms
and defense contractors. It is staffed at the highest levels by
former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. Former
President George H. W. Bush is himself employed by Carlyle as a
senior advisor, as is long-time Bush family advisor and former
Secretary of State James Baker III.

One company acquired by Carlyle is United Defense, a weapons
manufacturer based in Arlington, VA. United Defense provides the
Defense Department with combat vehicle systems, fire support,
combat support vehicle systems, weapons delivery systems,
amphibious assault vehicles, combat support services and naval
armaments. Specifically, United Defense manufactures the Bradley
Fighting Vehicle, the M113 armored personnel carrier, the M88A2
Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored
Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M7 BFIST, the Armored Gun System,
the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle,
the Paladin, the Crusader, and Electric Gun/Pulse Power weapons
technology.

In other words, everything a growing Defense Department, a war in
Iraq, and a burgeoning American military empire needs.

Ironically, one group that won't profit from Carlyle's involvement
in American military buildup is the family of Osama bin Laden. The
bin Laden family fortune was amassed by Mohammed bin Laden, father
of Osama, who built a multi-billion dollar construction empire
through contracts with the Saudi government. The Saudi BinLaden
Group, as this company is called, was heavily invested in Carlyle
for years. Specifically, they were invested in Carlyle's Partners
II Fund, which includes in that portfolio United Defense and other
weapons manufacturers.

This relationship was described in a September 27, 2001 article in
the Wall Street Journal entitled 'Bin Laden Family Could Profit
From Jump in Defense Spending Due to Ties to US Bank.' The 'bank'
in question was the Carlyle Group. A follow-up article published
by the Journal on September 28 entitled ' Bin Laden Family Has
Intricate Ties With Washington - Saudi Clan Has Had Access To
Influential Republicans ' further describes the relationship. In
October of 2001, Saudi BinLaden and Carlyle severed their
relationship by mutual agreement. The timing is auspicious.

There are a number of depths to be plumbed in all of this. The
Bush administration has claimed all along that this war with Iraq
is about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism and weapons of
mass destruction, though through it all they have roundly failed
to establish any basis for either accusation. On Wednesday, Bush
went further to claim that the war is about liberating the Iraqi
people and bringing democracy to the Middle East. This ignores
cultural realities on the ground in Iraq and throughout the region
that, salted with decades of deep mistrust for American motives,
make such a democracy movement brought at the point of the sword
utterly impossible to achieve.

This movement, cloaked in democracy, is in fact a PNAC-inspired
push for an American global empire. It behooves Americans to
understand that there is a great difference between being the
citizen of a constitutional democracy and being a citizen of an
empire. The establishment of an empire requires some significant
sacrifices.

Essential social, medical, educational and retirement services
will have to be gutted so that those funds can be directed towards
a necessary military buildup. Actions taken abroad to establish the
preeminence of American power, most specifically in the Middle East,
will bring a torrent of terrorist attacks to the home front. Such
attacks will bring about the final suspension of constitutional
rights and the rule of habeas corpus, as we will find ourselves
under martial law. In the end, however, this may be inevitable. An
empire cannot function with the slow, cumbersome machine of a
constitutional democracy on its back. Empires must be ruled with
speed and ruthlessness, in a manner utterly antithetical to the
way in which America has been governed for 227 years.

And yes, of course, a great many people will die.

It would be one thing if all of this was based purely on the
ideology of our leaders. It is another thing altogether to consider
the incredible profit motive behind it all. The President, his
father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful government
officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton
and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time corporate
sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries
will likewise profit enormously.

Critics of the Bush administration like to bandy about the word
"fascist" when speaking of George. The image that word conjures
is of Nazi stormtroopers marching in unison towards Hitler's Final
Solution. This does not at all fit. It is better, in this matter,
to view the Bush administration through the eyes of Benito Mussolini.
Mussolini, dubbed 'the father of Fascism,' defined the word in a far
more pertinent fashion. "Fascism," said Mussolini, "should more
properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state
and corporate power."

Boycott the French, the Germans, and the other 114 nations who
stand against this Iraq war all you wish. France and Germany do
not oppose Bush because they are cowards, or because they enjoy
the existence of Saddam Hussein. France and Germany stand against
the Bush administration because they intend to stop this Pax
Americana in its tracks if they can. They have seen militant
fascism up close and personal before, and wish never to see it
again.

Would that we Americans could be so wise.

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William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of
two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from
Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available
in May 2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA.