THE TURKEY NESTS
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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March 1, 2003
Iraq Scraps Missiles, Turkey Rejects U.S. Troops
By Nadim Ladki
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq started destroying its banned al-Samoud missiles on Saturday under the gaze of U.N. inspectors, complicating a U.S. push to win international support to go to war against Baghdad for failing to disarm.
U.S. preparations for war suffered a further blow when Turkey's parliament rejected a long-awaited motion that would have allowed the United States to deploy 62,000 troops in Turkey for a possible invasion of Iraq.
Four Iraqi missiles with a range exceeding the 93-mile limit set in U.N. resolutions were crushed under the supervision of U.N. inspectors on Saturday. "I can confirm now that four al-Samoud missiles have been destroyed," a U.N. spokesman told Reuters.
Iraq is thought to have produced around 100 al-Samoud 2 missiles, deploying about 50 in military bases around Baghdad.
Iraqi compliance had been seen as crucial before chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix addresses the Security Council late next week -- after which the United States and Britain want to bring to a vote a draft resolution that lays the ground for war.
The scrapping of the first of Iraq's most advanced surface-to-surface missiles was hailed as a "significant piece of real disarmament" by Blix, but was dismissed by Washington as part of a "game of deception."
In Ankara, Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan said parliament's decision not to let U.S. troops use Turkish bases and ports was a "completely democratic result," suggesting he would accept it. The ruling party will meet on Sunday, but Erdogan gave no clue to his intentions.
There is widespread opposition in Turkey to a war on Iraq, but acceptance of U.S. troops, enabling Washington to open a northern front into Iraq and probably shorten any war, would have brought hefty U.S. financial aid and the chance to send Turkish troops into northern Iraq to protect Ankara's interests.
The parliamentary motion, the climax of lengthy negotiations with Washington, was approved by a simple majority but not the overall majority of MPs present.
A State Department spokesman said only that the United States was seeking clarification of the vote....
UAE WANTS SADDAM TO GO
Pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) came from an unexpected source in the form of the United Arab Emirates, which became the first Arab state to call officially on him and his aides to go into exile.
Washington has said such a solution, proposed by the UAE at an Arab summit in Egypt on Saturday, could spare the region another war. But Saddam said this week he would rather die than go into exile.
The Arab League summit issued a communique opposing an attack on Iraq as a threat to Arab national security, and said member countries would not participate in any war.
The mood on the street was also strongly opposed to war.
In one of the biggest protests in the Middle East, more than 300,000 Yemenis took to the streets denouncing the United States, its main ally Britain and Israel as an "axis of evil" and urging Arab leaders to deny Washington help in a war.
In Turkey around 20,000 protesters took to the streets of Ankara urging parliament to reject Washington's request to use the country as a launchpad for an attack.
The Vatican, which does not believe an attack on Iraq would be a "just war," said Pope John Paul would send a senior cardinal to Washington on a personal peace mission.
In Iraq the Republican Guards, the country's best-equipped special forces, met Saddam and told him they were ready "to sacrifice to the level of martyrdom to defend their leader, their country and their sanctities," the official Iraq News Agency said....
MISSILE DESTRUCTION
Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for the U.N. inspectors, said the destruction of the proscribed al-Samoud 2 missiles, components and related systems was taking place at the Taji military base, some 25 miles north of Baghdad.
Uday al-Taei, a senior official of the Iraqi Information Ministry, said a "a timetable and action plan" had been agreed for the coming days.
Iraq's promise to destroy one of its major weapons systems did little to heal divisions in the U.N. Security Council, with the United States and Britain saying it meant little and Russia welcoming the decision.
The United States says the missiles are the tip of the iceberg and that Baghdad is trying to mask the fact that it has huge stores of the weapons the U.N. requires it to scrap. Iraq denies it has banned weapons.
"(U.N.) Resolution 1441 called for a complete, total and immediate disarmament. It did not call for pieces of disarmament. The president has always predicted that Iraq would destroy its al-Samoud missiles as part of their game of deception," said White House spokeswoman Mercy Viana.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw echoed the U.S. view, saying, "What Saddam Hussein does...is he plays the international community, trying to divide and trying to trickle out concessions."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko applauded the Iraqi move. "We see this as highly important evidence of Iraq's cooperation with the United Nations," he told Interfax news agency.
In a pre-recorded weekly radio address, President Bush again threatened military action while promising a brighter future for the Iraqi people once Saddam is gone.
"The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another," Bush said.
Bush has said a new resolution, while desirable, is not necessary for Washington to justify a U.S.-led attack, and he has assembled a large force in the Gulf region to carry one out....
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From Agents of Influence, by Pat Choate:
WASHINGTON'S REVOLVING DOOR
America's top international and trade experts are becoming other nations' top advisers. Two of the six ex-Secretaries of State did work for foreign interests after they left office.
Edmund Muskie, Secretary of State in the Carter Administration, has lobbied on behalf of Canadian and British clients. Another former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, heads an international consultling firm that has advised businessmen from Japan, Korea's giant Daewoo conglomerate, Fiat of Italy, and a Delaware-registered limited partnership that makes investments in China, among many others....
Many other former senior officials of the State Department now staff Japan's American political machine. Virtually all these diplomats turned foreign agents reached public office through partisan politics - campaign work, financial contributions, or both; relatively few came up through the ranks of the Foreign Service.
For many years, the Defense Department has been criticized for allowing a revolving door to operate between the military and U.S. defense contractors. What has received almost no attention, however, is the growing number of former Pentagon officials who sign up as advisers and who register as foreign agents for Japan and other countries.
For the six years that Richard Perle was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs, he had important influence over U.S. military assistance to Turkey, which receives some $600 million annually in such aid.
In May 1988, one year after leaving office, Perle met with the Turkish Prime Minister and negotiated a contract for a new company he had conceived, International Advisers, Inc.
The job: help Turkey acquire U.S. military and economic assistance.
The fee to Perle's company was $875,000 a year for at least two years....
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September 28, 2000
Ambassador to Turkey Cautions U.S.
By SHANNON McCAFFREY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. ambassador to Turkey cautioned members of Congress Thursday that a resolution labeling the killing of Armenians in Turkey as genocide could cause significant harm to relations with a key military ally.
Turkey is a NATO member and the United States uses the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey to patrol the no-fly zone in northern Iraq. There is concern that adoption of the resolution could endanger American use of the base.
"There will be a strong Turkish reaction," Ambassador Robert Pearson told the House International Relations Committee. "This is designed to make Turkish-American relations and the issues we are trying to deal with more difficult."
The committee delayed a vote until next week.
The nonbinding resolution would place the U.S. government on record as confirming that 1.5 million Armenians were killed or displaced between 1915 and 1923 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire government.
Armenians maintain their people were slaughtered as part of an Ottoman campaign to force Armenians out of eastern Turkey. The Turks deny they ever engaged in genocide. They acknowledge some 300,000 Armenians were killed, but say the deaths occurred as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil unrest. The Ottoman Empire became Turkey in 1923.
"Silence in the face of genocide, as we have learned, can only embolden those who would again seek the systematic destruction of an entire people," said Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., the resolution's prime sponsor.
In Turkey, Foreign Minister Ismail Cem described the committee hearing as a "tasteless development."
"Turkey is a strong country, a strong society and we will do anything we can do to make sure that a wrong decision will not be taken in a foreign parliament," he said.
U.S. defense contractors, which either have deals or are negotiating deals with Turkey, have been lobbying heavily against the resolution.
The Turkish government has hired a stable of high-powered lobbyists.
Former Reps. Bob Livingston, R-La., Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., and Steven Solarz, D-N.Y., are being paid $1.8 million to make the Turkish case on Capitol Hill.
Armenian groups have hired former Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., to lobby for them.
Some members of the committee expressed reservations about angering the Turkish government for actions that occurred long ago by a government no longer in power.
Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, said consequences of deliberately insulting a NATO ally could be devastating.
He proposed a more sweeping resolution that would recognize human rights crimes of the 20th century. It would include the killings of Armenians but would not single out Turkey as the perpetrator.
That was rejected by the committee chairman, Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y.
Other lawmakers said Congress has a moral obligation to do something.
"There is genocide denial in Turkey. That is what this is all about," said Rep. Edward Royce, R-Calif.
The resolution is H.Res. 596.
www.codoh.com/newsdesk/2000/000928.html
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January 13, 2001 in the Boston Globe
Human Rights vs US Arms Sales To Turkey
by Kevin McKiernan
BELL TEXTRON, the Rhode Island-based company that makes helicopter gunships, got some good news a few months ago when Turkey awarded it a $4 billion contract for 146 attack helicopters, one of the largest single arms deals in history.
International competition for the contract had been intense, with five companies, including Boeing Aircraft and Bell Textron, submitting bids. When Turkey eliminated Boeing's Apache helicopter from consideration last year, Bell's King Cobra became the favorite to win the award. Soon after it convenes, the new Congress will have to decide whether to grant an export license for the weapons.
About 80 percent of the Turkish arsenal is US-made, and the Turkish Army has relied on Sikorsky Blackhawks and Apache and Cobra helicopters to win the long (and underreported) war with Kurdish rebels in the southeast.
In 1997, the Clinton administration granted Boeing and Bell market licenses to build the attack helicopters, brushing aside human rights objections from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch about Turkey's abuse of its ethnic population.
Since President Clinton took office in 1992, more than $6 billion in US weaponry has been delivered to Turkey.
Now that Bell has won the helicopter contract, the Bush administration may try to persuade Congress to override human rights concerns, thus brokering the sale.
American-made helicopters are well known to the Kurds. I have often encountered refugees from destroyed villages in southeast Turkey whose only English were the words Sikorsky and Cobra. Villagers know that the soldiers who burn their houses arrive in Blackhawk helicopters, which are made by the Connecticut-based Sikorsky company. And they easily recognize the rocket-equipped Cobras, which are manufactured at a Bell Textron plant in Texas.
Turkish Kurdistan is a rugged, mountainous region, and helicopters have proved essential in the army's scorched-earth campaign. So far, more than 3,000 Kurdish villages have been burned, depriving the guerrillas of logistical support. Estimates of civilian Kurds displaced by the war range from 500,000 to 2 million.
It has been a dirty war, and both sides have been guilty of atrocities.
The Kurds are a large, diverse group whose members spill across the borders of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and parts of the former Soviet Union.
With a population of 25 million to 30 million, they represent the largest ethnic minority in the world without their own state.
The first Kurds I met were in Iraq, where I was shooting television news at the end of the Gulf War. At that time, the networks had an appetite for stories of Saddam Hussein's abuses (the Iraqi dictator had destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages), and I had lots of work. But when I started covering the Kurdish uprising in Turkey, I couldn't give the stories away.
I was told that as far as the media were concerned, the Turkish-Kurdish war wasn't on the radar.
Today, Ankara continues to dispatch US- made F-16s and Cobra attack helicopters to bomb Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, where most of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan's fighters have withdrawn. Last weekend, according to Turkish newspapers, 10,000 Turkish troops crossed 100 miles into Iraq, the deepest cross-border penetration to date.
At last report, the US-equipped troops were trying to encircle 2,500 Kurdish fighters dug in along the Iraq-Iran border.
Twelve months ago, the European Union voted to consider Turkey for admission to the EU, but only on the condition that it clean up its human rights record.
But the EU may be having second thoughts. Soon after the vote, Turkey blocked an EU delegation from visiting Leyla Zana, the imprisoned Kurdish member of the Turkish Parliament who has received the EU's peace prize. Then a Kurdish educational foundation was indicted on criminal charges of inciting separatist propaganda because it advertised a scholarship for students who could read and write in Kurdish.
Last year the government ordered a CNN television affiliate off the air for 24 hours because a reporter asked a guest if history might one day regard Ocalan as a Turkish version of the South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela. A few days later, Turkey arrested the Kurdish mayors of three cities on vague charges of separatism.
There are 37 elected Kurdish mayors, and many observers had hoped that their leadership would provide a nonviolent alternative to the civil war in Turkey that since 1984 has taken 40,000 lives, most of them Kurds.
Turkey has hired a stable of former leading members of Congress to pave the way for licensing the King Cobras. The lobbyists include former House Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon of New York and former congressman Stephen Solarz, also of New York.
Best known is former House speaker-designate Bob Livingston of Louisiana, who has received a $1.8 million contract to lobby for Turkey.
While Turkey is a valuable ally, what US exports need is gun control, but that demands leadership from Washington. The sale of 146 attack helicopters may be good news to Bell Textron, but human rights are also in America's national interest.
The new White House should use its influence to hold up the $4 billion in gunships until Ankara shows a willingness to deal democratically with its own citizens.
Kevin McKiernan is a producer and director whose latest documentary is ''Good Kurds, Bad Kurds.''
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
www.commondreams.org/views01/0113-02.htm
www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST050400.htm
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March 26, 2002
The Carlyle Group -
Crony Capitalism Goes Global
By Tim Shorrock, The Nation.com
By hiring enough former officials to fill a permanent shadow cabinet, Carlyle has brought political influence to a new level and created a twenty-first-century version of capitalism that blurs any line between politics and business.
William Conway, managing director and co-founder of the Carlyle Group, was talking recently about the media coverage of his bank and the cast of ex-Presidents and former officials, including George H.W. Bush, James Baker III and Frank Carlucci, on its payroll.
"One of the words that has recently cropped up as an adjective around us--and I love this adjective--is the 'secretive' Carlyle Group," he said in an interview in his offices overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington. "What's the secret? I don't think we have many secrets. The reality is, we're a group of businessmen who have made an enormous amount of money for our investors by making good investments over the past fifteen years."
To give Conway his due, Carlyle has done exceedingly well for the 435 pension funds, banks and investment funds--40 percent from overseas--that have entrusted their money to one of the world's largest private equity funds.
Under the leadership of Carlucci, a former CIA deputy director who was Defense Secretary in the Reagan Administration, Carlyle has become the nation's eleventh-largest defense contractor, a major arms exporter to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, one of the biggest foreign investors in South Korea and Taiwan, and a key player in global telecommunications, wireless, real estate and healthcare markets.
Since 1987 it has invested $6.4 billion in 233 transactions, with a rate of return of 36 percent on its completed investments. Carlyle currently has $12.5 billion invested.
"Their basic nature is not to be a long-term investor but buy low and sell high," said Philip Finnegan, an analyst with the Teal Group, a Beltway company that tracks the aerospace industry. "They always look for an exit strategy in whatever they buy. They have a sense of the stability of the business because of the accumulated expertise they have."
That's where Carlyle's global network of statesmen and former officials comes in.
Bush is Carlyle's senior adviser on Asia and makes his money by giving speeches at Carlyle's investment conferences.
Baker, who was Bush's Secretary of State, is Carlyle's senior counselor and a member of the firm's Asia, Europe and Japan advisory boards.
John Major, the former British prime minister, was named chairman of Carlyle Europe last year.
Carlyle's advisory boards are peppered with corporate executives from Boeing, BMW, Toshiba and other big multinationals, and men of influence like former Bundesbank president Karl Otto Pohl, former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun and former US ambassador to Japan (and former Speaker of the House) Thomas Foley.
Carlyle's new asset management group is run by Afsaneh Beschloss, the former treasurer and chief investment officer of the World Bank.
By hiring enough former officials to fill a permanent shadow cabinet, Carlyle has brought political influence to a new level and created a twenty-first-century version of capitalism that blurs any line between politics and business. In a sense, Carlyle may be the ultimate in privatization: the use of a private company to nurture public policy--and then reap its benefits in the form of profit.
Although the fund claims to operate like any other investment bank, it's undeniable that its stable of statesmen-entrepreneurs have the ability to tap into networks in government and commerce, both at home and abroad, for advance intelligence about companies about to be sold and spun off, or government budgets and policies about to be implemented, and then transform that knowledge into investment strategies that dovetail nicely with US military foreign and domestic policy....
Looking East
Where Carlucci has led Carlyle's foray into defense, Bush Sr. and Baker have helped the bank forge deep ties with the Middle East. Just after his son was sworn into office, Bush was invited by Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz to speak to potential US investors in Saudi Arabia at a two-day conference in Houston.
Bandar, who is close to the Bush family, was not relying purely on friendship, however: The Washington Post recently disclosed that Bandar has invested in Carlyle, along with his father, Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister. (Bush Jr. also has a Carlyle connection: In the early 1990s he was on the board of Caterair, a Carlyle company that provided in-flight food services to airlines but never made a profit.)
Through a 51 percent joint venture with the Saudi government, Carlyle's United Defense provides tactical training and maintenance for the thousands of Bradley Fighting Vehicles purchased by the Royal Saudi Land Forces after the Gulf War. Carlyle had a long relationship with Saudi Arabia through BDM Corporation and Vinnell Corporation, which train the Saudi National Guard and were sold to TRW in 1998.
In the early 1990s Carlyle advised Al-Waleed bin Talal--the Saudi prince whose $10 million donation to the World Trade Center victims' fund was rejected by Rudy Giuliani--on his US investments, including a $600 million bailout of Citicorp, now Citigroup.
Last April, Bush Sr. led a Carlyle delegation to Turkey, where Rubenstein negotiated a joint venture with the Koc Group, Turkey's largest conglomerate, which has holdings in energy, telecommunications and defense.
During a dinner with Turkish business executives, Bush reminded the audience of Turkey's support during the Gulf War and promised to "help Turkey as we did in the past."
FNSS, a joint venture between United Defense and the Nurol Group, is Turkey's largest manufacturer of armored vehicles and exports to Malaysia and other nations.
Over the past three years, in addition to visiting Turkey, Bush has been to South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Australia, France, Thailand and Hong Kong on Carlyle's behalf....
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April 23, 2002
Carlyle Group: Fuel for the War Machine
by Pascale Ghazaleh Al-Ahram Weekly
Outside the oil industry, not many people would have exclaimed over the news, in January 1998, that the Taliban had signed an agreement allowing a 1,272km, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic- feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project to proceed.
The proposed pipeline, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration (EIA), would have transported natural gas from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad natural gas field to Pakistan, and was projected to run from Dauletabad south to the Afghan border, through Herat and Kandahar, to Quetta in Pakistan before linking up with Pakistan's natural gas grid at Sui.
By March, however, Unocal, the company leading the project, had announced that details would not be finalised immediately due to the civil war in Afghanistan. In August, the company announced it was suspending its role in the pipeline because of the military action the US government was taking in Afghanistan, as well as fighting between the Taliban and the opposition.
By the end of the year, according to an EIA Country Analysis Brief, Unocal was announcing its withdrawal from Centgas (the Central Asian Gas Pipeline Ltd.) -- the consortium responsible for building the pipeline -- "citing low oil prices and turmoil in Afghanistan as making the pipeline project uneconomical and too risky."
It had previously stated that the pipeline project would not proceed until an "internationally recognised government" was in place in Afghanistan.
Unocal, however, was no stranger to unpopular governments: it was, after all, part of the consortium building a pipeline in Burma that human rights groups slammed for using forced labour and cooperating with a military dictatorship. Among the other members of that consortium, incidentally, was an oil company named Halliburton -- of which the CEO was none other than current Vice- President Richard Cheney.
Unocal and Halliburton share other affinities, however: at the Collateral Damage Conference of the Cato Institute on 23 June 1998, Cheney himself made some of these clear, noting that "70 to 75 per cent of [Halliburton's] business is energy related, serving customers like Unocal, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and many other oil companies around the world."
But back to Afghanistan.
Until Unocal relinquished its shares in Centgas, it had held an 85 per cent stake in conjunction with the Saudi Arabian company Delta Oil (which became the leader of the consortium following Unocal's withdrawal). Other holders included Pakistan's Crescent Group, Russia's Gazprom, South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company, and two Japanese firms, Inpex and Itochu.
When the consortium was formed, Marty Miller, Unocal Corporation vice-president responsible for new ventures in Central Asia and Pakistan, had explained that "no other import project can provide such volumes of natural gas to [the markets of India and Pakistan] at a lower price. Market analyses, according to a Unocal press release dated 27 October 1997, "indicate that Pakistan's electric power generation market will be the main consumer of the imported gas."
To any amateur conspiracy theorist, that information seems almost too good to be true. Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan and installing an "internationally recognised government" would eliminate the main obstacle to Unocal's investment in the pipeline project.
In this perspective, a side effect of the US-led attacks -- while they may have been triggered by the 11 September disaster and the subsequent decision to "root out terrorism" -- would benefit Big Oil, at least in the long run.
Nor is such speculation restricted to conspiracy theorists. Nina Burleigh, one of the first reporters to enter Iraq after the Gulf War, observed recently:
"So many business deals, so much oil, all those big players with powerful connections to the Bush administration. It doesn't add up to a conspiracy theory. But it does mean there is a significant money subtext that the American public ought to know about as 'Operation Enduring Freedom' blasts new holes where pipelines might someday be buried."
And amid the fanfare of America's "war on terror," it is easy to miss one disturbing note: it would seem that the decision to attack Afghanistan was taken months ago -- long before 11 September.
On 26 June, India Reacts reported: "India and Iran will 'facilitate' US and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime."
As early as mid-March, there were reports that India, Russia and Iran were heading an anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, while Washington provided the Northern Alliance with information and logistical support. Military sources, according to Jane's Intelligence Review, indicated that Russia and India were using Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as bases to launch anti-Taliban operations.
In the wake of the 11 September attack, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Niaz Naik revealed that, in mid- July, "senior American officials" had told him military action against Afghanistan would take place before the snows -- "by the middle of October at the latest."
Speaking to the BBC, Naik quoted these officials as having said "that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar."
And in a puzzling aside, Naik observed it was "doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban."
Let us assume, for the moment, that the US government was planning to attack Afghanistan, and that 11 September merely provided an opportunity to make such plans public. Why would it have wanted to?
The answer seems simple enough: oil, and weapons.
Afghanistan's principal selling point is not the breathtakingly rugged landscape or the rustic lifestyle: it is its strategic position, in uncomfortable proximity to any pipeline channeling oil and gas out of Central Asia to India and Pakistan, or west, to Europe and eventually the US.
Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel of Judicial Watch, a Washington public-interest law firm, recently discovered that Bush and Bin Laden are united by more than just a shared belief in the battle of good vs evil. Bush Sr, it turns out, is a paid senior adviser to the Carlyle Group, a private Washington equity firm described by the New York Times as the US's 11th largest defence contractor.
Carlyle's investors include -- no surprises here -- the Bin Laden family, as well as Bush Sr and former Secretary of State James Baker; and Judicial Watch, according to an 11 October article in the Village Voice, "says all involved stand to benefit from any increase in U.S. defense spending."
Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, spelled it out:
"George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments."
Such a confluence between "private" and "public" interests is not new to US politics; last year, according to a Chicago Tribune article dated 10 August 2000, questions were raised over work that Dresser Industries, Inc., had been doing to keep Iraqi oil production up.
Dresser, it so happens, had been purchased for $8.5 billion in 1998 by Halliburton.
We may remember Halliburton from its activities in Burma, mentioned earlier. We may also remember that Richard Cheney was the company's CEO from 1995 to 2000. As defence secretary in 1991, Cheney had helped wage war against Iraq; less than a decade on, he was helping Saddam Hussein bypass sanctions imposed by his administration and enforced under its successor.
During Cheney's stewardship of Halliburton, as an 11 October Center for Public Integrity investigative report by Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller reveals, the oil giant also benefited from almost $4 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans. Under Cheney's guidance, Halliburton "garnered $2.3 billion in U.S. government contracts...
Most of the contracts have been with the U.S. Army for engineering work in a variety of hot spots, including Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and Haiti." In return, the firm made substantial lobbying expenditures, with contributions amounting to over a million dollars "in soft and hard money to candidates and parties" -- largely Republicans.
Cheney left Halliburton to run for the vice-presidency; but the New York Times reported on 12 August 2000 that he had received a retirement package worth $20 million.
Late that same month, he sold 660,000 of his shares for a $18.3 million profit, promising on 1 September that if elected, he would forfeit 233,333 options that could not be vested until 2001 or later, according to AP. Strangely, however, there has been no mention of that forfeit since. Meanwhile, global conflict and oil prospecting continue apace.
It is true that war has generally been good to Halliburton; in 1999, according to the Tribune, its Brown and Root division won substantial portions of Pentagon contracts worth over $1 billion "for support services for U.S. troops in the Balkans and at the Incirlik air base in Turkey" -- where the US planes that patrol the northern no- fly zone over Iraq are stationed.
The firm, interestingly, also won a $100 million contract to improve security at US embassies worldwide.
There is more.
Lynne Cheney, otherwise known as Mrs Richard Cheney, served until recently on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons manufacturer and a major Star Wars contractor along with TRW -- another arms maker, of which the board included none other than Dick Cheney himself.
That is hardly a secret; nor is the fact that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was a member of the board of Chevron, and helped that corporation get into Kazakhstan, as Ian Bremmer, president of research and consulting firm Eurasia Group and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Zalmay Khalilzad, who served in Reagan's State Department and Bush Sr's Pentagon, was once chief consultant for Unocal.
It gets better: on 23 May, Khalilzad was appointed special assistant to Bush Jr, and senior director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and other regional issues on the National Security Council.
The links between administration figures, Big Oil and defence are numerous: one need only look to James Baker and John Sununu for further evidence.
Oil, then, greases the palm of war; and war opens the door to oil. Now Congress has whipped itself into a veritable frenzy of defence spending, and the Pentagon stands to nab fully half of a $40 billion emergency package approved in the days immediately following the 11 September attack.
On 28 September, William D Hartung noted in Mother Jones that "Lockheed Martin's F-22, which at more than $200 million each is the most expensive fighter plane ever built, will be in a much stronger position to stave off future budget cuts if Congress continues to ramp up Pentagon spending."
And that's just for starters.
"The Bush administration," explains Hartung, "is poised to accelerate weapons sales to the Middle East and South Asia, including pending deals to transfer Lockheed Martin F-16s to Oman and the United Arab Emirates; a sale of the Lockheed Martin Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) to Egypt; and possible exports to Pakistan of spare parts for its F-16s, C-130 transport planes, and P-3 surveillance aircraft (all Lockheed Martin products)."
All in the name of the war on terror.
Hartung concludes: "Just as his father did in the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, President Bush plans to swap arms sales for political and military support for his war on terrorism" -- for Lockheed Martin is only one of the beneficiaries from the budget increase.
All this is not to say that evil individuals with insalubrious oil and defence interests are working behind the scenes to manipulate US foreign policy. It does seem, however, that gaining a secure foothold in Central Asia will benefit a few members of the present administration, as well as their former employers, not to mention the military-industrial complex as a whole.
In other words, the defence industry will make money off waging war, and the oil industry will benefit from a US military presence in or around Afghanistan. If one happens to be active in both -- well, sounds like a textbook win-win situation.
Oil, defence and politics, in other words, are not mutually exclusive interests. Indeed, US foreign policy is intimately entwined with US businesses abroad, as a Washington Post article (26 October 2000) demonstrates.
According to AP writer Katherine Pfleger, "U.S. diplomats lobbied foreign governments, banks and state-run companies to assist two business deals" for Halliburton.
Specifically, officials "helped arrange financing" from the Export-Import Bank, which provides credits and loan guarantees for U.S. businesses investing overseas; as a result of these efforts, Angola obtained a $68 million loan package allowing it to sign an oil services contract with Halliburton.
The same Export-Import Bank has been involved in other oil deals; most recently, it guaranteed $489 million in credits to a Russian oil company "whose roots are imbedded in a legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organized crime funds," according to Royce and Heller's report.
The Russian company, Tyumen Oil Co., is represented by the blue- chip Washington law firm Akin, Gump; its lead attorney, write Royce and Heller, is James C Langdon Jr, who also happens to be one of George W Bush's "Pioneers" -- one of the elite fundraisers who brought in at least $100,000 for W's presidential campaign....
Bremmer, however, argued that, while "both Cheney and Rice have had strong interests in developing Western investment into the Caspian Basin, I don't think this has played a meaningful role in the present war in Afghanistan."
Conceding that "Central Asia's importance has clearly increased for the United States" because of the war, he warned nonetheless: "There are no illusions about the greater strategic role [the Central Asian states] play for the Russian Federation, and the significance of Russian cooperation to maintain their support for the long term."
Yet a 1998 report prepared by Rajan Menon, professor of international relations at Lehigh University and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Harriman Institute, for the National Bureau of Asian Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution, attributed the Unocal project in part to the Caspian Sea energy-producing nations' desire to build pipelines that bypass Russia.
And with the signing on 29 September of the deal between Azerbaijan and Georgia, which provides alternative fuel sources for those countries as well as Turkey (all of which rely on Russia for gas), it would seem that Russian influence in the Caspian area has already been dealt quite a blow.
By juggling Big Oil, defence, and government, at any rate, senior members of the US administration have ensured that they have a finger in every possible pie....
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