Back in April of 2003, The Nation magazine made the case for congressional investigations into war profiteering that was only just beginning. Of course, with Republicans in charge, it fell on deaf ears. But, now that the Democrats are in charge, where's the outrage? Where are the hearings? Why aren't no-bid contractors like Halliburton and certain Vice Presidents not testifying before congress?
Dick Cheney, despite his protestations of having "no ties" to Halliburton, may be one of the worst offenders, likely rising to level of treasonous activity. As of 2005, Cheney had 433,000 Halliburton options with varying strike prices as low as $28.13 a share. Halliburton closed at $38.98 on Friday (10/5/2007). If you adjust the lowest strike price to account for a 2007 split, Cheney could buy shares for as little as $14.07 and sell them for almost $39. That's $25 of profit per option exercised.
If Cheney gets his war with Iran, how much will his Halliburton options be worth then. Iraq was never about WMDs or Democracy. This administrations motivations could literally come down to one man's stock options. While tens of thousands of American soldiers are killed or wounded in Iraq, Cheney has set himself up to rake in tens of millions in war profits.
We need to transform the Democratic party into modern day Roosevelts and Trumans on this issues:
Where is the leader with the courage to say, as Franklin Roosevelt did during World War II, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster"? Democrats in Congress--and Republicans who have not placed their conscience in a blind trust for the duration of the Bush/Cheney years, a group we hope still includes Arizona's John McCain in the Senate and Iowa's Jim Leach in the House--should borrow a page from past wars, when the nation's elected leaders knew what to call businessmen who used hostilities abroad as an excuse to raid the federal treasury. Senator Robert La Follette tagged them as "enemies of democracy in the homeland." During World War II Harry Truman referred to some forms of war profiteering as "treason."
When he heard rumors of such profiteering, Truman got into his Dodge and, during a Congressional recess, drove 30,000 miles paying unannounced visits to corporate offices and worksites. The Senate committee he chaired launched aggressive investigations into shady wartime business practices and found "waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and profiteering," according to Truman, who argued that such behavior was unpatriotic. Urged on by Truman and others in Congress, President Roosevelt supported broad increases in the corporate income tax, raised the excess-profits tax to 90 percent and charged the Office of War Mobilization with the task of eliminating illegal profits. Truman, who became a national hero for his fight against the profiteers, was tapped to be FDR's running mate in 1944.