The Iraq Thread 2

[Acecombat 0]

FS Pilot:

Quote[/b] ]Why should we let French or German companies do jobs that Americans and Brits could do when we're the ones who won the war?

Then why did you say this:

Quote[/b] ]As long as they're the best ones to get the job done and they're doing so, I don't see the problem.

[ran 0]

FS Pilot:

Quote[/b] ]Why should we let French or German companies do jobs that Americans and Brits could do when we're the ones who won the war?

Then why did you say this:

Quote[/b] ]As long as they're the best ones to get the job done and they're doing so, I don't see the problem.

double standards ..... that's the american way of (not) thinking for you ...

[Acecombat 0]

Yes ran unfortunately i have lived long enough on this planet now to see this

But what bugs me is that all of this was done in the space of 2 posts , how can you make one comment and then completely trash it so quickly ?

[Badgerboy 0]

Has anyone read about this?

Quote[/b] ]"The United States might consider it could not tolerate a situation in which the US and its allies were at the mercy of a group of unreasonable countries. We believe the American preference would be for a rapid operation conducted by themselves to seize oilfields.

How times change eh? You can get the full documents if you visit the National Records Office in the UK. Theres usually interesting stuff released every month.

Like this!

[Acecombat 0]

Quote[/b] ]"The United States might consider it could not tolerate a situation in which the US and its allies were at the mercy of a group of unreasonable countries. We believe the American preference would be for a rapid operation conducted by themselves to seize oilfields.

HAhahaha

God i love the hypocrisy , group of unreasonable country's must be a personal reference to Faisal in those days (God i love that guy) they are the ones whove got stockpiles of nukes with which they are juggling the worlds future and a bunch of poor tattered countrys are unreasonable ahaha

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]But what bugs me is that all of this was done in the space of 2 posts , how can you make one comment and then completely trash it so quickly ?

FS´ism at it´s best !

Well we know FS and his "versatile" debating behaviour.

[FSPilot 0]

The statements don't contradict each other at all, read them again if you have to.

EiZei

Quote[/b] ]Yeah, critique against american foreign policy did not exist before Bush Jr (think Chile 1973). :rolleyes:

That's the point, it did.  But the democrats who don't support this war did support it when Clinton was at the helm.

Quote[/b] ]And I dont recall juicy oil contracts being handed out in Kosovo.

We're talking about Iraq I think.

Acecombat

Quote[/b] ]FS Pilot:

Quote[/b] ]Why should we let French or German companies do jobs that Americans and Brits could do when we're the ones who won the war?

Then why did you say this:

Quote[/b] ]As long as they're the best ones to get the job done and they're doing so, I don't see the problem.

They're not contradictory statements, what's so hard to understand about them?  Politicians think that since we won the war so we should be the ones to take charge of the new nation.  As long as we're the best ones for the job there's no problem with that at all.

[denoir 0]

As long as we're the best ones for the job there's no problem with that at all.

Ah, but there lies the contradiction, my marxist friend. It is free competition that guarantees the best quality at the lowest prices. What you are supporting - i.e one government deciding and planning what the best is as opposed to the open market has a name - communism. Well, since Americans arn't the ones who will be paying it in the end but the Iraqis, it's more about corruption and ripping the Iraqis off. And it's a long-term ripoff. You can guess who will be maintaining the infrastructure now being built - the companies that built it.

The best thing for the Iraqis is to have a free bidding process where they can get the best quality at the lowest prices. The best thing for USA is to have US companies selling overpriced stuff to Iraq. Obviously Bush chose to kill two birds with one rock - doing what's good for USA and for his corporate buddies. The second part is where you should be objecting as it is your tax money being spent to make Bush's friends richer. For the US public a free bidding process among US corporations would be the optimum. You'd still of course be ripping off the Iraqis by excluding other bidders.

Now, that's fine - those are the spoils of war. Just don't come playing Mother Theresa and saying that you're doing it for the Iraqis!

[ralphwiggum 6]

The statements don't contradict each other at all, read them again if you have to.

EiZei

Quote[/b] ]Yeah, critique against american foreign policy did not exist before Bush Jr (think Chile 1973). :rolleyes:

That's the point, it did.  But the democrats who don't support this war did support it when Clinton was at the helm.

and Republicans who did not support when Clinton was in now supports it.

[FSPilot 0]

denoir

Quote[/b] ]Ah, but there lies the contradiction, my marxist friend. It is free competition that guarantees the best quality at the lowest prices. What you are supporting - i.e one government deciding and planning what the best is as opposed to the open market has a name - communism. Well, since Americans arn't the ones who will be paying it in the end but the Iraqis, it's more about corruption and ripping the Iraqis off. And it's a long-term ripoff. You can guess who will be maintaining the infrastructure now being built - the companies that built it.

You're making it sound like we're robbing the Iraqi people by doing this, that's not true.  The Iraqis get a lot of benefits from us rebuilding their country, whether we do it or the French or whoever does it.

Quote[/b] ]Now, that's fine - those are the spoils of war. Just don't come playing Mother Theresa and saying that you're doing it for the Iraqis!

Well, don't come around saying that we're robbing the Iraqis.  They're getting lots of good things from this too.

RalphWiggum

Quote[/b] ]and Republicans who did not support when Clinton was in now supports it.

Guess that goes to show that politicians are only interested in whats best for their party, not the rest of the world.

[walker 0]

Hi all

I just thought you might like to see that many in the pentagon are worried about Junta now taking over the US.

At least one US Airforce Colonel has come out and said what is happening.

http://www.amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the U.S. Air Force. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon and on the "Lie Factory" that was Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans.

If talk of a congressional investigation is correct this Officers Testimony as to the lies told to the US Public and Soldiers to fake them in to war on Iraq will be key.

Kind Regards Walker

[denoir 0]

You're making it sound like we're robbing the Iraqi people by doing this, that's not true.  The Iraqis get a lot of benefits from us rebuilding their country, whether we do it or the French or whoever does it.

If the country is pacified and the rebuilding suceeds then they'll be better off than they were before, no doubt. That's not the point however. The point is that the Iraqi people would benefit from having an open market for the rebuilding. The result from a restriction on bids is that they will pay more for worse quality. And in the end it will be their money that will be spent more than it has to be on probably inferior quality services. Inferior quality because of the lack of competition the US corporations don't have to put any effort into building things poperly.

It's not a robbery, like pointing a gun at a person and taking his wallet. It's like pointing a gun at him and forcing him to buy a crappy old car at a very high price. And this is not because American corporations are inferior to others, but because the lack of competition puts them in a position where they can offer crappy services at unreasonable prices. And that's a dream come true from the point of view of a corporation in a capitalist/market economy. Obviously all the company cares about is profit. The only thing that prevents the customers from getting screwed is free competition. Remove that and the customer will get screwed. It's the law of the market.

[ralphwiggum 6]

RalphWiggum

Quote[/b] ]and Republicans who did not support when Clinton was in now supports it.

Guess that goes to show that politicians are only interested in whats best for their party, not the rest of the world.

thus TBA is interested in their agenda, not freedom of Iraqi people.

[FSPilot 0]

You're making it sound like we're robbing the Iraqi people by doing this, that's not true.  The Iraqis get a lot of benefits from us rebuilding their country, whether we do it or the French or whoever does it.

denoir

Quote[/b] ]If the country is pacified and the rebuilding suceeds then they'll be better off than they were before, no doubt. That's not the point however. The point is that the Iraqi people would benefit from having an open market for the rebuilding. The result from a restriction on bids is that they will pay more for worse quality. And in the end it will be their money that will be spent more than it has to be on probably inferior quality services. Inferior quality because of the lack of competition the US corporations don't have to put any effort into building things poperly.

You're automatically assuming that we're going to give the Iraqis the shaft or something.  What makes you think that companies like Haliburton aren't the best for the job?  I understand your concern that because there's no competition we could easilly take advantage of the situation, but that's not automatically going to happen.  Or maybe I'm just being too trusting.

Quote[/b] ]It's not a robbery, like pointing a gun at a person and taking his wallet. It's like pointing a gun at him and forcing him to buy a crappy old car at a very high price. And this is not because American corporations are inferior to others, but because the lack of competition puts them in a position where they can offer crappy services at unreasonable prices. And that's a dream come true from the point of view of a corporation in a capitalist/market economy. Obviously all the company cares about is profit. The only thing that prevents the customers from getting screwed is free competition. Remove that and the customer will get screwed. It's the law of the market.

I understand that completely, my ISP does it to me all the time.  What I don't understand is why you're automatically assuming this is going to happen.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not so naive that I think nobody would try to take advantage of this situation, but I'm also not so cynical that I automatically think they're going to take advantage of the Iraqi people.

And it's not like nobody's watching these guys either.

RalphWiggum

Quote[/b] ]

RalphWiggum

Quote[/b] ]and Republicans who did not support when Clinton was in now supports it.

Guess that goes to show that politicians are only interested in whats best for their party, not the rest of the world.

thus TBA is interested in their agenda, not freedom of Iraqi people.

Well so are the democrats then.

[denoir 0]

You're automatically assuming that we're going to give the Iraqis the shaft or something.  What makes you think that companies like Haliburton aren't the best for the job?  I understand your concern that because there's no competition we could easilly take advantage of the situation, but that's not automatically going to happen.  Or maybe I'm just being too trusting.

The thing is that the nature of the game makes it certain that it will happen. A company has a responsibility to its share holders to maximize its profit. Haliburton will make the most profitable choices and without competition it is providing bad service at a high cost. It's not the role of a company to be 'nice'. They won't charge less for their services, just to give the Iraqis a break. On the contrary, their responsibility to their share holders is to take every penny that they can get. And this means that if they have the opportunity, they have to sell cheap services at insane prices. Normally that's where free competition kicks in and the whole thing reaches an equilibrium. Without it there is no control system. That's why countries have anti-trust laws. A monopoly always means bad news for the consumer in terms of both price and quality.

In Iraq you'll have one system of control - at least in the beginning - and it's the US goverment. And then you're back at the communist command economy model. It has proven itself worthless throughout the world due to the simple fact that people are greedy and all the control systems fail. And this is especially true for the Bush administration that has really close ties to the industry that's supposed to rebuild Iraq. So it's bad news for the Iraqis either way.

But as you said - there are benefits for them as well. They'll get a brand new infrastructure although it will be bad in quality and very overpriced.

[ralphwiggum 6]

RalphWiggum

Quote[/b] ]

RalphWiggum

Quote[/b] ]and Republicans who did not support when Clinton was in now supports it.

Guess that goes to show that politicians are only interested in whats best for their party, not the rest of the world.

thus TBA is interested in their agenda, not freedom of Iraqi people.

Well so are the democrats then.

you have to show that democrats opposed first Gulf War to prove your point that "politicians are only interested in whats best for their party". i made the case when i showed you that republicans have history of selfish decisions. now it is your case to show that democrats did same with same issue that was evident beforehand.

[bn880 5]

Hi all

I just thought you might like to see that many in the pentagon are worried about Junta now taking over the US.

At least one US Airforce Colonel has come out and said what is happening.

http://www.amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the U.S. Air Force. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon and on the "Lie Factory" that was Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Special Plans.

If talk of a congressional investigation is correct this Officers Testimony as to the lies told to the US Public and Soldiers to fake them in to war on Iraq will be key.

Kind Regards Walker

If no one minds, here is the article saved on our forum, in case it kind of disappears a month from now.

Quote[/b] ]December 1, 2003 issue

Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative

In Rumsfeld’s Shop

A senior Air Force officer watches as the neocons consolidate their Pentagon coup.

By Karen Kwiatkowski

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski recently retired from the U.S. Air Force. Her final posting was as an analyst at the Pentagon. Below is the first of three installments describing her experience there. They provide a unique view of the Department of Defense during a period of intense ideological upheaval, as the United States prepared to launch—for the first time in its history—a “preventive†war.

In early May 2002, I was looking forward to retirement from the United States Air Force in about a year. I had a cushy job in the Pentagon’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, International Security Affairs, Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the previous two years, I had published two books on African security issues and had passed my comprehensive doctoral exams at Catholic University. I was very pleased with the administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sub-Saharan Africa, former Marine and Senator Helms staffer Michael Westphal, and was ready to start thinking about my dissertation and my life after the military.

When Mike called me in to his office, I thought I was getting a new project or perhaps that one of my many suggestions of fun things to do with Africa policy had been accepted. But the look on his face clued me in that this was going to be one of those meetings where somebody wasn’t leaving happy. After a quick rank check, I had a good idea which one it would be.

There was a position in Near East South Asia (NESA) that they needed to fill right away. I wasn’t interested. They phrased the question another way: “We have been tasked to send a body over to Bill Luti. Can we send you?†I resisted—until I slowly guessed that in true bureaucratic fashion and can-do military tradition my name had already been sent over. This little soirée in Mike’s office was my farewell.

I went back to my office and e-mailed a buddy in the Joint Staff. Bob wrote back, “Write down everything you see.†I didn’t do it, but these most wise words from a trusted friend proved the first of three omens I would soon receive.

I showed up down the hall a few days later. It looked just like the office from which I came, newer blue cubicles, narrow hallways piled high with copy paper, newspapers, unused equipment, and precariously leaning map rolls. The same old concrete-building smell pervaded, maybe a little mustier. I was taking over the desk of a CIA loaner officer. Joe had been called back early to the agency and was hoping to go to Yemen. Before he left, he briefed me on his biggest project: ongoing negotiations with the Qatari sheiks over who was paying for improvements to Al Udeid Air Base. I was familiar with Al Udeid from my time on the Air Staff a few years before. Back then we seemed to like the Saudis, and our Saudi bases were a few hours closer to the action than Al Udeid, so the U.S. played a woo-me game. Now that we needed and wanted Al Udeid to be finished quickly and done up right, it was time for the emirs to play hard to get. Joe gave me the rundown on counterterrorism ops in Yemen and an upcoming agreement with the Bahraini monarch to extend our military-security agreement, locking in a relationship just in case those Bahraini experiments with democracy actually took off.

I had an obligatory meeting with the deputy director, Paul Hulley, Navy Captain. This meeting followed a phone call in which I hadn’t been as compliant as I should have been with a Navy Captain, and since Paul had handled my bad attitude with candor and grace, I was determined to like him—and I did. I gave him my story: I was a year from retirement and, more importantly, I was in a car pool. I’d be working a 7:15 to 17:30 schedule. He was neither charmed nor impressed. He advised that I’d need to be working a lot longer than that. Then we stepped in to meet Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Bill Luti. I knew Luti had a Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts and was a recently retired Navy Captain himself. At this point, I didn’t know what a neocon was or that they had already swarmed over the Pentagon, populating various hives of policy and planning like African hybrids, with the same kind of sting reflex. Luti just seemed happy to have me there as a warm body.

My second omen was the super-size bottles of Tums and Tylenol Joe left in his desk. The third occurred as I was chatting with my new office mate, a career civil servant working the Egypt desk. As the conversation moved into Middle East news and politics, she mentioned that if I wanted to be successful here, I shouldn’t say anything positive about the Palestinians. In 19 years of military service, I had never heard such a politically laden warning on such an obscure topic to such an inconsequential player. I had the sense of a single click, the sound tectonic plates might make as they shift deep under the earth and lock into a new resting position—or when the trigger is pulled in a game of Russian roulette.

I had never worked for neocons before, and the philosophical journey to understand what they stood for was not a trip I wanted to take. But my conversations with coworkers and some of the people I was meeting in the office opened my eyes to something strange and fascinating. Those who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite knew that something calculated had happened to NESA. Key personnel, long-time civilian professionals holding the important billets, had been replaced early in the transition. The Office Director, second in command and normally a professional civilian regional expert, was vacant. Joe McMillan had been moved to the NESA Center over at National Defense University. This was strange because in a transition the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies. To remove that continuity factor seemed contraindicated, but at the time, I didn’t realize that the expertise on Middle East policy was being brought in from a variety of outside think tanks.

Another civilian replacement about which I was told was that of the long-time Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk, Larry Hanauer. Word was that he was even-handed with Israel, there had been complaints from one of his countries, and as a gesture of good will, David Schenker, fresh from the Washington Institute, was serving as the new Israel/Syria/Lebanon desk.

I came to share with many NESA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon. There was a sense that politics like these might play better at the State Department or the National Security Council, not the Pentagon, where we considered ourselves objective and hard boiled.

The anti-Arab orientation I perceived was only partially confirmed by things I saw. Towards the end of the summer, we welcomed to the office as a temporary special assistant to Bill Luti an Egyptian-American naval officer, Lt. (later Lt. Cmdr.) Youssef Aboul-Enein. His job wasn’t entirely clear to me, but he would research bits of data in which Bill Luti was interested and peruse Arabic-language media for quotations or events that could be used to demonize Saddam Hussein or link him to nastiness beyond his own borders and with unsavory characters.

While I was still hoping to be sent back to the Africa desk, I was also angling to take the NESA North Africa desk that would be vacated in July. During this time, May through mid-July, the news in the daily briefing was focused on war planning for the Iraq invasion. Slides from a CENTCOM brief appeared on the front page of the New York Times on July 5. A few weeks later, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered an investigation into who leaked this information. The Air Force Office of Special Investigation was tasked to work with the FBI, and everyone in NESA was supposed to be interviewed.

My interview, by two fresh-faced OSI investigators, occurred sometime in July. One handed me a copy of an article by William Arkin discussing Iraq-war planning published in May 2002 in the Los Angeles Times and asked if I knew Arkin. I didn’t recall the name, but when I checked I learned that he had spent time at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Apparently, Arkin had facilitated a leak six weeks before, but it hadn’t caused a fuss. I pointed out that I did know a person with major SAIS links who probably knew Arkin. They leaned forward eagerly. “Have you ever heard of Paul Wolfowitz?†They looked puzzled, so I called up the bio of the deputy secretary and showed them how he ran SAIS during most of the Clinton years. I suggested the investigation look at the answers to the cui bono question. I also told them no one in the military or at CENTCOM would leak war plans because as Rumsfeld accurately said, it gets people killed. But the politicos who were anxious to get the American people over the mental hump that the Bush administration was going to send troops to Iraq were not military and had both motive and opportunity to leak.

During the summer, I assumed the duties of the North Africa desk. Part of my job was to schedule and complete two overdue bilateral meetings with longtime U.S. security partners Morocco and Tunisia. Bilateral meetings historically included a tailored regional-security briefing addressing Weapons of Mass Destruction threats and status. In planning my upcoming bilateral agendas and attendee lists, I discovered that Bill Luti had certain issues regarding the regional-security briefing, in particular with the aspects relating to WMD and terrorism.

There had been an incident shortly before I arrived in which the Defense Intelligence Officer had been prohibited from giving his briefing to a particular country only hours before he was scheduled. During the summer, the brief was simply not scheduled for another important bilateral meeting. Instead, a briefing was prepared by another policy office that worked on non-proliferation issues. This briefing was not a product of the Defense Intelligence Agency or CIA but instead came from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

At the end of the summer of 2002, new space had been found upstairs on the fifth floor for an “expanded Iraq desk.†It would be called the Office of Special Plans. We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained, and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment. We were also told that one of the products of this office would be talking points that all desk officers would use verbatim in the preparation of their background documents.

About that same time, my education on the history and generation of the neoconservative movement had completed its first stage. I now understood that neoconservatism was both unhistorical and based on the organizing construct of “permanent revolution.†I had studied the role played by hawkish former Sen. Scoop Jackson (D-Wash.) and the neoconservative drift of formerly traditional magazines like National Review and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. I had observed that many of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon not only had limited military experience, if any at all, but they also advocated theories of war that struck me as rejections of classical liberalism, natural law, and constitutional strictures. More than that, the pressure of the intelligence community to conform, the rejection of it when it failed to produce intelligence suitable for supporting the “Iraq is an imminent threat to the United States†agenda, and the amazing things I was hearing in both Bush and Cheney speeches told me that not only do neoconservatives hold a theory based on ideas not embraced by the American mainstream, but they also have a collective contempt for fact.

By August, I was morally and intellectually frustrated by my powerlessness against what increasingly appeared to be a philosophical hijacking of the Pentagon. Indeed, I had sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, but perhaps we were never really expected to take it all that seriously …

To be continued

_

In a coming installment, Lieutenant Colonel Kwiatkowsi relates what happens when a group of Israeli generals treads the well-worn (for them) path to Douglas Feith’s office.

December 1, 2003 issue

Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative

[toadlife 3]

If the country is pacified and the rebuilding suceeds then they'll be better off than they were before, no doubt. That's not the point however. The point is that the Iraqi people would benefit from having an open market for the rebuilding. The result from a restriction on bids is that they will pay more for worse quality. And in the end it will be their money that will be spent more than it has to be on probably inferior quality services. Inferior quality because of the lack of competition the US corporations don't have to put any effort into building things poperly.

It's not a robbery, like pointing a gun at a person and taking his wallet. It's like pointing a gun at him and forcing him to buy a crappy old car at a very high price. And this is not because American corporations are inferior to others, but because the lack of competition puts them in a position where they can offer crappy services at unreasonable prices. And that's a dream come true from the point of view of a corporation in a capitalist/market economy. Obviously all the company cares about is profit. The only thing that prevents the customers from getting screwed is free competition. Remove that and the customer will get screwed. It's the law of the market.

Your point about the lack of competition is taken, but you are forgetting that the Iraqi people are not the ones paying for the initial rebuilding of Iraq, nor is any Iraqi government making any descisions in regards to this matter. For all intents and purposes, the United States is the Iraqi government right now, and it's American Tax dollars that are paying for the rebuilding Iraq.

Serveral companies did bid for the initial jobs in Iraq, and the government picked Halliburton. Did any of you ever think that perhaps Halliburton was the best company for the job, or is that thought off the table for you guys?

Regardless of who they picked for the job, I would think it is in the best interest of the United States government not to get screwed over, since it's their money paying the bills at the moment.

When a formal Iraqi government takes over and starts paying for it's own projects, I'm sure the free market will rule.

[EiZei 0]

What if every other donating country would suddenly decide that their companies should be the only ones getting the deals?

[toadlife 3]

What if every other donating country would suddenly decide that their companies should be the only ones getting the deals?

That would be fine as long as their country had competent companies that could do the job.

i.e.- The U.S. has the industrial leverage to do this. Other countries may or may not.

[toadeater 0]

Quote[/b] ]Serveral companies did bid for the initial jobs in Iraq, and the government picked Halliburton. Did any of you ever think that perhaps Halliburton was the best company for the job, or is that thought off the table for you guys?

No they did not. Does the term "no-bid contract" mean anything to you?

Sure Halliburton was best for the job, Dick Halliburton is vice president!

But this is all old news now. Halliburton was caught red-handed and thrown out by the Pentagon. They are crooks, they were caught, it's a fact.

Maybe Bush honestly didn't know, maybe he did. But why should we blindly trust this man with everything? We need independent groups watching over his every move, keeping track of all the documents, and someone definitely should take account of how our money is being spent.

Quote[/b] ]Regardless of who they picked for the job, I would think it is in the best interest of the United States government not to get screwed over, since it's their money paying the bills at the moment.

You mean it's YOUR money paying for it, if you're a US, or British taxpayer. So it's in YOUR best interest not to get screwed over. Bush and co. are getting rich either way, they already got their money out of YOUR pocket.

Quote[/b] ]When a formal Iraqi government takes over and starts paying for it's own projects, I'm sure the free market will rule.

Oh, they'll have their own government, but it's not going to be the puppet government Bush wanted.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Halliburton's roots in the Pentagon run alot deeper than the Vice-President- although the fact that he is a former Defense Secretary is certainly a plus. Hell, during the Clinton Administration Cheney's (former) stock interests in Halliburton netted him about 40 million dollars from defense contracts, including (among other things) construction of military barracks in the Balkans.

[denoir 0]

Your point about the lack of competition is taken, but you are forgetting that the Iraqi people are not the ones paying for the initial rebuilding of Iraq, nor is any Iraqi government making any descisions in regards to this matter. For all intents and purposes, the United States is the Iraqi government right now, and it's American Tax dollars that are paying for the rebuilding Iraq.

Serveral companies did bid for the initial jobs in Iraq, and the government picked Halliburton. Did any of you ever think that perhaps Halliburton was the best company for the job, or is that thought off the table for you guys?

Regardless of who they picked for the job, I would think it is in the best interest of the United States government not to get screwed over, since it's their money paying the bills at the moment.

When a formal Iraqi government takes over and starts paying for it's own projects, I'm sure the free market will rule.

Right now USA is paying for the reconstruction, but the plan is to let Iraq's oil finance it. As it was pointed out, it's you who are paying not Bush. But even if his motives are good, you have to realize that he works for the American people, not the Iraqi people. As long as your interests are compatible, it's fine. The problem comes when USA could benefit from something that would be bad for the Iraqis. In the end the US president and the US government answers to the Americans, not the Iraqis.

In this whole rebuilding story, it's in America's interest to squeeze every penny possible out of the Iraqis. And it would be a bit much to expect of Bush to put the Iraqi people before the American.

[drewb99 0]

Saddam's been a very naughty monkey:

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/wwn/20030410/104998680005.html

Quote[/b] ]KUWAIT CITY -- Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been caught with his pants down -- literally. A shocking 1968 porn film has surfaced, in which the flamboyant strongman appears performing raunchy homosexual acts!

[quicksand 0]

I don`t find that remotely funny,only disgusting..This kind of bs shoudn`t be showed on this forum moreover the media section is called "GOSSIP" so come on...