Oh, I know, Cheney has no influence over awarding contracts to Halliburton,
and doesn’t stand to profit from it personally. What a wonderful and bizarre
coincidence then that Halliburton alone stands to earn billions in revenues
from its post-war contracts! How lucky for them. Too bad no other US
companies are going to get a shot at those
contracts.

–C

This article was pulled from the wires of that radical organization:
Associated Press.

————————————–
Cheney’s Former Firm Could Earn Billions in Iraq

By David Pace/Associated Press

WASHINGTON (May 30) - Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company already
has
garnered more than $600 million in military work related to the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and potentially could earn billions more without
having to
compete with other companies.

As the Army’s sole provider of troop support services, Halliburton’s Kellogg
Brown & Root subsidiary has received work orders totaling $529.4 million
related to the two wars under a 10-year contract that has no spending
ceiling.

Rather than put the Iraq work up for bidding, the government has used the
2001 Halliburton contract to place the various work orders in Iraq,
prompting
criticism from some Democrats that Cheney’s former company is receiving
favored
treatment.

“The amount Halliburton could receive in the future is virtually
limitless,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who disclosed the troop
support work
orders Thursday. “It is simply remarkable that a single company could earn
so much
money from the war in Iraq.”

Halliburton, a Houston-based oilfield-services and construction company,
disputes those characterizations, noting it had to compete to win the
original
contract and that each of its work orders is covered by strict guidelines
and
costs controls.

“U.S. government contracts are awarded, not by politicians, but by
government civil servants, under strict guidelines,” company spokeswoman
Wendy Hall
said. “Government civil servants are well aware of and consistently abide
by
the requirements of the process. Privatizing this work allows the military
to
concentrate on its mission. “

“Any allegation that this contract is set up to encourage unwarranted
spending is unfounded and untrue,” she said. “The vice president has
nothing to do
with the awarding of contracts, the bidding process or task orders.”

Cheney headed Halliburton from 1995 until George W. Bush picked him as his
running mate in July 2000.

The Army Corps of Engineers, using a separate no-bid contract, has awarded
Kellogg Brown & Root $71.3 million in work orders to repair and operate oil
wells in Iraq. That contract has a two-year duration of a spending ceiling
of $7
billion.

Kellogg Brown & Root competed with two other companies in 2001 to win the
logistics contract that makes it the Army’s only private supplier of troop
support services such as housing, amenities and food over the next decade.

The initial logistics contract award carried no value. The Army negotiates
each task order with the company and then verifies the costs as they are
billed.

There is no ceiling on spending, because the contract is designed to provide
rapid troop support wherever and whenever U.S. forces move into action
overseas.

Under similar contracts, the Army paid Kellogg Brown & Root $1.2 billion
from
1992 through 1999 to support U.S. troops, mainly in the Balkans. An
extension
of that contract from 1999 through 2004 is projected to cost $1.8 billion.

Since March 2002, the Army has issued 24 task orders totaling $425.5 million
under the contract for work related to Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to
Army records provided Waxman. Eleven more work orders totaling $103.9
million
have been issued under the same contract for work related to the war in
Afghanistan.

Dan Carlson, spokesman for the Army Field Support Command, said the Army has
paid $42 million to Kellogg Brown & Root through April for work under the
contract related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Carlson said the more than $500 million in work orders under the logistics
contract represents the Army’s best estimate of the final costs of the
projects.
He said the company must justify its spending to Army contract officials
before it can be paid.

“Costs are verified as they are billed,” he said. “We may spend more or
we
may spend less.”

Much of a $60 million obligation to Brown & Root to provide logistical
supply
line services and locations in Turkey was never spent because the Turkish
government refused to allow U.S. troops to launch an invasion of Iraq from
Turkey, Carlson said.

Folks,

Please note the below clarification on what Wolfowitz actually said, submitted by an alert reader.

Still, I don’t think this clarification changes much. All three reasons remain as weak as they were before.

1. WMD is a multiple standard and we are the worst offender. Next?

2. Support for terrorism? Largely unproven in Iraq’s case. Easily proven in the case of the Saudis, our friends. Next?

3. Criminal treatment of the Iraqi people? OK, then how about the equally bad dictatorial regimes that we have installed and continue to support in the rest of the world, especially in drug-producing nations? Next??

—–Original Message—–

FYI, he didn’t actually say this. The quote was:

Q: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden’s rage about that, which he’s built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there’s a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into —

Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but — hold on one second –

(Pause)

Kellems: Sam there may be some value in clarity on the point that it may take years to get post-Saddam Iraq right. It can be easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to –

Wolfowitz: — there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there’s a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two.

The Independent report left out the last paragraph of the quote, which undermines the thrust of their story.

Here’s a link to the transcript.

—–Original Message—–

WMD just a convenient excuse for war, admits Wolfowitz

The case for war is blown apart

By David Usborne/The Independent

The Bush administration focused on alleged weapons of mass

destruction as the primary justification for toppling Saddam Hussein

by force because it was politically convenient, a top-level official

at the Pentagon has acknowledged.

The extraordinary admission comes in an interview with Paul

Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, in the July issue of the

magazine Vanity Fair.

Mr Wolfowitz also discloses that there was one justification that

was “almost unnoticed but huge”. That was the prospect of the United

States being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia

once the threat of Saddam had been removed. Since the taking of

Baghdad, Washington has said that it is taking its troops out of the

kingdom. “Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going

to the door” towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle

East peace, Mr Wolfowitz said. The presence of the US military in

Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qa’ida and

other terrorist groups.

“For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass

destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,”

Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine.

The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic

that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell.

They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz’s

immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, conceded for

the first time that the arms might never be found.

The failure to find a single example of the weapons that London and

Washington said were inside Iraq only makes the embarrassment more

acute. Voices are increasingly being raised in the US - and Britain

- demanding an explanation for why nothing has been found.

Most striking is the fact that these latest remarks come from Mr

Wolfowitz, recognised widely as the leader of the hawks’ camp in

Washington most responsible for urging President George Bush to use

military might in Iraq. The magazine article reveals that Mr

Wolfowitz was even pushing Mr Bush to attack Iraq immediately after

the 11 September attacks in the US, instead of invading Afghanistan.

There have long been suspicions that Mr Wolfowitz has essentially

been running a shadow administration out of his Pentagon office,

ensuring that the right-wing views of himself and his followers find

their way into the practice of American foreign policy. He is best

known as the author of the policy of first-strike pre-emption in

world affairs that was adopted by Mr Bush shortly after the

al-Qa’ida attacks.

In asserting that weapons of mass destruction gave a rationale for

attacking Iraq that was acceptable to everyone, Mr Wolfowitz was

presumably referring in particular to the US Secretary of State,

Colin Powell. He was the last senior member of the administration to

agree to the push earlier this year to persuade the rest of the

world that removing Saddam by force was the only remaining viable

option.

The conversion of Mr Powell was on full view in the UN Security

Council in February when he made a forceful presentation of evidence

that allegedly proved that Saddam was concealing weapons of mass

destruction.

Critics of the administration and of the war will now want to know

how convinced the Americans really were that the weapons existed in

Iraq to the extent that was publicly stated. Questions are also

multiplying as to the quality of the intelligence provided to the

White House. Was it simply faulty - given that nothing has been

found in Iraq - or was it influenced by the White House’s fixation

on the weapons issue? Or were the intelligence agencies telling the

White House what it wanted to hear?

This week, Sam Nunn, a former senator, urged Congress to investigate

whether the argument for war in Iraq was based on distorted

intelligence. He raised the possibility that Mr Bush’s policy

against Saddam had influenced the intelligence that indicated

Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.

This week, the CIA and the other American intelligence agencies have

promised to conduct internal reviews of the quality of the material

they supplied the administration on what was going on in Iraq. The

heat on the White House was only made fiercer by Mr Rumsfeld’s

admission that nothing may now be found in Iraq to back up those

earlier claims, if only because the Iraqis may have got rid of any

evidence before the conflict.

“It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them

prior to a conflict,” the Defence Secretary said.

The US military said last night that it had released a suspected

Iraqi war criminal by mistake. US Central Command said it was

offering a $25,000 (315,000) reward for the capture of Mohammed

Jawad An-Neifus, suspected of being involved in the murder of

thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims whose remains were found at a mass

grave in Mahawil, southern Iraq, last month.

As scepticism grows over the failure to find weapons of mass

destruction in Iraq, London and Washington are attempting to turn

the focus of attention to Iraq’s alleged possession of mobile

weapons labs.

A joint CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency report released this

week claimed that two trucks found in northern Iraq last month were

mobile labs used to develop biological weapons. The trucks were

fitted with hi-tech laboratory equipment and the report said the

discovery represented the “strongest evidence to date that Iraq was

hiding a biowarfare program”.

The design of the vehicles made them “an ingeniously simple

self-contained bioprocessing system”. The report said no other

purpose, for example water purification, medical laboratory or

vaccine production, would justify such effort and expense.

But critics arenot convinced. No biological agents were found on the

trucks and experts point out that, unlike the trucks described by

Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, in a speech to the UN Security

Council, they were open sided and would therefore have left a trace

easy for weapons inspectors to detect. One former UN inspector said

that the trucks would have been a very inefficient way to produce

anthrax.

(c) 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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