War is peace

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, March 8, 2026 23:49
VIEWED: 7556
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SIGNYM

Friday, October 8, 2004 8:36 PM

BTW, I will provide a reference to the list of installations (not necessarily "bases"). I can't possibly transcribe them all in, and it's a hardcopy reference (book). Best I can do.

NEUTRINOLAD

Saturday, October 9, 2004 3:08 AM

Until the bribes got big enough.

Geezer, Ghoulman, et. al., as you are educated about this, you wouldn't happen to have the list of American companies and agencies that were also cited as bribe recipients but is being kept secret as a matter of "national security", would you?

RUE

Saturday, October 9, 2004 3:10 AM

Geezer, sometimes I wonder how you manage to actually string words together. The sentences are grammatical, but the content indicates a severe reality deficiency.
edited
PS You know, I'm far too busy and life's way too short to debate an essentially meaningless question, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I have said that there are four reasons to support the Iraq war, and consequently Bush. They are: fear, greed, hate, and for lack of a better term, American jihad. Including his many other arguments, Geezer seems to fall in the last category. American never did anything wrong. Or, if wrong was done, it was by accident. Or, if not by accident, it was just a byproduct of the best decisions being made in an imperfect world under imperfect knowledge. And if the facts don't suit, argue that 'it' wasn't really that bad, because, it's not about facts, it's just a matter of perspective. Or some other incorporal nicety like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
He still hasn't answered my question from another thread, which was, give ONE reason you will not back away from to justify attacking Iraq. One sentence or a short paragraph please.
Which makes me think that HE thinks America doesn't need to have credible reasons. It's always right, no matter what. I place that in the category of American jihad.

SOUPCATCHER

Saturday, October 9, 2004 3:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by NeutrinoLad
Geezer, Ghoulman, et. al., as you are educated about this, you wouldn't happen to have the list of American companies and agencies that were also cited as bribe recipients but is being kept secret as a matter of "national security", would you?

The usual suspects, among them Halliburton. Done through foreign subsidiaries. During the time while Cheney was CEO. The following excerpt is from a Financial Times article written in November 2000.

Quote:
excerpted from "A discreet way of doing business with Iraq" http://tinyurl.com/3udtn
*editted to add: the article is subscription only, not sure how I got past that, but the link might not work. Here is a reprint of the article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/02.23D.Cheney.Circumvented.htm

Millions of dollars of US oil business with Iraq are being channelled discreetly through European and other companies, in a practice that has highlighted the double standards now dominating relations between Baghdad and Washington after a decade of crippling sanctions.

Though legal, leading US oil service companies such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Flowserve, Fisher-Rosemount and others, have used subsidiaries and joint venture companies for this lucrative business, so as to avoid straining relations with Washington and jeopardising their ties with President Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad.

By submitting their contracts to the UN via mainly French subsidiaries, many of which do little more than lend their name to the transaction, the companies are treated as European, rather than US or Japanese, applicants.

* thanks to Digby at Hullabaloo for the link

-----------------------------------

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was posted, said “Private Property”
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothing --
This land was made for you and me.

- Woody Guthrie

NEUTRINOLAD

Saturday, October 9, 2004 5:36 AM

Thanks Soupcatcher, but I didn't mean the sales of equipment, etc., which were organized to be a perfectly legal, if amorally corrupt and ethically bankrupt, practice.
I was referring more to this scandal, http://cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/10/07/france.iraq.un.ap/index.html

If you read to the last third of the article it says, "The names of American companies and individuals who may have been involved in oil deals weren't released because of U.S. privacy laws, the report said."

So I was wondering about this. What's the deal?

SOUPCATCHER

Saturday, October 9, 2004 5:44 AM

Ah. My bad. Sorry. Haven't seen anything about those companies.

There are three kinds of people: fighters, lovers, and screamers.

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 9, 2004 10:48 AM

Funny, you're the third person I've heard refer to those "Privacy laws". The first time my reaction was "Yeah, yeah, another conspiracy theory" but by the third time it starts to feel like "everyone" knows something I don't know!

So I'm going to look into those privacy laws and find out!

Geezer- The book I was thinking of is "Blowback" by Chalmers Johnson but it might actually be in "Sorrows of Empire" (same author). Anyway, here's a quote from "Sorrows" for your perusal while I go rummage for those books.

Quote:
Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories... These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11....

The report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.

www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm

Now, these are just BASES. It does not include "installations" (such as radar installations) or "facilities" like offices or golf courses. Chalmers Johnson, BTW, used to be a CIA analyst for the Far East.

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 9, 2004 11:32 AM

I found this in the Houston Chronicle:

Quote:
Major U.S. oil companies and a Houston oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the CIA's chief arms inspector.
ADVERTISEMENT

The 918-page report says that four American oil companies — Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Houston-based Bay Oil — and three individuals, including Oscar Wyatt, were given vouchers and got 111 million barrels of oil between them from 1996 to 2003. The vouchers allowed them to profit by selling the oil or the right to trade it.

The other individuals, whose names appeared on a secret list kept by the former Iraqi government, were Samir Vincent of Annandale, Va., and Shakir Al-Khafaji of West Bloomfield, Mich., according to the report by the inspector, Charles Duelfer.

The fact that these companies and individuals received oil from Iraq does not mean that they did anything illegal, experts on the program said. Such allocations may have been proper if the individuals and companies received appropriate U.N. approval.

In interviews on Friday, spokesmen for the oil companies and for Houston-based El Paso Corp., which assumed control of the assets of the company once run by Wyatt, said the transactions had been legal. But each confirmed that they had received subpoenas from a federal grand jury in New York, which is investigating "transactions in oil of Iraqi origin" as part of the oil-for-food program, according to a federal financial filing by El Paso Corp.

Wyatt got lion's share
The largest of the allocations went to Wyatt, who the list said had received allocations totaling 74 million barrels. At the profit rates of 15 cents to 85 cents per barrel that were reported in the arms inspector's study, he could have earned $23 million.

The names of the American companies and citizens who benefited from the voucher scheme were not included in the published report prepared by the Iraqi Survey Group that was released Wednesday by the CIA, because the names of American individuals cannot be publicly disclosed under privacy laws. But the names were contained in unedited copies given to the White House and to several congressional committees.

/ www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/energy/2838780

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 9, 2004 5:29 PM

PS- I'm doing my best to imitate Soupcatcher.

SOUPCATCHER

Saturday, October 9, 2004 7:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
PS- I'm doing my best to imitate Soupcatcher.

I'm not sure that's such a good idea, SignyM. (Although I appreciate the sentiment)

In the past few hours, I've posted two corrections to earlier posts (the first one where I didn't read carefully enough and charged off to answer the wrong question, the second one where I withdrew a statement based on new evidence). And then there's a third post that I need to correct in regards to a statement I made about Bush's position on abortion (I have read a lot more since I posted and learned that my original position was naive and imposed a very simplistic framing on the issue). So I guess that makes me a flip-flopper

. And we, in the US, all know that changing our minds and admitting to mistakes is tantamount to weakness, at least in the mind of our President.

Great article from the Houston Chronicle, btw.

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Nature? Infinite variety. Straight lines? Not so much.

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