In the summer of 2000 the Republican propaganda attack machine was in high gear, and even "exciting as an anvil boy scout" Al Gore was on the receiving end of a chronic media blast. For example, the NY TImes' at-the-time two token "liberal" op-ed writers, Maureen Dowd and Bob Herbert, energetically jumped on the "Al Gore can't be trusted" Republican band-wagon, Herbert's quibbles lost to the ages (chronicled on microfilm at libraries), and Mo Dowd relentlessly assaulting Gore's choice of wardrobe, campaign consultants, or other choices, both Dowd and Herbert too puffed-up with their own self-importance to notice that a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton) had just been dragged down by a $100 million Republican white-collar Jihad led by the adulterous Republican leadership (Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, Bob Livingston and others, including Tom DeLay, who had once been known as "hot-tub Tom" before he became known as "the hammer") using a variation of the old "RAPE!" charge staple of lynch-mobs, in this case "HE [Clinton] LIED ABOUT HIS AFFAIR!"
And, of course, the NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, and other "major media" had effectively given millions of dollars more worth of free campaign TV and press to the Republicans, turning the Clinton's overnight guest list INTO A SCANDAL! The so-called "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL."
Things were so good in 2000 - the WORST event on the entire horizon was some softness in the stock-market (the tech-laden Nasdaq in particular) - that the Gore campaign, Democratic leaders, and the press-media just couldn't step back, take a deep breath, and say "We just got out of the Bush Sr. recession (brought on by the FAILURE of HUNDREDS of PRIVATE BUSINESS Savings & Loans, the S&L meltdown cost TAXPAYERS ONE TRILLION DOLLARS making up for the PRIVATE INDUSTRY FAILURES) - let's NOT do it again!"
Well, to make a long story short, Dick Cheney and the Bush family had always been on the margins of the concerted Republican IMPEACHMENT and get-Clinton scandal-mongering efforts, but in the 2000 campaign they greatly benefited from both the impeachment and long list of faux-scandals against the Clinton White House that preceded impeachment.
But both the Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush had skeletons in their own closet. George W. BUsh had SOLD HIS Harken Energy stock ILLEGALLY - while on the Board of Directors, WITHOUT GETTING PRIOR SEC APPROVAL or even notifying the SEC. Bush got a slap-on-the-wrist for that violation, because the SEC Chairman had been installed in that office by Bush's father, then President George H. W. Bush. The younger Bush had also hidden from the American public his DUI conviction, and glossed over some other run-ins with the law. And, above all, the younger Bush had gone "AWOL" from a Vietnam era military assignment; he had REFUSED to complete an Air Force flight physical exam, as ordered by his base commanding officer, and as a result was grounded from flying Air National Guard jet aircraft that he had just received one million dollars in taxpayer-funded training - during the ongoing Vietnam war - as his Texas ANG duty. Disgusted with the unmilitary actions of the younger Bush, his Texas ANG superiors had him shipped out of state, where he wouldn't be a detriment to his powerful father's political career. (In 1972 Bush Sr. was in Republican Party politics as Republican National Committe Chairman.)
George W. Bush was assigned to an Alabama Air National Guard base... that didn't even have aircraft. It was an unceremonious dumping ground for a ANG commissioned officer who failed to live up to his expensive training, but the younger Bush could not even bother to appear at his new assignment. No one, anywhere, can recall seeing George W. Bush at that Alabama Air National Guard assignment, although plenty of people recall seeing Mr. Bush come in to his unofficial job as a campaign volunteer in an Alabama Congressman's reelection campaign.
But the Bush AWOL issue was only the lesser of two big issues that the Gore campaign REFUSED to use in the summer of 2000. The other, larger, more explosive scandal was that Republican Vice Presidential nominee DICK CHENEY had been secretively, if not secretly, DEALING WITH THE IRAQ regime of SADDAM HUSSEIN at a time when America was trying to enforce economic SANCTIONS against trading with Iraq! Mr. Cheney was at the time Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, and he was using FOREIGN but wholly-owned subsidiaries of Halliburton TO SKIRT THE US-enforced SANCTIONS on the dictator's regime, and DEAL WITH IRAQ.
WHAT IS AMAZING is that first Al Gore (and his vice-presidential running mate, JOE LIEBERMAN) FAILED to use Cheney's DOUBLE--DEALINGS WITH IRAQ as a campaign issue in 2000; and then in 2004 Democratic presidential candidate JOHN KERRY REPEATED the abject failure, REFUSAL, to use Mr. Cheney's very potent baggage against him.
From that time, the FAILURE of FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DICK CHENEY to do ANYTHING to prevent 9-11 despite urgent, personal warnings from CIA Director George Tenent and "Counter-Terrorism Czar" Richard Clarke... his APPROVAL of the sale of US ports to DUBAI.... his continued profiting from HALLIBURTON stock options, while as Vice President directing billions of dollars worth of no bid, no oversight contracts to Halliburton.... and now his (tacit) APPROVAL of the sending of Halliburton's CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS TO DUBAI... are all evidence that MR. CHENEY PUTS HIS OWN PERSONAL PORTFOLIO _FAR AHEAD_ OF THE WELFARE and SECURITY of the United States and its taxpaying citizens.
And Mr. Gore, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Kerry, and today's DLC Democratic "leadership" REFUSE to use any of the above as ammunition to help Democrats achieve their goals of passing urgent legislation to improve America's future.
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Former executives at the Halliburton subsidiaries said Cheney DID NOT OBJECT to TRADING WITH [the Saddam Hussein despot regime in] BAGHDAD. (Doug Mills - AP)
Firm's Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
Affiliates Had $73 Million in Contracts
By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 23, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35751-2001Jun22
UNITED NATIONS -- During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.
"Iraq's different," he said.
Former executives at the Halliburton subsidiaries said Cheney did not object to trading with Baghdad. (Doug Mills - AP)
According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.
Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.
Mary Matalin, Cheney's counselor, said that if he "was ever in a conversation or meeting where there was a question of pursuing a project with someone in Iraq, he said, 'No.' "
"In a joint venture, he would not have reviewed all their existing contracts," Matalin said. "The nature of those joint ventures was that they had a separate governing structure, so he had no control over them."
The trade was perfectly legal. Indeed, it is a case study of how U.S. firms routinely use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid the opprobrium of doing business with Baghdad, which does not violate U.S. law as long as it occurs within the "oil-for-food" program run by the United Nations.
Halliburton's trade with Iraq was first reported by The Washington Post in February 2000. But U.N. records recently obtained by The Post show that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Vice President Cheney has acknowledged.
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 in 1995 to head Halliburton, he promised to maintain a hard line against Baghdad.
But in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.
The 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 -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War.
Former executives at the subsidiaries said they had never heard objections -- from Cheney or any other Halliburton official -- to trading with Baghdad.
"Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand, as far as I know, had no official policy about that, other than we would be in compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws," said Cleive Dumas, who oversaw Ingersoll Dresser Pump's business in the Middle East, including Iraq.
Halliburton's primary concern, added Ingersoll-Rand's former chairman, James E. Perrella, "was that if we did business with [the Iraqi regime], that it be allowed by the United States government. If it wasn't allowed, we wouldn't do it."
Dumas and Perrella said their companies' commercial links to the Iraqi oil industry began before the U.N. Security Council imposed an oil embargo on Baghdad in the wake of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
They returned to dealing with Iraq after the council established the "oil-for-food" program in December 1996, permitting Iraq to export oil under U.N. supervision and use the proceeds to buy food, medicine and humanitarian goods. The program was expanded in 1998 to allow Iraq to import spare parts for its oil facilities.
The Halliburton subsidiaries joined dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion.
The proceeds funded a sharp increase in the country's nutritional standards, nearly doubling the food rations distributed to Iraq's poor.
But U.S. and European officials acknowledged that the expanded production also increased Saddam Hussein's capacity to siphon off money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq may be skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program.
Cheney has offered contradictory accounts of how much he knew about Halliburton's dealings with Iraq. In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV's "This Week," he denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad.
"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," he said. "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."
Cheney modified his response in an interview on the same program three weeks later, after he was informed that a Halliburton spokesman had acknowledged that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq.
He said he was unaware that the subsidiaries were doing business with the Iraqi regime when Halliburton purchased Dresser Industries in September 1998.
"We inherited two joint ventures with Ingersoll-Rand that were selling some parts into Iraq," Cheney explained, "but we divested ourselves of those interests."
The divestiture, however, was not immediate. The firms traded with Baghdad for more than a year under Cheney, signing nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton's 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000, according to U.N. records.
Perrella said he believes Halliburton officials must have known about the Iraqi links before they purchased Dresser. "They obviously did due diligence," he said.
And even if Cheney was not told about the business with Baghdad before the purchase, Perrella said, the CEO almost certainly would have learned about it after the acquisition. "Oh, definitely, he was aware of the business," Perrella said, although Perrella conceded that this was an assumption based on knowledge of how the company worked, not a fact to which he could personally attest because he never discussed the Iraqi contracts with Cheney.
A long-time critic of unilateral U.S. sanctions, which he has argued penalize American companies while failing to punish the targeted regimes, Cheney has pushed for a review of U.S. policy toward countries such as Iraq, Iran and Libya.
In the first expression of that new thinking, the Bush administration is campaigning in the U.N. Security Council to end an 11-year embargo on sales of civilian goods, including oil-related equipment, to Iraq.
U.S. officials say the new policy is aimed at easing restrictions on companies that conduct legitimate trade with Iraq, while clamping down on weapons smuggling and other black-market activity.
If the plan is approved, there would be "nothing to stop Iraq from importing [as many] oil spare parts as it needs" from Halliburton and other suppliers, according to a British official who briefed reporters on the proposal when it was introduced last month.
Cheney resigned as chairman of Halliburton last August. Although he has retained stock options worth about $8 million, he has arranged to donate to charity any profits from the eventual exercise of those options, Glover Weiss said.
Confidential U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had broad, and sometimes controversial, dealings with the Iraqi regime.
For instance, the documents detail more than $2.5 million in contracts between Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq that were blocked by the Clinton administration. They included agreements by the firm to sell $760,000 in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya.
The Persian Gulf terminal was badly damaged during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and later was destroyed by allied warplanes during Operation Desert Storm. At the time, Cheney was secretary of defense.
Washington halted the sale because the facility was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. Under the terms of the oil-for-food program, Baghdad is permitted to export crude oil, subject to U.N. supervision, through only two terminals, Ceyhan in Turkey and Mina al Bakr on the Persian Gulf.
The equipment was never delivered to Iraq, but Baghdad subsequently repaired the Khor al Amaya facility on its own.
A senior Iraqi oil ministry official, Faiz Shaheen, told an official Iraqi newspaper that Iraq would soon be able to export about 600,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the terminal.
Dumas said he was not aware of the dispute over the Khor al Amaya terminal. It was unlikely, he added, that Cheney or other top Halliburton executives would have known about the specific deals. "We had great independence in running our business," he said.
U.S. officials say the Bush administration is prepared to allow Iraq to resume exports from Khor al Amaya, as long as the earnings are placed in a U.N. escrow account that is used to pay for humanitarian supplies and further improvements to the oil industry.
"The U.S. attitude towards Iraqi exports has evolved considerably," said James A. Placke, a Washington-based analyst for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. "They used to tightly restrict Iraqi oil exports, and now there is no limitation on Iraqi exports."
Iraq's power to entice foreign investment, meanwhile, has increased with the soaring demand for oil. U.S. companies, which have been able to trade with Iraq only through foreign subsidiaries and middlemen, are wary of dealing with Baghdad but eager to get a piece of the action, according to industry sources.
"The American oil industry is very interested in trying to enter Iraq," said J. Robinson West, chairman of Petroleum Finance Co., a consulting firm. "But I think that they are quite respectful of U.S. policy towards Saddam Hussein. There is a very strong feeling that in fact he is the greatest threat to oil production in the Middle East."
