"Dick" Cheney Made Millions Off Oil
Deals with Saddam Hussein
San Francisco Bay Guardian
November 13, 2000 by Martin A. Lee
Here's a whopper of a story you may
have missed amid the cacophony of campaign ads and stump
speeches in the run- up to the elections.
During former defense secretary
Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of
Halliburton, Inc., his oil services firm raked in big bucks
from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq. Cheney left
Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package last July
when he became the GOP's vice-presidential candidate.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't
generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But
thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil
tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals
with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through
several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy
transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power
while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of
London, between September 1998 and last winter, Cheney, as
CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business
contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and
services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser
Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's
war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The
combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any
other U.S. company doing business with Baghdad.
Halliburton was among more than a
dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum industry
with spare parts and retooled its oil rigs when U.N.
sanctions were eased in 1998. Cheney's company utilized
subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria so as
not to draw undue attention to controversial business
arrangements that might embarrass Washington and jeopardize
lucrative ties to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of
petrol under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program this
year. Assisted by Halliburton, Hussein's government will
earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through
black-market channels.
With Cheney at the helm since 1995,
Halliburton quickly grew into America's number-one
oil-services company, the fifth-largest military contractor,
and the biggest nonunion employer in the nation. Although
Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had absolutely
nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success,
State Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times
indicate that U.S. officials helped Halliburton secure major
contracts in Asia and Africa. Halliburton now does business
in 130 countries and employs more than 100,000 workers
worldwide.
Its 1999 income was a cool $15
billion.
In addition to Iraq, Halliburton
counts among its business partners several brutal
dictatorships that have committed egregious human rights
abuses, including the hated military regime in Burma
(Myanmar). EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human
rights watchdog, condemned Halliburton for two
energy-pipeline projects in Burma that led to the forced
relocation of villages, rape, murder, indentured labor, and
other crimes against humanity.
A full report (this is a 45 page pdf
file - there is also a brief summary) on the Burma
connection,
"Halliburton's Destructive Engagement," can be
accessed on EarthRights' Web site
Read Full Article by Martin Lee at
the San Fransisco Bay Guardian
here
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And for yet more revelations on this
profiteering lying ghoul "Dick" Cheney and his corporate oil
dealings with Iraq, please see related article here at
Truth Out