Dick Cheney's Role in All of This

[Octafish]

Explained in English...

Gas, Oil and Afghanistan

By Jon Flanders

EXCERPT...

Cheney described Halliburton's role in a 1998 speech at the aptly named "Collateral Damage Conference" of the Cato Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. According to Cato "This all-day conference explored the current and potential conflicts between US foreign policy and the liberty and well-being of American citizens. The conference focused on the ways that US foreign policy infringes on the freedom of Americans to trade, invest and communicate with the rest of the world."

SNIP...CHENEY SPEAKING:

Halliburton employs about 70,000 people. We are currently a Fortune 200 company, but are in the process of merging with Dresser Industries. Once we do that, part of Haliburton will not only include Brown & Root, but also M. W. Kellogg, one of the world's premiere engineering and design companies. In addition, Dresser also is heavily involved in manufacturing pumps, compressors, and all kinds of complex mechanical equipment that services the energy industry. Overall, once we complete the merger, we will have about 100,000 employees. Our sales in 1999 should put us among the top 100 companies in America in terms of revenue. We'll be the largest private employer in Texas and operate in over 130 countries all over the globe. About 70 to 75 percent of our business is energy related, serving customers like Unocal, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and many other major oil companies around the world. As a result, we oftentimes find ourselves operating in some very difficult places. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is."

Where the business is, indeed. In an article by Kenny Bruno and Jim Valette in Multinational Monitor magazine, dated May 2001 the authors report that "...During Cheney's tenure, Halliburton created or continued partnerships with some of the world's most notorious governments-in countries such as Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria.

In order to do business with dictators and despots, Halliburton has skirted US sanctions and made considerable efforts to eliminate those sanctions. Halliburton's pattern of doing business with US enemies and dictators started before Dick Cheney joined the company, and may well continue after his tenure as CEO.

Halliburton's dealings in six countries -Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria-show that the company's willingness to do business where human rights are not respected is a pattern that goes beyond its involvement in Burma:

* Azerbaijan. Dick Cheney lobbied to remove Congressional sanctions against aid to Azerbaijan, sanctions imposed because of concerns about ethnic cleansing. Cheney said the sanctions were the result only of groundless campaigning by the Armenian-American lobby. In 1997, Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root bid on a major Caspian project from the Azerbaijan International Operating Company.

* Indonesia. Halliburton had extensive investments and contracts in Suharto's Indonesia. One of its contracts was canceled by the post-Suharto government during a purging of corruptly awarded contracts. Indonesia Corruption Watch named Kellogg Brown & Root (Halliburton's engineering division) among 59 companies using collusive, corruptive and nepotistic practices in deals involving former President Suharto's family.

* Iran. Dick Cheney has lobbied against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Even with the Act in place, Halliburton has continued to operate in Iran. It settled with the Department of Commerce in 1997, before Cheney became CEO, over allegations relating to Iran for $15,000, without admitting any wrongdoing.

* Iraq. Dick Cheney cites multilateral sanctions against Iraq as an example of sanctions he supports. Yet since the war, Halliburton-related companies helped to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry. In July 2000, the International Herald Tribune reported, "Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump Co., joint ventures that Halliburton has sold within the past year, have done work in Iraq on contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry, under the United Nations' Oil for Food Program." A Halliburton spokesman acknowledged to the Tribune that the Dresser subsidiaries did sell oil-pumping equipment to Iraq via European agents.

* Libya. Before Cheney's arrival, Halliburton was deeply involved in Libya, earning $44.7 million there in 1993. After sanctions on Libya were imposed, earnings dropped to $12.4 million in 1994. Halliburton continued doing business in Libya throughout Cheney's tenure. One Member of Congress accused the company "of undermining American foreign policy to the full extent allowed by law."

* Nigeria. Local villagers have accused Halliburton of complicity in the shooting of a protester by Nigeria's Mobile Police Unit, playing a similar role to Shell and Chevron in the mobilization of this 'kill and go" unit to protect company property.

CONTINUED...

http://members.localnet.com/~jeflan/jfafghanpipe.htm

Cheney and his ilk have made oil into such a precious commodity it's worth going to war for. Consider what they did to Jimmy Carter and the shit sandwiches they left for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. We need to lay the blame for the current situation squarely where it belongs, Cheney and the rest of the War Party.

Andy Singer also does an excellent job, summing things up visually:

[snagglepuss]

1. .

[Octafish]

8. Update -- Dick Cheney: War Profiteer

Somewhere, in an undisclosed location...

Dick Cheney: War Profiteer

Posted on Friday, November 18 @ 09:38:22 EST
Tom Turnipseed, Common Dreams

Questions persist about Vice-President Cheney's role in the ongoing investigation and scandal swirling about the White House. His chief of staff and confidante Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Let's take a look at some personal incentives for Cheney's selling war to our country.

Cheney has pursued a political and corporate career to make himself very rich and powerful. He is the personification of a war profiteer who slid through the revolving door connecting the public and private sectors of the defense establishment on two occasions in a career that has served his relentless quest for power and profits.

As Defense Secretary, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton should take over logistical support programs for U.S. military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney's privatization efforts for our military's logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work with them before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States. When asked about the money he received from Halliburton, Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."

The Bush administration has dished out lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq to favored U.S. based corporations including Halliburton and denied contracts to many Iraqi and foreign based companies. To the conquerors go the spoils was the message on December 11, 2003 when Bush said, "The taxpayers understand why it makes sense for countries that risk lives to participate in the contracts in Iraq, It's very simple. Our people risk their lives, friendly coalition folks risk their lives, and therefore the contracting is going to reflect that."

Bush's statement is a stunning admission of how much corrupt corporations control our foreign policy. Under Cheney's leadership Halliburton out did Enron in using offshore subsidiaries as tax shelters to hide profits to bilk U.S. taxpayers. Halliburton also utilized off-shore subsidiaries to contract for services and sell banned equipment to rogue states like Iran, Iraq and Libya. This would be illegal if done directly by Halliburton.

SNIP...

Halliburton has been more closely associated with the invasion of Iraq than any other corporation. Before the Iraq War began, it was 19th on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors and zoomed to number 1 in 2003. In 2003 Halliburton made $4.2 billion from the U.S. government. Cheney stated he had , "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest."

SNIP...

Calling on Cheney to sever his financial ties to Halliburton, Lautenberg points out that the company has already raked in more than $10 billion for work in Iraq, and was handed some of the first Katrina contracts. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of no-bid contacts in Iraq, and there have been numerous allegations of over charging for services. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company also built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay. Lautenberg said, "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it."

CONTINUED...

Source: Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1117-22.htm

Thanks, snagglepus, for giving a damn. The jig is about up for the traitors.

[Overseas]

27. That's the Dick Cheeeeney I know.

One of the most brazen war profiteers ever.

[pnorman]

2. K & R!

n/t

[Octafish]

10. The Curse of Dick Cheney

The guy's so...so...lovable.

The Curse of Dick Cheney

The veep's career has been marred by one disaster after another

By T.D. ALLMAN

Should George W. Bush win this election, it will give him the distinction of being the first occupant of the White House to have survived naming Dick Cheney to a post in his administration. The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.

This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself.

"Cheney's manner and authority of voice far outstrip his true abilities," says Chas Freeman, who served under Bush's father as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. "It was clear from the start that Bush required adult supervision -- but it turns out Cheney has even worse instincts. He does not understand that when you act recklessly, your mistakes will come back and bite you on the ass."

Cheney's record of mistakes begins in 1959, when Tom Stroock, a Republican politician-businessman in Casper, Wyoming, got Cheney, then a senior at Natrona County High School, a scholarship to Yale. "Dick was the all-American boy, in the top ten percent of his class," Stroock says. "He seemed a natural." But instead of triumphing, Cheney failed. "He spent his time partying with guys who loved football but weren't varsity quality," recalls Stephen Billings, an Episcopalian minister who roomed with him during Cheney's freshman (and only full) year at Yale. "His idea was, you didn't need to master the material," says his other roommate, Jacob Plotkin. "He passed one psych course without attending class or studying, and he was proud of that. But there are some things you can't bluff, and Dick reached a point where you couldn't recover."

CONTINUED...

http://truthspring.info/2007/06/23/the-curse-of-dick-cheney/

The guy's proof positive of it's what-you-know on who-you-know.

[G_j]

3. a must read,

K&R!

[Octafish]

12. BP Disaster Is Cheney’s Katrina

Thanks for reminding me, my Friend. A few famous American drug dealers:

BP Disaster Is Cheney’s Katrina

Bush Administration Actions Created Unsafe Circumstances

By Rebecca Lefton | June 2, 2010



President Bush delivers his 2006 State of the Union address, where he famously stated that “America is addicted to oil.” SOURCE: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is without a doubt former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Katrina. President George W. Bush and Cheney consistently catered to Big Oil and other special interests to undercut renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives that would set the United States on a more secure clean energy path.

Oil companies raked in record profits while benefitting from policies they wrote for themselves. These energy policies did nothing for our national security and left consumers to pay the price at the pump and on their energy bills, which rose more than $1,100 during the Bush administration.

The following timeline outlines the administration’s direction, consequent legislative steps and missteps, and the resulting circumstances that provided advantages to Big Oil companies and led to the establishment of a regulatory system that created the BP oil disaster.

2001
Cheney’s secret dirty energy task force crafts national energy policy. The Bush administration released the National Energy Policy Report on May 16. President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney—who gave up his title as CEO of oil and gas company Halliburton to take on his new role—with developing a new energy policy swiftly after taking office. But Cheney’s relationship with Halliburton did not end. Cheney was kept on the company's payroll after retirement and retained around 430,000 shares of Halliburton stock.

The task force report was based on recommendations provided to Cheney from coal, oil, and nuclear companies and related trade groups—many of which were major contributors to Bush’s presidential campaign and to the Republican Party. Oil companies—including BP, the National Mining Association, and the American Petroleum Institute—secretly met with the Cheney and his staff as part of a task force to develop the country’s energy policy.

The proposal clearly represented the interests of dirty industry, including opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and encouraging oil and gas production, coal output, and the development of biofuels and nuclear power.

Only 7 of the 105 recommendations in the plan involved renewable energy. Cheney’s task force report proposed funding the development of clean energy technologies by opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling and earmarking $1.2 billion of bid bonuses from leases in ANWR. The administration was clearly not serious about ending our addiction to oil. Less than two months earlier the president proposed cutting millions from renewable energy programs. The New York Times reported at the time that, “The plan does little for efficiency or renewable energy.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/06/oil_timeline.html

A great fellow for the military industrial some people are better than others and deserve to rule complex.

[G_j]

26. the cap fit

[Overseas]

28. That's how it seems to me. //nt

[amborin]

4. K&R

[Octafish]

14. Dick Cheney at Davos: The 'man in the bubble'

For those who poo-poo the strange coincidences of Cheney popping up whenever he's needed to aid the world's poorest billionaires.

Dick Cheney at Davos: The 'man in the bubble'

By Orville Schell | 10 February 2004
UC Berkeley News

Orville Schell is dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and the author, most recently, of "Virtual Tibet." This article, written by Schell, was originally published in the Los Angeles Times on February 8, 2004.

DAVOS, Switzerland – Each January, I take a narrow-gauge Swiss railway up through the snowy Alps to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum. Just as in the days when tubercular patients went to the community's sanitariums (made famous by Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain") "for the air," this outpost still has the rare feeling in our global vortex of a self-contained place, a world unto itself.

During the five days of the forum, this feeling is enhanced by the steel fence erected around the conference area, the thousands of Swiss police who guard the perimeter against demonstrators and the bunker-like Congress Centre, where many of the speeches, panels, discussions and much of the endless networking that characterize Davos take place. Here, undisturbed by the chaotic world, the 2,000-plus participants from corporations, government, politics, academia, the media and civil society mingle in a bubble, a rarefied bubble, occupied largely by people who rank near the top of the periodic tables of wealth, power and fame.

Davos is a modern agora, the forum-marketplace in Periclean Athens where those with citizenship - as distinguished from the lower castes and slaves - gathered to deliberate on the city-state's affairs. One is apt to run into the International Atomic Energy Agency's director-general, Mohammed Baradei, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), financier George Soros, Playboy Enterprises Chief Executive Christie Hefner, Warsaw Stock Exchange President Wieslaw Rozlucki, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger or Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Kassymzhomart Tokayev engaged in conversation. And it is perfectly within the etiquette of the forum to say hello and start a conversation oneself.

Almost every prominent figure is in attendance without staff, much less the retinue that usually trails the high and the mighty. There is, in fact, a curious and unexpected equivalence among the participants as they hoof back through the snow, often to quite-modest hotels. Presidents and prime ministers can be seen wandering narrow streets, and CEOs of mighty corporations struggle to get e-mail at Internet kiosks alongside lowly professors or directors of nongovernmental organizations.

This year, though, there was an exception to this momentary democracy of the elite, a participant who kept himself isolated in a personal bubble even within the bubble that is Davos. Vice President Dick Cheney did not so much attend as descend on Davos, roaring up the narrow valley in his helicopter, accompanied by a squadron of military choppers. On what was only his second trip abroad while in office, he brought with him the bubble of all bubbles.

CONTINUED...

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/02/10_schell.shtml

And to think many DUers believe the guy doesn't have a heart.

[Enthusiast]

16. And what about this?

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. The question is, who is going to do something about it?

[Octafish]

17. Hey Holder! Remember Valerie Plame? Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI

One would think that Mr. Holder would focus on your most important question, Rosa Luxemburg. There must be some kind of secret pardon in play as it wasn't Fitzgerald. Cheney and Bush agree to leave office as long as their successors don't lift a finger to prosecute them for their various treasons.

Exclusive: Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI

By Murray Waas
Tuesday December 23, 2008 11:14am

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work.

Cheney revised the talking points on July 8, 2003– the very same day that his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller and told Miller that Plame was a CIA officer and that Plame had also played a central role in sending her husband on his CIA sponsored trip to the African nation of Niger.

Both Cheney and Libby have acknowledged that Cheney directed him to meet with Miller, but claimed that the purpose of that meeting was to leak other sensitive intelligence to discredit allegations made by Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information to go to war with Iraq, rather than to leak Plame’s identity.

That Cheney, by his own admission, had revised the talking points in an effort to have the reporters examine who sent Wilson on the very same day that his chief of staff was disclosing to Miller Plame’s identity as a CIA officer may be the most compelling evidence to date that Cheney himself might have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to Miller and other reporters.

This new information adds to a growing body of evidence that Cheney may have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to reporters and that Libby acted to protect Cheney by lying to federal investigators and a federal grand jury about the matter.

Still, for those in search of the proverbial “smoking gun”, the question as to whether Cheney directed Libby to leak Plaime’s identity to the media at Cheney’s direction or Libby did so on his own by acting over zealously in carrying out a broader mandate from Cheney to discredit Wilson and his allegations about manipulation of intelligence information, will almost certainly remain an unresolved one.

Libby was convicted on March 6, 2007 of four felony counts of lying to federal investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice, in attempting to conceal from authorities his own role, and that of other Bush administration officials, in leaking information to the media about Plame.

One of the jurors in the case, Dennis Collins, told the press shortly after the verdict that he and many other jurors believed that Libby was serving as a “fall guy” for Cheney, and had lied to conceal the role of his boss in directing information about Plame to be leaked to the press.

CONTINUED...

http://murraywaas.crooksandliars.com/2008/12/23/exclusive-cheneys-admissions-to-the-cia-leak-prosecutor-and-fbi/

My guess is this is where history comes in: We may as well bell the treasonous cat by painting an accurate picture for eternal judgement.

Edit: Fitzgerald. Fitzpatrick. I know, I know...

[Rosa Luxemburg]

22. One could open a closed book

Rove's role in it was mystifying

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Octafish]

33. Furious Valerie Plame & Joe Wilson Return “Political Courage” Award ...

...As CA Dems Snub Mikey Weinstein, Fighting Theocratic Takeover of Military.

Welcome to DU, ScooterLibbyHunter. Thanks for reminding me:



Plame Affair makes clear: USA is run by TRAITORS

[ScooterLibbyHunter]

36. thank you

Been reading DU for a long time. Every morning and afternoon. That thing just got to me. A smoke helped. ;-)
thank you !!

[sabrina 1]

6. Cheney's best friends are people like himself, brutal, cowardly

dictators who have no loyalty to any country. They have built the Oil Industry into a World Empire for which apparently the U.S. military now works just as the Colombian military does.

BP is operating here in the U.S. in much the same way it has operated in third world countries. They were under the radar screen until this disaster happened. Now we are seeing them using our Coast Guard and National Guard as well as local law enforcement to do THEIR bidding, to protect them from the American people. It is unconscionable that they cannot seem to be stopped. And I am afraid that as this disaster grows, anger among the people will result in violence. Something BP is all too familiar with.

Cheney is a traitor and I think it all goes back to not prosecuting the Iran Contra criminals. That emboldened them and since then they appear to have gained control of this government no matter who is in power.

[Octafish]

24. Crimes in Freedom's Name - Dick Cheney's El Salvador

El Mozote

Crimes in Freedom's Name

Dick Cheney's El Salvador

By MARK ENGLER
CounterPunch
October 16 / 17, 2004

We know that distortions abounded in the Vice President's contribution to the Cheney-Edwards debate on Tuesday. But one moment that hasn't received much attention is Dick Cheney's revealing misuse of the 1980s civil war in El Salvador. Observers of Latin American affairs were shocked and awed when the Vice President cited the conflict as a parallel for the current predicament in Afghanistan:

"Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador," Cheney said. "We had a guerilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress... And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied their right to vote. And today El Salvador is a of a lot better because we held free elections... And will apply in Afghanistan. And it will apply as well in Iraq."

The most relevant fact that the Vice President omits here is that the 75,000 people were killed not by the guerillas, but by the government that Cheney was supporting and its paramilitary death squads. The second most relevant fact is that the 1984 elections were widely recognized as a farce, with a long line of genuine opposition candidates already having been killed off and with the U.S. spending $10 million to manipulate the outcome. That this is the model for exporting democracy says a lot about what the neoconservatives have in store for us.

In truth, if El Salvador is a whole of a lot better off today, it is because the movement against the government continued. A UN Truth Commission, mandated as part of the country's 1992 peace accords, affirmed a reality that the Reaganites steadfastly denied then and prefer to forget today. The Commission found the FMLN guerillas responsible for 5% of human rights violations and the Armed Forces responsible for 90%, with the remaining 5% undetermined.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/engler10162004.html

Thank you for knowing what it is we are up against, sabrina 1.

PS: Have you seen DUer Robert Paulsen's work on Dick the Traitor?

[Rhiannon12866]

7. Excellent read. K&R!

It's also quite revealing that he hasn't yet weighed in on the oil leak, his area of expertise. x(

[Octafish]

25. Disaster Capitalism! Gulf oil well disaster could mean explosive profits for Halliburton.

The guy doesn't want to jinx his stock options.

From the Kapitalism Über Alles Department (w/a big tip of the fin to SOTT.net):

Disaster Capitalism! Gulf oil well disaster could mean explosive profits for Halliburton

Romona Paden
Examiner
Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:26 EDT

The oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico could be a well-timed and profitable accident for Halliburton, the global oil company with the famous connection to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Just eight days before the uber-Valdez accident, Houston-based Halliburton acquired Boots & Coots Services, also based in Houston, in a $240 million cash and stock deal.

Boots & Coots, which uses the graphic of a burning oil well to represent the ampersand in its name, specializes in "pressure control and well intervention services." In other words, when an oil well explodes, Boots & Coots can step in and help remedy the problem. In a release, Jerry Winchester, Boots & Coots president and CEO, says "Combining the resources of both companies creates the premier intervention company across the globe."

While Halliburton's timing of the acquisition could be chalked up to luck, some members of Congress are asking questions. Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), have asked Halliburton provide all documents relating to "the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout" at the rig in the Gulf, according to a report in the LA Times.

In her recent speech delivered in Independence, Mo., Sarah Palin, mother of the "Drill Baby Drill" mantra heard at the last Republican National Convention, called the British Petroleum disaster "very tragic." She went on to say she hopes the country will be able to "trust the oil companies," according to a Politico story.

CONTINUED w LINKS: http://www.examiner.com/x-38929-Kansas-City-Business-Commentary-Examiner~y2010m5d3-Gulf-oil-well-may-make-for-explosive-profits-for-Halliburton

One reporter (Rachel Maddow?) found the utter silence of one oil drenched Louisiana bayou eerie. Big Oil and Big Money are most "disquieting."

[Overseas]

29. Uncontrolled gusher of war profiteering compounded with disaster profiteering. //nt

[Rhiannon12866]

39. This story deserves its own thread... Thanks!!!

And Rachel found the whole experience of visiting the Gulf extremely unsettling. She felt like she needed fresh air, but she was already outside. x(

[OneGrassRoot]

9. K&R and....

[Octafish]

32. Grab by the nose and kick 'em in the pants.

Know your BFEE: Dope Dealers & Money Launderers

Regarding your outstanding photo, OneGrassRoot: Once he rids the nation of their treasonous Stay-Behind Network, Obama will have Bush and Cheney by the short hairs.

[KharmaTrain]

11. The Corporate Media Is Still Scared Shitless By Crashcart...

I wonder if he's got a file like J Edgar Hoover does of various stenographers in compromizing situations. With limited exceptions, they are afraid to speak both the obvious and the evil of Cheney. They're even afraid of his kid Lizzard. During the booosh regime, he was off limits due to "national security" reasons and now the "statue of limitations" on bush regime crimes has expired (not that it ever existed in their heads) everything is President Obama's fault and any finger pointing at Cheney is "sour grapes" or deflecting the blame.

[Octafish]

34. If DNI is getting their money's worth out of Total Information Awareness they do.

They certainly do have a J Edgar Hoover filing system.

And those in its pages know they'd be thrown under the bus in a New York second.



Corporate McPravda and the ownership class are scared shitless that Cheney and the BFEE will leave them off the last helicopter to Paraguay. Remember how, during the September 11 attackes, the government instituted its emergency Continuity Of Government plan? They did not invite a single senior Democrat from The Hill to accompany them to their secret, undisclosed locations where they, should the nation in some form survive the emergency, would govern.

[Oceansaway]

13. K&R...n/t

[Octafish]

37. Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil

The things sociopaths do...

Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil

By Mark Ames, The eXile
Posted on June 1, 2006, Printed on June 3, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/36881/



One of the oddest reactions to Vice President Cheney's now-infamous speech in Lithuania, the one which many Russians believe officially heralded the start of a new Cold War, came from the mainstream American media. What was so strange? They actually did their job.

Instead of simply parroting the Administration's latest pieties, they actually allowed themselves to smell a rat. And what a putrid, bloated, rotting-in-a-flooded-Manila-gutter rat odor it was! You'd have to have been literally brain dead not to have smelled it.

The rat of course was the insane hypocrisy of a foaming fascist like Dick Cheney suddenly getting all Amnesty International righteous over a bad regime that does bad things. The fact that Cheney flew straight to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan right after squirting over Russia's human rights problems turned the rank hypocrisy into a bad black comedy routine, barely fit for even a Tom Green. Kazakhstan is a country where opposition politicians and media aren't merely jailed, exiled or cowed as they are in Russia, but are shot and dumped in forests, Miller's Crossing-style, on behalf of a despot whose family runs the country like its own fiefdom.

Azerbaijan is even worse, if such a thing can be imagined not only because the Azeri authorities brutally suppress pro-democracy protests, but because it is the first and only post-Soviet state to officially create a despotic family dynasty. After former leader Heydar Aliyev died in office, he passes power (along with control over the country's vast oil wealth) to his son, Ilham Aliyev, in 2003, a dynastic transfer that was then "legimitized" by rigged elections that the Bush administration somehow manages each time to view as a democracy cup 1/100 full rather than 99/100 empty.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/36881/

Thanks, Oceansaway, for giving a damn!

[malaise]

15. This is not a super thread

It's a mega-super thread.

Rec

[Octafish]

38. Cheney Reportedly Wanted Cuts In Climate Testimony

Corporate McPravda must've accidently missed this story:

Cheney Reportedly Wanted Cuts In Climate Testimony

by H. Josef Hebert
Published on Tuesday, July 8, 2008 by Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.

When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the science.

But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC’s original draft testimony removed.

“The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) … any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change,” Burnett has told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The three-page letter, a response to an inquiry by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the panel’s chairwoman, was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Boxer planned a news conference later in the day.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/08/10209/

Thank heavens for the Internets and Sisters.

[Soylent Brice]

18. from your keyboard to the media whores and deaf and blind citizens.

i won't hold my breath, though.

thank you Octafish.
K&R

[UTUSN]

19. K&R #4 in case a visiting media "reporter" sees it & needs ideas for a story n/t

[UTUSN]

21. That was K&R #40, not "4" n/t

[Blue Owl]

20. K&R

Excellent read.

[mogster]

23. Some related links

Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm

Afghan Pipeline: A New Great Game
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/analysis/16777.stm

Also found this timeline, although I don't know anything about the source:
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm

[Earth Bound Misfit]

31. Thank you, K n R.

[H2O Man]

35. Recommended.

Thanks.

[Scurrilous]

40. Kick

:kick:

[trusty elf]

41. self delete