VP Dick Cheney Musing? "War has been very, very good to me."
Dick and Liz Cheney are on the stump attacking the Obama Doctrine. Along with other "experts" and "trusted sources" these two saying they are shining the spotlight on root of Obama' foreign policy in Middle East.
The core of neoconservative thinking is the "assertive" promotion of American style democracy and economy in America's national interest frequently by means of the threat of, and use of military force to establish American political, economic, and cultural dominance especially in the developing world. It seems clear to me that Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Rumsfeld and the other neo-cons who assert such influence over George W. Bush want to transform Iraq into a U.S. friendly client state- a Islamic Israel, if you will, but with lots of oil.
BUT....THERE ARE ALSO PERSONAL MOTIVATIONS. W wanted to show the world that he could go Daddy one better. Cheney wanted to be very, very rich.
Let's review:
Cheney’s Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War
By Angelo Young, International Business Times
20 March 2013
http://www.ibtimes.com/...
The accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.
Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.
Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.
The No. 1 recipient?
Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.
The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.
Who were Nos. 2 and 3?
Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.
As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.
According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies.
Even without the graft, the costs of paying for these services are higher than paying government employees or soldiers to do them because of the profit motive involved. No-bid contracting -- when companies get to name their price with no competing bid -- didn’t lower legitimate expenses. (Despite promises by President Barack Obama to reel in this habit, the trend toward granting favored companies federal contracts without considering competing bids continued to grow, by 9 percent last year, according to the Washington Post.)
Even though the military has largely pulled out of Iraq, private contractors remain on the ground and continue to reap U.S. government contracts. For example, the U.S. State Department estimates that taxpayers will dole out $3 billion to private guards for the government’s sprawling embassy in Baghdad.
The costs of paying private and publicly listed war profiteers seem miniscule in light of the total bill for the war.
Last week, the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University said the war in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars, not including the $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans of the war and the lifetime benefits that will be owed to them or their next of kin.
Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton, prior to his stint as Vice President did well, in fact very, very, very well at KBR and he did not deserve not deserve the big payoffs handing him by the Halliburon Board of Directors.
In the five years he worked at the company, he received $12.5m in salary. He also held $39m-worth of stock options when he quit the company in 2000 – a fortune for a man with no previous experience in running a multinational company. In addition, Halliburton’s board of directors voted to award him early retirement when he quit his job, even though he was too young to qualify under his contract. That flexibility enabled him to leave with a retirement package, including stock and options, worth millions more than if he had simply resigned. Plus, Halliburton paid out Cheney an extra $1m during the time he served as vice-president.
Cheney cashed in his remaining stock options gradually, starting with selling 100,000 Halliburton shares in May 2000, for an immediate profit of $3m. In 2005, Cheney exercised most of what remained of his Halliburton stock options for a $6.9m profit, all of which he donated to charity. (Most of it was donated to the Richard B Cheney Cardiac Institute at George Washington University.)
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Here’s the thing, as KBR’s chief exec Cheney was not all that good. The company lost a lot of money in sales, in development, and in lawsuits during his time at the helm. The stock price of Halliburton rose from about $12 a share in 1996, to a high of $25, before plunging to about $7 a share in 2002.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
SO WHAT MOTIVATION MIGHT EXIST FOR HALLIBURTON TO GIVE SUCH A FINE SENDOFF TO THEIR INEXPERIENCED AND UNDERPERFORMING CEO?
I wonder why they were so willing to give him a golden parachute?
Hmmmmm…..do you think he owed them?
Hmmmmm…..do you think they had something in mind that the former Secretary of Defense and soon to be VP candidate could do for them?
Hmmmmm…..do you think they were hoping for a nice little war….or two….hmmmmm
Cheney's portfolio went into a "blind trust." - that little bit of window dressing that gives the appearance of propriety when it is obvious that the office holder recalls where his investments lie. Mr. Bush made a lot of money as President on oil stocks purchased as governor of Texas. He left office a very rich man thanks to that. Cheney left office a very, very rich man.
