We all know we're killing Iraqis, but who's making the real killing over there?

1. How the Bush Family Makes a Killing From George's Presidency
By Heather Wokusch/Common Dreams

Halliburton scored almost $1.2 billion in revenue from contracts related to Iraq in the third quarter of 2006, leading one analyst to comment: "Iraq was better than expected ... Overall, there is nothing really to question or be skeptical about. I think the results are very good."

Very good indeed. An estimated 655,000 dead Iraqis, over 3,000 dead coalition troops, billions stolen from Iraq's coffers, a country battered by civil war - but Halliburton turned a profit, so the results are very good.

Very good certainly for Vice President Dick Cheney, who resigned from Halliburton in 2000 with a $33.7 million retirement package (not bad for roughly four years of work). In a stunning conflict of interest, Cheney still holds more than 400,000 stock options in the company. Why pursue diplomacy when you can rake in a personal fortune from war?

Yet Cheney isn't the only one who has benefited from the Bush administration's destructive policies. The Bush family has done quite nicely too. Just a few examples:

Bush Sr.: Bush's dad has strong connections to the Carlyle Group, a massive private equity investment firm whose Chairman Emeritus is Frank Carlucci, a former college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's and former Defense Secretary under Ronald Reagan. Imagine the pull Carlucci has with today's White House.

But Carlucci has another secret weapon - Bush Sr. Amid conflict-of-interest allegations, the elder Bush resigned from the Carlyle Group in 2003, but reportedly remains on retainer, opening doors to lucrative profits in the Middle East and elsewhere. Bush Sr.'s specialty is Saudi Arabia; in fact, he was at a Carlyle investment conference with Osama bin Laden's estranged brother, Shafiq bin Laden, when the 9/11 attacks took place.

Carlyle specializes in military and security investments, and with Bush Jr. in office, the company's profits have soared; it received $677 million in contracts in 2002, then a whopping $2.1 billion in 2003. Carlyle's investors currently enjoy an equity capital pool of over 44 billion dollars.

In January 2006, Bush Sr. wrote China's Foreign Affairs Ministry that it would be "beneficial to the comprehensive development of Sino-US relations" if Beijing approved the sale of a Chinese bank to a consortium which included Carlyle. Bluntly put, Bush Sr. asked China to grant Carlyle a lucrative business deal or risk his son's wrath. Foreign policy at its finest.

William H. T. "Bucky" Bush: George's "Uncle Bucky" joined the board of military contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI) in 2000 and perhaps not surprisingly, the value of the company's governmental contracts has strongly increased with Bush Jr. in office. Uncle Bucky earns monthly consulting fees as well as options to buy stock at favorable prices, and considering that ESSI's stock tripled two weeks after 9/11 then settled into comfy territory, it's safe to say that George's uncle is doing quite well. In fact, Bucky cashed out on 8,438 stock options in January 2005, earning himself a cool $450,000 in the process. As of 2005, he still owned options on 45,000 more shares of the company's stock and accrues more each year.

War is profitable for ESSI, or as an executive explained: "The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by U.S. forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support ... products and services that we offer."

But lest anyone conclude that Bucky has opened doors for the company, ESSI's vice-president of investor relations explained in 2005, "The fact his nephew is in the White House has absolutely nothing to do with Mr Bush being on our board or with our stock having gone up 1000 per cent in the past five years." Absolutely nothing at all.

Neil Mallon Bush: Neil rose to infamy in the 1980s as director of the Colorado-based Silverado Savings and Loan; after Silverado collapsed due to mismanagement and corruption, US taxpayers were stuck with the billion-dollar bailout, yet Neil managed to escape the crisis with a small fine and no jail time. It helps to have a dad as Vice President.

In 1993, Neil joined Bush Sr. in Kuwait to drum up business in the Middle East, and today, he makes a profit by helping companies cash in on the occupation of Iraq. For example, in late 2003, The Financial Times reported that Neil earned $60,000 per year through the Crest Investment Company, a private firm generating contracts in Iraq. Crest was headed by Jamal Daniel, a longtime Bush family contact, who was also on the advisory board of New Bridge Strategies, a company specifically set up "with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq."

In 2003, Neil's messy divorce proceedings revealed that he was to get $2 million in stock options from a Chinese semiconductor firm despite having limited education or business experience in that area; critics complained that the Chinese company was buying access to his brother, the president. Neil later testified that on repeated business trips to Asia, he'd had sex with women who showed up at his hotel rooms, presumably prostitutes hired by companies trying to curry favor with the White House.

Neil has also profited from George's disastrous No Child Left Behind educational policy. His company, Ignite! (partially owned by Bush Sr. and funded by Crest Investment) has been awarded with lucrative federal contracts to place its educational products in school districts across the country.

Marvin Pierce Bush: Marvin joined Bush Sr. and Neil on their Middle Eastern sales trip in 1993 and then made a mint in the investment banking business. He is a co-founder of Winston Partners, a private investment firm whose investments in military and security firms profit from Bush's "war on terror."

Having a sibling as president has helped Marvin in other ways, too. He is on the board of HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc., which had insured parts of the World Trade Center; HCC benefited from the 9/11 insurance bailout legislation pushed through by brother George.

Marvin was also on the board of Securacom, a company which provided electronic security for both Dulles International Airport and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Marvin stepped down in 2000, but how intriguing that Bush's brother was so well connected to the security of two critical locations on that fateful day.

In short, the "results are very good" for the Bush dynasty, perhaps even "better than expected," thanks to George's stint in the Oval Office. Dad's still setting up international deals. Uncle Bucky's cashing in his stock options. Brothers Neil and Marvin are laughing all the way to the bank.

It's just the American people who have paid the ultimate price.

Action Ideas:
1. For more on war profiteering, head over to Halliburton Watch and Corp Watch. Catch a screening of the new Robert Greenwald film entitled Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.

2. If you're searching for information on contemporary foreign policy issues, coupled with an opportunity to take positive action, check out Women's Action for New Directions . The site offers in-depth coverage of Hot Topics, such as war and nuclear weapons, as well as fact sheets and other resources. Visit WAND's Take Action! center for petitions to sign and opportunities to contact Congress, the White House and the media about the peace and security issues you care about most.

(Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives' Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now and can be reached at www.heatherwokusch.com)


2. The Industrial Services Complex Formerly Known as the Military -- by David Swanson /Truthout

"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," by far the best film Robert Greenwald has created, is not about the military industrial complex. Rather, it is about the remaining shell of the former military, having embedded within itself not just the media, but numerous other corporate entities. The US military no longer cooks its own food, washes its own laundry, repairs its own vehicles, or guards its own V.I.P.s. We've privatized everything, right down to the shooting - mercenaries make up the second largest contingent in the Coalition of the Killing.

Private corporations cost more and provide less, or in the case of the reconstruction of Iraq, provide virtually nothing. There has been no reconstruction, and various corporations have provided literally nothing - at great expense. Halliburton has sent drivers to risk their lives hauling empty trucks back and forth across Iraq. And when a $75,000 truck breaks down, for lack of a spare tire or an oil filter, they blow the truck up or abandon it.

The absence of a reconstruction in Iraq is not the topic of "Iraq for Sale." Neither is the injustice of the war. "Iraq for Sale" is a film about how the war is being conducted, not whether there was any justification for beginning or continuing it at all. But the depiction of how the war is being conducted reveals in itself massive crime.

We meet in this film the families of two of the four Blackwater employees whose murders in Fallujah made big news, and we hear how Blackwater cut corners on arming their vehicle or including in it the proper number of personnel.

We learn about the employees of CACI who tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib, but who - unlike some members of the old military - have not been held accountable in any way.

We also hear from former translators for Titan about how that company pocketed big bucks while providing incompetent translators.

We hear from drivers for Kellogg, Brown and Root (Halliburton) and their families. KBR has knowingly sent trucks into zones where there was a high chance they would be attacked. And they have been attacked. And drivers have been killed. The deaths are not counted in US (old military) casualty figures. We hear from some of the drivers who have survived attacks.

We also see Halliburton provide contaminated water for service members, provide endless lines for food - and refuse to allow eating at any time other than scheduled meals, making it easier for resisters to attack. Halliburton overcharges, including charging $99 to wash a bag of laundry without getting it clean. The total of Halliburton overcharges is over $1 billion.

That's over $1 billion in pure waste as part of an already wasteful arrangement with Halliburton, a contract obtained with no competition or bidding and no expectation that the terms of the contract be met. Only in a field connected to patriotic music and flag waving would this level of corruption be so easily tolerated. No wonder corporations love war so much!

If the privatization of the military has a silver lining, it's this: should we ever be able to eliminate the privatized sections of the military, the remaining old military will be a more appropriately sized entity for defending a nation that does not launch aggressive wars. Let's make the Department of Defense a publicly-run public service of a size that we can afford and the world can survive.

I highly recommend seeing the film " Iraq for Sale ."

If you're in New Jersey or Philadelphia this weekend, you should come watch it with me. Following the screening, we're going to discuss the ever-improving prospects for impeachment, including how we can persuade the New Jersey state legislature to send impeachment charges to the US House. Sign up to join us.

(David Swanson is creator of MeetWithCindy.org, co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. His website is www.davidswanson.org)


3. Corporate Incompetence Run Amok in Iraq? Whatever. -- by Christopher Brauchli

“I am against government by crony.” -- Harold Ickes on resigning as Secretary of the Interior in 1946

Here’s a surprise. Congressional hearings can be enlightening, the caliber of the participants notwithstanding.

In mid-September a Senate Democratic policy committee heard testimony from two truckers about what happened to them while working for KBR. KBR, like Dick Cheney, is a subsidiary of Halliburton. KBR has been in the news a lot since the Iraq invasion began. The invasion did not take place because Mr. Cheney as invasion enthusiast anticipated that his former employer would get millions and millions in contracts that it would incompetently perform. He thought the invading forces would be greeted as liberators and there would be no need for massive reconstruction. He was wrong. Mr. Bush destroyed much of Iraq’s infrastructure thus creating opportunity for Mr. Cheney’s former employer and proving that even though things may not come out as you anticipate, they may nonetheless have a happy outcome. The war has been a boon for KBR if less so for the Iraqis.

Notwithstanding its great financial good fortune early in the war, KBR suffered lots of bad press because of its post war activities. It overcharged the military by $27.4 million for meals. Two of its employees took kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor who was providing services to troops in Kuwait. Any relief Halliburton felt that its offspring had stayed out of the headlines for a few months came to an end with reports of the senate testimony of the two KBR truckers.

The truck drivers described for the senators how KBR had sent them and an entire convoy of fuel tankers stretching for many miles, into a known combat zone with inadequately armored accompaniments notwithstanding warnings from the truck drivers that the area was unsafe. The men’s warnings proved well founded. The convoy was attacked and seven civilian drivers and two soldiers were killed. (The truck drivers sued KBR saying KBR knew the proposed route was unsafe since a battle was in progress. The drivers’ suit was thrown out by a Texas judge who said it was the military’s responsibility to protect the trucks and he couldn’t second-guess its decision to send the trucks into dangerous terrain. The lawyer for the truck drivers says he will appeal.)

KBR was not the only company up for an encore performance of incompetence. Parsons too, gave an encore, albeit in a different venue.

Parsons’ first failed performance became public in May and June of 2006 and involved a $243 million contract for construction of 150 health clinics in Iraq awarded to Parsons. Though successful in spending the money, it completed only 20 of the facilities. That proved to be no anomaly. Parsons was given a $99.1 million contract to build the Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility North of Baghdad by June 2006. In that month it was announced that it could not complete the project before 2008 and the project would cost $13.5 million more than the amount it bid. Its contract was canceled.

Commenting on those episodes that looked to the outsider like incompetence run amuck, Erin Kuhlman, a spokeswoman for Parsons said: “Parsons performed our work in Iraq in conformance with the contract terms and the directions given to us by the U.S. government. We’re extremely proud of our dedicated employees who have performed very well under extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances.”

If Ms. Kuhlman was proud of Parsons in July, her buttons would have popped off after September hearings before a House committee with the amusing name of House Government Reform Committee. In that hearing it was disclosed by a federal inspector that, including the foregoing examples, 13 of 14 major projects built by Parsons were substandard. (The 14th was the Correctional Facility described above.)

Parsons’ greatest triumph among the thirteen, if incompetence is the measure, was the $72 million police college in Baghdad. After the building was completed it turned out its occupants should not have flushed the toilets. Here is how they found that out. After a few weeks of flushing, the connections on the pipes came loose and urine and fecal matter leaked from the ceilings into the student barracks. One part of the barracks had such bad leaks it was called the “rain forest” although what was dripping was not rain. According to reports parts of the facility were irreparably damaged and will have to be destroyed.

Earnest O. Robbins II, a Parsons vice president was asked to explain how such massive failures could occur. He said: “I have some conjectures and that’s all it would be, and that is, it took a while of use for this to manifest itself, for the fittings to come loose or whatever.” To that a dispirited populace can only respond, “whatever”.

(Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu)


4. Idle Contractors Add Millions to Iraq Rebuilding -- by JAMES GLANZ/NY Times

Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq , according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.

The report provided the first official estimate that, in some cases, more money was being spent on housing and feeding employees, completing paperwork and providing security than on actual construction.

Those overhead costs have ranged from under 20 percent to as much as 55 percent of the budgets, according to the report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. On similar projects in the United States, those costs generally run to a few percent.

The highest proportion of overhead was incurred in oil-facility contracts won by KBR Inc., the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, which has frequently been challenged by critics in Congress and elsewhere.

The actual costs for many projects could be even higher than the estimates, the report said, because the United States has not properly tracked how much such expenses have taken from the $18.4 billion of taxpayer-financed reconstruction approved by Congress two years ago.

The report said the prime reason was not the need to provide security, though those costs have clearly risen in the perilous environment, and are a burden that both contractors and American officials routinely blame for such increases.

Instead, the inspector general pointed to a simple bureaucratic flaw: the United States ordered the contractors and their equipment to Iraq and then let them sit idle for months at a time.

The delay between “mobilization,” or assembling the teams in Iraq, and the start of actual construction was as long as nine months.

“The government blew the whistle for these guys to go to Iraq and the meter ran,” said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the inspector general’s office. “The government was billed for sometimes nine months before work began.”

The findings are similar to those of a growing list of inspections, audits and investigations that have concluded that the program to rebuild Iraq has often fallen short for the most mundane of reasons: poorly written contracts, ineffective or nonexistent oversight, needless project delays and egregiously poor construction practices.

“This report is the latest chapter in a long, sad and expensive tale about how contracting in Iraq was more about shoveling money out the door than actually getting real results on the ground,” said Stephen Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington.

“These contracts were to design and build important items for oil infrastructure, hospitals and education, but in some cases more than half of the money padded corporate coffers instead,” he said.

Although the federal report places much of the burden for the charges squarely on the shoulders of United States officials in Baghdad, the findings varied widely over a sampling of contracts examined by auditors, from a low of under 20 percent for some companies to a high of over 55 percent.

One oil contract awarded to a joint venture between Parsons, an American company, and Worley, from Australia, had overhead costs of at least 43 percent, the report found. One contract held by Parsons alone to build hospitals and prisons had overhead of at least 35 percent; in another, it was 17 percent.

The lowest figure was found for certain contracts won by Lucent, at 11 percent, but the report indicates that substantial portions of the overhead in those cases could not be determined.

The report did not explain why KBR’s overhead costs on those contracts — the contracts totaled about $296 million — were more than 10 percent higher than those at the other companies audited. Despite past criticism of KBR, the Army, which administers those contracts, has generally agreed to pay most of the costs claimed by the company.

Melissa Norcross, a spokeswoman for KBR, said in a written reply to questions, “It is important to note that the special inspector general is not challenging any of KBR’s costs referenced in this report.”

“All of these costs were incurred at the client’s direction and for the client’s benefit,” she said, referring to the Army Corps of Engineers , which is in charge of the oil contract.

But a frequent Halliburton critic, Representative Henry A. Waxman , a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, disputed those assurances. “It’s incomprehensible that over $160 million — more than half the value of the contract — was squandered on overhead,” Mr. Waxman said in a written statement.

The majority leader of the same committee, Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for Parsons, Erin Kuhlman, said the United States categorized overhead and construction costs differently from contract to contract in Iraq, making it difficult to make direct comparisons. “Parsons incurred, billed and reported actual costs as directed by the government,” she said.

In Iraq, where construction materials are scarce and contractors must provide security for work sites and housing for Western employees, officials have said they expect the overhead to be at least 10 percent, but the contractors and American officials have grudgingly conceded that the true costs have turned out to be higher.

But even the high of 55 percent could be an underestimate, Mr. Mitchell said, because the government often did not begin tracking overhead costs for months after the companies mobilized. He added that because of the haphazard way in which the government tracked the costs, it was not possible to say how well the figures reflected overhead charges in the entire program.

The report’s conclusions were drawn from $1.3 billion in contracts for which United States government overseers actually made an effort to track overhead costs, of the total of $18.4 billion set aside for reconstruction in specific supplemental funding bills for the 2006 fiscal year.

When all American and Iraqi contributions are added up, various estimates for the cost of the rebuilding program range from $30 billion to $45 billion. Language included in the Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Bush last week, states that the inspector general’s office will halt its examination of those expenditures by October of next year.

Maj. Gen. William H. McCoy, who until recently commanded the Persian Gulf region division of the Corps of Engineers, disputed some of the inspector general’s findings in a letter appended to the report. Things like “waiting for concrete to cure” could still be taking place during what seem to be periods of inactivity, General McCoy wrote, so a quiet period “does not mean that the project is not moving forward.”

But many of the delays came during 2004 and took place in response to political developments in Iraq, the inspector general’s report says. The American occupation government, the Coalition Provisional Authority, mobilized many of the companies early that year.

After the authority went out of existence in June 2004, handing sovereignty to the Iraqi government, top American officials then kept the companies idle for months as the officials rewrote the rebuilding plan, and ran up costs as little work was done.