After being voluntarily water-boarded, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote in his article,
Believe Me, Its Torture: “You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure.”
Water-boarding is one of the first thoughts that comes to mind when thinking of the disastrous Bush administration that left our country in ruins seven years ago, and the Intelligence Committees recent report on CIA interrogation techniques has reminded us all of the savagery that the “War on Terror” produced. Responding to this report, Dick Cheney, out from his caliginous hole, has embraced our lives again with his psychotic reasoning.
On Meet the Press, Cheney, without an iota of doubt or regret, revealed that he has “no problem” with the torture and death of innocent people if it helps achieve his goal of acquiring intelligence and protecting America, even though the Senate Committee determined that the techniques were not at all effective. Benjamin Franklin, who said “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer,” would be rolling in his grave.
The New York Times has made the case for the torturers and their bosses to be prosecuted for these cruel and brutal human rights violations, but those disgusting and barbaric acts only partially display the shameless and unethical nature of the Bush administration and the psychopathic mind of Dick Cheney.
One Percent Reasoning...
“If there is a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty,” reasoned Cheney back in November 2001, in what is now known as the One Percent Doctrine. It is interesting to imagine what the world would be like if any of our leaders or Soviet leaders reasoned like this during the Cold War. Certainly in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis the chances of the Soviets firing a nuclear weapon seemed higher than one percent. But was it a certainty?
This one percent doctrine is not the reasoning of a frenzied leader who cares solely about protecting his country, as Cheney would have people believe, but the reasoning of a war profiteer. Cheney and other Bush administration executives, like Donald Rumsfeld, were directly associated with companies who profited tremendously from the Iraq War, which was launched with this one percent type reasoning that turned out to be false.
Halliburton, the most notorious company to profit off of the Iraq War paid Dick Cheney, former CEO, a generous $34 million dollar exit package when he left to take the honorable role of a public servant. A going away present, similar to the long term incentive plans that Wall Street firms provide employees leaving for a position of influence in the government, like Obama’s latest Treasury Under Secretary nomination, Antonio Weiss. But the revolving door of Wall Street seems tame to the revolving door of war profiteers. Three years after the Iraq War, Halliburton’s stock had risen by 300 percent and it is estimated that the company received around $40 billion dollars worth of contracts from the U.S. government over the past decade, many of the deals given without any bidding. Not bad for a $34 million exit package.
Donald Rumsfeld also made quite the profit selling shares from defense companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing for tens of millions before he became Defense Secretary. He also refused to sell his shares of Gilead Sciences, where he was Chairman before leaving for the public realm. The company held a a patent for the vaccine Tamiflu, which the Pentagon bought $58 million dollars worth in 2004. Fortunately for Rumsfeld, the Gilead stock, which was $7.45 when he became Defense Secretary and refused to sell, rose to an astonishing $67.45 by the time he left office.
KBR, a 2006 spinoff of Cheney’s Halliburton, has been accused of so much waste and fraud that you’d think it was an investment bank. It has cost the government up to $300 million dollars in pay for unnecessary personnel and cannot account for $100 million dollars worth of its government furnished property. It has also been blamed for the electrocution deaths of as many as twelve soldiers because of their dingy wiring job that the American government paid them $204 million to do.
This is all, of course, old news; as is the torture. Our leaders knowingly pushed for a war that would be very profitable for the companies they had just left. A war that has cost tens of thousands of lives and over four trillion in taxpayer dollars. Before the military industrial complex became what it is today, FDR said: “I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.” Today, many millionaires in the United States have made there fortunes from just that.
None of this; the revolving doors, the profiteering, the fraud and waste, is exclusive to the defense industry. It is a part of capitalism, especially the imperialist type capitalism of Iraq reconstruction. Globalization, disaster capitalism, neo-imperialism, there are many different names for it. Ultimately, it is a modern example of the Colonialism that Karl Marx wrote about 150 years ago. A most brutal reality of the never ending drive for profit, cloaked as a mission to spread Democracy and protect America.
War, Capitalist Style
Dick Cheney’s recent appearance on Meet the Press shows that he is still hard at work trying to convince the people that it was all for their safety and protection. What is particularly disheartening is that he doesn’t have to try all that hard: Fifty-one percent of Americans see the CIA interrogation techniques as justified, and only 29 percent as unjustified, according to a recent Pew Poll.
In a way, the Bush administration was simply a reflection of how half of the American voters think, as this poll indicates. Security obsessed with a love for the profit motive. It was the best of both worlds during Iraq, protecting America and using private industry to do so. The profit motive, after all, is what makes our society such a great place, driving individuals towards innovation.
The corruption and waste that occurred, however, points to a major flaw with this philosophy. Handing over contracts to companies with insiders in the government does not in any way create innovation, it it simply a quick fix for profit, which is much preferred. This is what Capitalism is all about, and Conservatives who argue that this isn’t real Capitalism, but Crony-Capitalism, are not living in reality. In true Capitalism, getting inside the government, like Cheney and Rumsfeld did, is a part of doing business. Just as we see Wall Street insiders running our government and regulating their own industry, the Bush crew did what any good defense Capitalists would, they started a war with the intent of privatization. During the Gulf War, there was one contractor for every 100 soldiers, by 2007, there was one contractor for every 1.4 soldiers. This war, simply put, was created by and for Capitalism.
I am in no way absolving Dick Cheney for the evils that he committed, and he should be prosecuted, or at least banned from ever making another appearance in the media. I am simply pointing out that what happened, and what continues to happen, is not just because there are certain people who are criminal minded, it happens because our system lets it happen and even promotes it. Profit is what guides us here in America, and whether it be achieved through war or gambling on derivatives or selling tablets, it has no conscience or moral code, quite like one of its greatest beneficiaries, former Vice President Dick Cheney.