Ariana Huffington

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Note: From Arianna Huffington, former darling/ideologue of the ultra-right
in the U.S.


 The Bottom Line On Iraq: It's The Bottom Line

 By Arianna Huffington

 Boys, boys, you're all right. Sure, it's Daddy, oil, and imperialism,
 not to mention a messianic sense of righteous purpose, a deep-seated
 contempt for the peace movement, and, to be fair, the irrefutable fact
 that the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein.

 But there's also an overarching mentality feeding the administration's
 collective delusions, and it can be found by looking to corporate
 America's bottom line. The dots leading from Wall Street to the West
 Wing situation room are the ones that need connecting. There's money
 to be made in post-war Iraq, and the sooner we get the pesky war over
 with, the sooner we (by which I mean George Bush's corporate cronies)
 can start making it.

 The nugget of truth that former Bush economic guru Lawrence Lindsey
 let slip last fall shortly before he was shoved out the oval office
 door says it all. Momentarily forgetting that he was talking to the
 press and not his buddies in the White House, he
 admitted: "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the
 economy."

 To hell with worldwide protests, an unsupportive Security Council, a
 diplomatically dubious Hans Blix, an Osama giddy at the prospect of a
 united Arab world, and a panicked populace grasping at the very
 slender reed of duct tape and Saran Wrap to protect itself from the
 inevitable terrorist blow-back -- the business of America is still
 business.

 No one in the administration embodies this bottom line mentality more
 than Dick Cheney. The vice president is one of those ideological
 purists who never let little things like logic, morality, or mass
 murder interfere with the single-minded pursuit of profitability.

 His on-again, off-again relationship with the Butcher of Baghdad is a
 textbook example of what modern moralists condemn as "situational
 ethics," an extremely convenient code that allows you to do what you
 want when you want and still feel good about it in the morning. In the
 Cheney White House (let's call it what it is), anything that can be
 rationalized is right.

 The two were clearly on the outs back during the Gulf War, when Cheney
 was Secretary of Defense, and the first President Bush dubbed Saddam
 "Hitler revisited."

 Then Cheney moved to the private sector and suddenly things between
 him and Saddam warmed up considerably. With Cheney in the CEO's seat,
 Halliburton helped Iraq reconstruct its war-torn oil industry with $73
 million worth of equipment and services -- becoming Baghdad's biggest
 such supplier. Kinda nice how that worked out for the vice-president,
 really: oversee the destruction of an industry that you then profit
 from by rebuilding.

 When, during the 2000 campaign, Cheney was asked about his company's
 Iraqi escapades, he flat out denied them. But the truth
 remains: When it came to making a buck, Cheney apparently had no
 qualms about doing business with "Hitler revisited."

 And make no mistake, this wasn't a case of hard-nosed realpolitik
 -- the rationale for Rummy's cuddly overtures to Saddam back in '83
 despite his almost daily habit of gassing Iranians. That, we were
 told, was all about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

 No, Cheney's company chose to do business with Saddam after the rape
 of Kuwait. After Scuds had been fired at Tel Aviv and Riyadh. After
 American soldiers had been sent home from Desert Storm in body bags.

 And in 2000, just months before pocketing his $34 million Halliburton
 retirement package and joining the GOP ticket, Cheney was lobbying for
 an end to U.N. sanctions against Saddam.

 Of course, American businessmen are nothing if not flexible. So his
 former cronies at Halliburton are now at the head of the line of
 companies expected to reap the estimated $2 billion it will take to
 rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure following Saddam's ouster. This
 burn-and-build approach to business guarantees that there will be a
 market for Halliburton's services as long as it has a friend in high
 places to periodically carpet bomb a country for it.

 In the meantime, Halliburton, among many other Pentagon contracts, has
 a lucrative 10-year deal to provide food services to the Army that
 comes with no lid on potential costs. Lenin once scoffed that "a
 capitalist would sell rope to his own hangman." And, while the man got
 more than a few things wrong, he's been proven right on this one time
 and time again: from Hewlett-Packard and Bechtel helping arm Saddam
 back in the 80s, to the good folks at Boeing, Hughes Electronics,
 Lockheed Martin, and Loral Space whose corporate greed helped China
 steal rocket and missile secrets -- and point a few dozen long-range
 nukes our way.

 Clearly, our national interest runs a distant second when pitted
 against the rapacious desires of special interests and the politicians
 they buy with massive campaign contributions. Oil and gas companies
 donated $26.7 million to Bush and his fellow Republicans during the
 2000 election and another $18 million in 2002. So does it really come
 as any surprise that Cheney's staff held secret meetings in October
 with executives from Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips --
 and, yes, Halliburton -- to discuss who would get what in a
 post-Saddam Iraq? As they say, to the victors -- and the big buck
 donors -- go the sp-oil-s.

 Here's my bottom line: At a time of war, at what point does subverting
 our national security in the name of profitability turn from ugly
 business into high treason?

 ------
 Arianna Huffington is the author of "Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate
 Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America." For
 information on the book, visit www.PigsAtTheTrough.com

 If you have questions or comments, contact Arianna at
 arianna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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