Arianna Rules

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Thu Feb 20 08:43:35 PST 2003


Fine piece by Ms. Huffington -- the kind of piece that Hitch used to write before he fell in love with that Kurdish freedom fighter, W.

The "money" graphs:

"No one in the administration embodies this bottom line mentality more than Dick Cheney. The vice president is one of those ideological purists who never let little things like logic, morality, or mass murder interfere with the single-minded pursuit of profitability.

"His on-again, off-again relationship with the Butcher of Baghdad is a textbook example of what modern moralists condemn as 'situational ethics,' an extremely convenient code that allows you to do what you want when you want and still feel good about it in the morning. In the Cheney White House (let's call it what it is), anything that can be rationalized is right.

"The two were clearly on the outs back during the Gulf War, when Cheney was Secretary of Defense, and the first President Bush dubbed Saddam 'Hitler revisited.'

"Then Cheney moved to the private sector and suddenly things between him and Saddam warmed up considerably. With Cheney in the CEO's seat, Halliburton helped Iraq reconstruct its war-torn oil industry with $73 million worth of equipment and services -- becoming Baghdad's biggest such supplier. Kinda nice how that worked out for the vice-president, really: oversee the destruction of an industry that you then profit from by rebuilding."

"When, during the 2000 campaign, Cheney was asked about his company's Iraqi escapades, he flat out denied them. But the truth remains: When it came to making a buck, Cheney apparently had no qualms about doing business with 'Hitler revisited.'

"And make no mistake, this wasn't a case of hard-nosed realpolitik -- the rationale for Rummy's cuddly overtures to Saddam back in '83 despite his almost daily habit of gassing Iranians. That, we were told, was all about 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.'

"No, Cheney's company chose to do business with Saddam after the rape of Kuwait. After Scuds had been fired at Tel Aviv and Riyadh. After American soldiers had been sent home from Desert Storm in body bags.

"And in 2000, just months before pocketing his $34 million Halliburton retirement package and joining the GOP ticket, Cheney was lobbying for an end to U.N. sanctions against Saddam.

"Of course, American businessmen are nothing if not flexible. So his former cronies at Halliburton are now at the head of the line of companies expected to reap the estimated $2 billion it will take to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure following Saddam's ouster. This burn-and-build approach to business guarantees that there will be a market for Halliburton's services as long as it has a friend in high places to periodically carpet bomb a country for it."

<http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/021903.html>

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