As a government employee I’m required to fill out a several page form every year in order to show that I don’t have any conflicts of interests which may interfere with the honest performance of my job. In theory, so are all U.S. government employees who have jobs that are potentially subject to conflicts of interest.
The purpose of the extensive rules governing potential conflicts of interests for U.S. government employees are explained concisely in the first paragraph of
this document:
As an executive branch employee, you have the opportunity to use your talent and expertise to do work that benefits the public. Sometimes, though, your government work may benefit you or your family personally…. In these circumstances, the public could be concerned that you will be motivated by considerations other than your desire to do what is best for the public as a whole.
In no area of policy is it more important for government to prevent conflicts of interest than in those dealing with issues of war and other disasters. To do this, an ethical government must ensure that its employees who are involved in making war and disaster related decisions do not have financial interests that could cause them to profit from war or other disaster. Failure of government to adequately address such a situation could lead to the hiring and retention of government employees who promote war or other disaster for financial gain – i.e. war profiteering.
War profiteering is an abominable act. Those who engage in it should be removed from office immediately – and then prosecuted. High government officials who willfully and repeatedly allow war profiteering to occur under their supervision should also be removed from office.
With that in mind, let’s consider some examples of the actions of several Neocons in the George W. Bush administration or who contracted to do work on behalf of the Bush administration. The following examples are taken from Naomi Klein’s book, “
The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, where the issue of war profiteering is discussed in great detail.
Some examples of war profiteering by Neocons working in or connected with the Bush administration Donald RumsfeldAmong holdings representing conflicts of interest that Donald Rumsfeld
refused to divest himself of when he became Secretary of Defense in 2001 was $8 million to $39 million worth of stock in Gilead Sciences, a company that Rumsfeld previously chaired and which held the patent on an influenza vaccine known as Tamiflu. A Senate ethics committee tried to get Rumsfeld to comply with the rules, but he refused.
George Bush’s “War on Terror”, as well as the accompanying Iraq War, which Rumsfeld so aggressively promoted, contributed greatly to a rise in the value of Gilead stock. So did the July 2005 purchase by Rumsfeld’s Pentagon of $58 million worth of Tamiflu and the purchase of $1 billion worth of Tamiflu by the Department of Health and Human Services shortly thereafter. As a result of all these things, by the time Rumsfeld left office his millions of dollars worth of holdings in Gilead stock had increased by 807 %, providing him with a profit of millions or tens of millions of dollars.
Dick CheneyWhen Dick Cheney became Vice President in 2001 he
refused to let go of 189,000 shares of Halliburton stock, though he repeatedly proclaimed that he had done so.
With the onset of war in Iraq, which Cheney had lobbied for constantly for two and a half years, Halliburton received billions of dollars worth of
no-bid contracts. That made the Iraq War the single most profitable event in Halliburton’s history. Due largely to those no-bid contracts, the value of Halliburton stock has risen by more than 300 % during Cheney’s time in office so far.
Furthermore, Halliburton was found guilty of
over-billing our government $1.5 billion, and several billions of dollars allocated to the reconstruction of Iraq
went missing. Yet, no meaningful investigation has ever been conducted by the Bush administration to hold the perpetrators accountable.
James Baker IIIJames Baker, the man who headed George W. Bush’s theft of the 2000 election, was appointed by Bush as special envoy with respect to Iraq’s debt. That meant that Baker was responsible for persuading numerous governments to forgive Iraq’s crushing foreign debt.
At the time that Baker received this assignment he was a partner in the Carlyle Group (which also received billions of dollars as a result of the Iraq War). Though Baker never mentioned this publicly, Naomi Klein
obtained a confidential memo that demonstrated a serious conflict of interest for Baker with respect to his new government assignment and his partnership in the Carlyle group. At the same time that he was supposed to be convincing governments to
forgive Iraq’s debt, the Carlyle group was involved in an effort on behalf of their client, the nation of Kuwait, to
collect several billion dollars in debt from Iraq.
And not only that. The memo that Klein obtained indicated that Baker played a key role in collecting the debt from Iraq. Furthermore, to secure the contract with Kuwait, the Carlyle group emphasized the influence that Baker had with the Bush administration, and required Kuwait to invest $1 billion with them.
After Klein exposed the deal in
The Nation, the Carlyle Group backed out of it. But the damage was already done because they had already been successful in forcing Iraq to pay $2.59 billion to Kuwait, money that was desperately needed to ease Iraq’s humanitarian crisis and help rebuild their country. In addition, Baker was completely unsuccessful in his “efforts” to ease Iraq’s debt burden, the job that the Bush administration paid him to do.
George Schultz and the “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq”George Schultz was a former Secretary of State in the Reagan administration. In 2002 he headed the “
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq” at the request of the Bush administration. In that capacity he wrote editorials such as “
Act Now: The danger is immediate – Saddam Hussein must be removed”, to whip up enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq.
At the same time, though he never disclosed this to his readers, Schultz was a member of the board of directors at Bechtel, which stood to gain huge profits from a war with Iraq. And indeed, less than a month after the start of the war, Bechtel was
awarded a $680 million contract for the reconstruction of Iraq. They ended up making $2.3 billion on Iraq reconstruction, even though they never came close to finishing the job they were hired to do.
Also of note is that Lockheed Martin was intimately involved in creating and running the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. And they too made huge profits on the Iraq War.
Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor for the Nixon administration, was probably more intimately involved with the Bush administration than any other outside advisor, meeting regularly with both Bush and Cheney.
After September 11, 2001, Bush picked him to head the 9-11 Commission, to investigate the circumstances of the 9-11 attacks on our country. When the families of 9-11 victims asked Kissinger to produce a list of his corporate clients, in order to ascertain if he had conflicts of interest with respect to his new position, he refused. Rather than produce the list
he stepped down as the chair of the Commission, though Bush did not ask him to step down or to produce the list of his corporate clients.
Richard PerleRichard Perle was tasked by Donald Rumsfeld to chair the Defense Policy Board for the Bush administration.
Two months after the 9-11 attacks Perle created a private defense and security company called Trireme Partners. He used his position as chairman of the Defense Policy Board to argue for a preemptive attack on Iraq – a role that previous chairmen of the DPD had probably never done. At the same time, he used his title to
solicit investments in his new company, according to an investigation by Seymour Hersh.
Perle also convinced Boeing to invest $20 million in his new company. In return, he used his influence to procure a $17 billion tanker deal for Boeing. The tanker deal itself eventually became one of the
biggest scandals in Pentagon history. Donald Rumsfeld later claimed that he couldn’t recall any of the details of his role in the $17 billion contract.
Perle’s profiteering eventually caught up with him, and he was
pressured into resigning as chairman of the DPD.
A few words about the Project for a New American CenturyAs has always been the case throughout the history of the world whenever crimes against humanity are perpetrated, our current leaders disguise their true intentions behind a veil of gobbelygook. A blueprint for how this is done can be deciphered by an examination of the “
statement of principles” of the group known as Project for a New American Century (PNAC), from which the Bush/Cheney administration takes its ideology. Relevant portions of that “statement of principles” are as follows:
We need to … challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values … We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.
Further insights into PNAC’s goals and motivations can be seen from their document, “
Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, written long before the 9-11 attacks on our country.
The primary theme of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” is that our military must be much stronger than the militaries of any nation or combination of nations that might oppose our ambitions, in order that we may “shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests”, “boldly and purposefully promote American principles abroad” and maintain an “order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity”. More specifically, we now have new “missions” which require “defending American interests in the Persian Gulf and Middle East” by “deterring or, when needed, by
compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles”.
In case anyone missed it, these statements are a declaration of imperialistic intentions. They virtually
define imperialism. Furthermore, they indicate a call for war crimes – pure and simple. How else would one characterize “compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests…”?
War profiteering?Naomi Klein notes that nothing enrages Richard Perle more than the suggestion that his advocacy for war “is in any way influenced by the enormous profitability of war for him personally”. When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reminded Perle of Seymour Hersh’s article about his conflicts of interest, Perle blew up and
compared Hersh to a terrorist. Then he told Blitzer, “I don’t believe that a company would gain from a war…. The suggestion that my views are somehow related for the potential for investments in homeland defense is complete nonsense.”
Klein notes the absurdity of Perle’s statement that corporations don’t reap financial gains from wars. Yet, she says that even the most committed critics of the Neocons tend to portray them as ideologues, motivated by a commitment to American supremacy rather than motivated primarily by personal financial gain.
It is time, however, that we lose our reluctance to look at the situation realistically and call them what they are. Klein says of the distinction between the Neocons’ militant nationalistic ideology and plain war profiteering:
This distinction is both artificial and amnesiac. The right to limitless profit-seeking has always been at the center of Neocon ideology. Before 9/11, demands for radical privatization and attacks on social spending fuelled the Neocon movement… at think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage and Cato.
Consider the consequences of failing to hold war profiteers accountable for their crimesTo be honest about it, this isn’t the first time in world history or American history that war profiteers have led a nation into a disastrous war for their own personal gain. Nor was our invasion of Iraq the most disastrous war to ever befall the world – yet. And war profiteers often or usually get away with their crimes without having to pay a price. So, if our country fails to take action against these war profiteers it won’t set a whole new precedent in doing so, because the precedent has already been set.
But on the other hand, the Bush administration is the most blatantly criminal presidential administration that our country has ever suffered through. His invasion of Iraq was completely unnecessary and irresponsible. The fact that Iraq posed no threat to us and Bush/Cheney knew that it posed no threat to us means that it was a war crime. Furthermore, George Bush and Dick Cheney lied to the American people and to Congress in order to justify that war. As such, they violated the separation of powers in our Constitution and usurped Congress’s power to declare war. Congress was wrong to
give George Bush the power to use his own judgment to make a unilateral decision on whether or not to invade Iraq. But they did not declare war. He did. Congress merely left it up to his judgment. They should have known better. They should have known that George Bush would abuse that responsibility – as indeed he did. Now they have the opportunity to partially amend their mistake, by making George Bush and Dick Cheney accountable for their criminal actions.
I don’t want to get into a semantic argument about whether or not our Constitution
requires that Congress impeach Bush and Cheney and remove them from office. One could argue the
letter of the Constitution either way. But our Constitution has been willfully violated by those two criminals
countless times. If Congress fails to take action now, they are so much as saying that our Constitution is nothing but the
worthless scrap of paper that George Bush has said it is.
Therefore, if Congress believes that our Constitution contains the laws that hold our country together and make us a nation of laws rather than a nation of men, then common sense demands that they impeach. So does common decency. It is not only our Constitution and our nation that is at stake. War profiteering is one of the worst crimes known to man – for reasons that I don’t think I have to explain. It is a terrible crime against humanity. If the world doesn’t draw a line in the sand with regard to these kind of crimes before too long, given current weaponry, technology, and pending environmental catastrophes, it is not likely that world civilization will last much longer.
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