Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

> Back to Rumsfeld. Let's not get into the if the US should or should 
> not have
> gone to war if possible and just take the the situation on the 
> economical
> side. 2 weeks ago, I read about scandals  on how the "reconstruction" 
> money
> was not spend (Pierce please back me up with some links of yours, I'm
> worthless at finding things on the net (it was on Gnews with links to 
> major
> american journals) and how one big company transporting oil TO irak had
> already put 1 B$ in it's pocket (without going through the bidding 
> process if
> I recall right). If I am not mistaken Rumsfeld had a job there not 
> long ago.

  As always in US politics, its not that easy a question to answer and 
you've gotten
things a bit scrambled.

  The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) was run by the State 
Department,
not the Department of War (Defense). So it has little to do with 
Rumsfeld and more
to do with Powell. It's one of my critiques of Bush: He brought a 
typical
overbloated US bureaucracy to Iraq, so that the chronically 
understaffed (never rose above 57% staffing) CPA was spending all its 
time on red tape instead. However, you have to realize that I'm 
criticizing Bush from the right, the left would rather make
an issue of the non-existent Halliburton issue.

 Halliburton: There are only 3 large construction companies in the 
world that can
do the sort of transnational construction that the US military needed 
in Iraq. They
are Bechtel, Halliburton, and Slumberger (sp?). During the Clinton 
administration,
the DOD put out a contract for supporting the military, which was put 
out for bid.
Halliburton won that job as low bidder. When Bush went to war, the DOD 
just extended the existing contract, which is actually typical of how 
the government does things, because its a lot of paperwork to do the 
whole bid thing. Because Cheney (not Rumsfeld as you think) used to be 
CEO of Halliburton, this was looked on askance by some, but it is 
probably irrelevant, given Halliburton's role in all that which is 
really to
interview and hire local subcontractors to do all the work. As a public 
company,
their profits/losses are easily available on Yahoo, and they don't show 
any
large windfalls.

 About the only thing anyone has been able to make stick is that 
Halliburton
negotiated with a gasoline supplier to supply gasoline into Iraq for 
$1.50/gallon
when the spot price was about $1, so they looked like idiots. Except 6 
months later,
the spot price is $2, so now they look like geniuses... Neither is true 
of course,
if you want a guaranteed price, you have to pay more, and all the flak 
means that
now the US taxpayer is paying $2 instead of $1.50...

  Some people have accused the CPA of spending less then 2% of the 
reconstruction
money. I'd cut them a certain amount of slack because they were 
chronically
understaffed, but again, its a little bit complicated because they 
awarded
contracts that they haven't paid out for yet so the 2% is probably too
low by quite a bit, but I couldn't find an accounting of how much was 
spent
anywhere, so who knows.

 Its all a bit moot anyways, because all that money got turned over to 
the
Iraqi provisional government, and while they'll probably be a bit less 
honest
then the CPA (jobs for the boys!), they'll have 1/10th the bureaucracy 
to deal with.
They're also quite likely to change the rules to allow non-coalition 
countries
to compete, though they show no motivation to. From what I've heard 
from individual
Iraqis, they see France and the UN as props for the evil Saddam regime, 
so giving them money is not on the table.

 I think the reality is that the CPA did a tremendous job given that 
they only really had a year to do everything they list here:

http://www.cpa.gov/pressreleases/20040628_historic_review_cpa.doc

yet with the cards stacked against them by US contracting law and the 
fact that many of the things that people in developed countries
take for granted didn't even exist in Iraq. Before the CPA could start 
making
payments, it had to reform the banking system, before that could 
happen, they
had to reform the accounting system, before that...

 None of that means that Rumsfeld is lining is pockets. At 
opensecrets.org,
you can look up the $ connections of individual members of the 
administration,
here's Rumsfeld's page:

http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet/cabinet.rumsfeld.asp

However, as it points out:

"Rumsfeld has scrupulously avoided any direct  dealings with defense 
companies, either serving on boards or purchasing  stock, apparently to 
avoid the appearance of impropriety in case he was  asked to fill a 
defense department post again."

 I think Bob was purposely baiting you, because its easy to get you to 
spout
all the standard anti-Bush rhetoric, but you don't actually know enough 
about what
you're talking about to back it up.

> If I was you, I'd ask how it can be that you go to war with a country

 Er, I'm the person who thinks we've been at war with them since 1990, 
which
I'd just thought I'd point out.

> you
> already devastated by 10 years of sanctions and still need to spend 1 
> B$ a
> week there. Now the money is comming OUT from your pocket and IN 
> someone's
> pocket. I don't have the feeling the IN pocket is the peoples pocket. 
> Am I
> wrong?

  Well, all the money is coming OUT of our pockets, and IN to someone's 
pockets,
that's how money works, nadim. Today, I bought a hot dog, and the money 
came
OUT of my pocket, and IN to the hot dog vendors. Let's arrest him!

The real question is whether money has come out of OUR pockets and IN 
to someone's pockets _inappropriately_. Despite a lot of sound and 
fury, no one has been able to really prove that's happened. It sounds 
good on TV though to accuse Bush of
sucking Halliburton's cock for Cheney, but you'll notice they never say 
that
in places they can be debated.

 Is Halliburton making money off the war in Iraq? Yes. Its called 
capitalism.
Did Bush invade Iraq so Halliburton could make money? No, that's just 
stupid,
they're not making that much money off the deal. Revenues are not 
profits
for a general contractor, they're just a middleman.

> Now, Rumsfeld pocket might not be getting fater but when his time as a 
> war
> hawk is over, he'll need work again and I am very curious to see if he 
> going
> to work for some charity association for war victimes (any side) or if 
> he's
> going to get a job at one of his pal company who had a good time while 
> you
> were working double shifts to pay taxes.

 He'll probably go back to serving on the board of directors of various
public companies, which can pull in $50K/year per board for little work.

 However, that's typical for politicians of both parties. Sandy Berger
(the National Security Advisor under Clinton who is now under 
investigation
for smuggling classified documents out of the national archives in his 
pants)
has his own consulting company for instance. Said consulting company has
done a lot of lobbying for China...

 Pierce