The Economics of War & Peace

TOWARD THE PETRO-APOCALYPSE

[Translated from Le Monde (Paris).  A French elected official from the Green
Party warns that there will be an oil crisis unlike any that preceded it by
the end of the decade.  He says our only hope is in a measure that it is hard
to imagine occurring:  a worldwide agreement to draw down oil consumption.  
--Mark]

Point of view

TOWARD THE PETRO-APOCALYPSE
By Yves Cochet

Le Monde (Paris)
March 31, 2004

http://www.ufppc.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=2

In a few years, the global production of conventional oil will fall, while the global demand continues to rise.  The resulting shock of this structural oil famine is inevitable, so great are the dependency of our economies on cheap oil and. related to the first, our inability to wean ourselves from this dependency in a short period of time.

We can hope to soften the shock, but only if its imminence immediately becomes the unique reference point for a general mobilization of our societies, with, as a consequence, drastic consequences in every sector.  The alternative is chaos.  This prospect is based on the work of the American geologist King Hubbert, who predicted in 1956 the peak in US domestic production of oil in 1970.  This occurred exactly as predicted.

Transposing Hubbert's approach today to other countries has given similar predictive results:  at present, the production of every the giant oilfield --and only the giant ones matter -- is in decline, except in the "black triangle" of Iraq-Iran-Saudi Arabia.

The Hubbert's peak of the oil-producing Middle East should be reached around 2010, depending on the more or less rapid recovery of full Iraqi production and the growth rate of demand in China.

The sectors most affected by the steady rise in the price of crude oil will be, first, aviation and intensive agriculture, since the price of jet fuel for one and of nitrogenous fertilizer as well as diesel fuel for the other are directly linked to the price of crude oil.

This will occur unless stabilizing policies are used -- for a time and in some other sectors -- to lower taxes on oil as prices rise.  But afterwards ground transport, tourism, the petrochemical industry, and the automotive industry will feel the depressive effects of a reduction in the quantity of oil (depletion).  To what extent will this situation lead to a general recession? No one knows, but the blindness of politicians and the usual panicked overreaction of markets allows us to fear the worst.

This unavoidable prophecy is being universally ignored, denied, or underestimated.  Rare are those who realize exactly how close and how great is its advent.  Michael Meacher, formerly UK minister of the environment (1997-2003), wrote recently in the Financial Times that unless there is a general awakening and decisions at the planetary scale bring radical change in the domain of energy, "civilization will confront the most acute and no doubt most violent upheaval in recent history."

If, in spite of everything, we want to maintain a bit of humanity in life on Earth in the 2010s, we ought, as the geologist Colin Campbell has suggested, to call on the United Nations to agree immediately on the following:  to guarantee that poor countries will still be able to import a little oil; to forbid oil profiteering; to encourage saving energy; to promote renewable sources of energy.  In order to attain these objectives, this universal agreement should impose the following measures:  every State must regulate oil imports and exports; no oil-exporting country may produce more oil than its annual depletion, scientifically calculated, allows; every State must reduce its oil imports to an agreed-upon global depletion rate.

This necessary priority granted to physical econometrics will not suit economists and politicians, especially in America.  No government of the United States has ever accepted questioning the American way of life.  Since the first oil shock of 1973-1974, every American military intervention can be analyzed in the light of the fear of running short of cheap oil.  It was, moreover, the American production peak in 1970 that enabled OPEC to seize the occasion and cause the first shock, which coincided with the Yom Kippur War. Countries in the West then attempted to regain control and conjure away the specter of shortage, less through energy sobriety than by means of opening oilfields in Alaska and the North Sea.  In 1979, the Iranian revolution and the second oil shock once again allowed OPEC to regain preeminence, as Western economies paid dearly for their thirst for oil through the recession of subsequent years.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the financing and arming of Saddam Hussein to fight Iran was part of the American reconquest of the price and flow of oil, as was the cooperation obtained from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to increase crude oil exports to the West.  That allowed the oil price crash of 1986, a return of Western growth through unlimited oil abundance, the extension of the thirst for energy up to the Iraq wars (1991, 2003) no matter how many died from them (100,000?  300,000?), no matter how much they cost ($100 billion? $300 billion?), by no matter what means (annual Dept. of Defense budget:  $400 billion).

During these same last fifteen years, the multiple conflicts in the Balkans had their source and their resolution in the American desire to keep Russia away from the oil transport routes from the Black Sea and the Caspian to the ports on the Adriatic, by way of Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania.  Oil geopolitics authorizes any pact with Islamist devils, from central Asia to Bosnia, and all the cynical connivances with terrorists, right up to Tony Blair's recent trip to Libya to allow Shell to bring its volume of reserves in return for several hundred million dollars.

The present American Greater Middle East Initiative is dressed up in humanitarian and democratic considerations, but it is nothing but an attempt to get control once and for all of every source of oil in the region.

More than thirty years of worrying about oil has not opened the eyes of American and European leaders concerning the energy crisis that is looming just before us.  Despite what René Dumont and the ecologists were saying from the 1974 presidential campaign on, the governments of industrialized countries have continued and continue to believe in almost inexhaustible cheap oil -- to the detriment of the climate and human health, both perturbed by greenhouse gas emissions -- instead of organizing a reduction in their economies' reliance on hydrocarbons.

However, the oil shock that promises to strike before the end of the decade is not like the ones that preceded it.  What is at stake this time is not geopolitical, but geological.  In 1973 and 1979, the shortage had a political origin in OPEC's decision.  Then the supply was restored.

Today, it is the wells themselves that are declining.  Even if the United States succeeded in imposing its hegemony on all the oilfields in the world (outside of Russia), their army and their technology will not be able to prevail against the coming depletion of conventional oil.  In any case, there is not enough time to replace a fluid so cheap to produce, so rich in energy, so easy to use, store, and transport, with so many uses (domestic, industrial, fuel, raw material...), in order to reinvest $100 billion in another source of abundance that doesn't exist.

Natural gas?  It does not have the just-named qualities of oil and will reach its global production peak in around 2020 -- about ten years after the other peak.  The only viable path is immediate oil sobriety organized through an international agreement along the lines I have sketched out above, authorizing a prompt weaning from our addiction to black gold.

Without waiting for this delicate international agreement, our new regional elected officials and our soon-to-be-elected European representatives should set for themselves as a top priority the local realization of these objectives by organizing, on their own territory, an oil shrinkage.  Otherwise, rationing will come from the market through the coming rise in oil prices, and then be propagated by inflation, with the shock reaching every sector.  Since the price will soon reach $100 a barrel, this will no longer be a simple oil shock -- it will be the end of the world as we know it.

--Yves Cochet (Green) represents Paris in the National Assembly, and is former land and environment minister (ministre du territoire et de l'environnement).

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Chair, Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Webpage: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu

1. The Costs Of War

[The "Legal" Basis of POCLAD]
Extracted from "The Dinosaur War - To Protect Corporate Profits," by Thom Hartmann http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1011-05.htm:

...Before 1886, most states had laws that prevented corporations from meddling in politics. They can't vote, the logic went, so what are they doing talking to politicians? Wisconsin, for example, had a law stating: "No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office." The penalty for any corporate official violating the law and getting cozy with politicians on behalf of the corporation was five years in prison and a substantial fine.

Humans had the right of free speech, and an individual - representing himself and his own opinions - was free to say and do what he wanted. Free speech is a human right. But corporations didn't have rights - they had privileges. Brought into being by authority of the state in which they're incorporated, that state determined the privileges its corporations could have and how they could be used.

But, they teach in law school, in 1886 the U.S. Supreme Court changed all that - a decision which leads us directly to today's war with Iraq. The Court, the textbooks say, in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, recognized corporations as persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, and thus handed them the huge club of human rights that our Founders had given us humans to beat back government should it ever become repressive. Armed with this mighty weapon, corporations claimed free speech, privacy, the right not to speak, and used anti-discrimination statues originally passed to free slaves to throw out "bad boy" laws that favored local businesses over large corporations or companies that had been convicted of felonies.

I recently discovered that in 1886 the Supreme Court ruled no such thing. The "corporations are persons" was a fiction created by the Court's reporter. He simply wrote it into the headnote of the decision. In fact, it contradicts what the Court itself said. And we've found in the National Archives a note in the hand of the Supreme Court Chief Justice of the time to the court's reporter saying, explicitly, that the Court had not ruled on corporate personhood in the Santa Clara case. Nonetheless, corporations have claimed the human rights the Founders fought and often died to bequeath to living, breathing humans. And, using those rights, they've usurped our government to the point where our domestic policies are now based on what's best for the corporations with the largest campaign contributions, and our foreign policy has become a necessary extension of that.

... While profit is a fine value for a corporation to hold, it's not the prime value of humans and it's definitely not one of the values that drive or preserve democracy.

If we are to save our world from a profit frenzy driven Armageddon, if we are to restore democracy to our American republic, we must first get corporations out of government, so our politicians can once again become statesmen.

Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Domination and the Theft of Human Rights," a book which details how voters can return human rights to humans. www.unequalprotection.com

Thom Hartmann
Extracted from "The Dinosaur War - To Protect Corporate Profits," Published on Friday, October 11, 2002 by CommonDreams.org http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1011-05.htm

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        "It will become more and more clear that the casualties of war are not just abroad, but here. It is often said that they can get away with war because unlike Vietnam, the casualties are few. True, only a few hundred battle casualties, unlike Vietnam. But battle casualties are not all. When wars end, the casualties keep mounting up - sickness, trauma. After the Vietnam war, veterans reported birth defects in their families due to the Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam.
        *** In the first Gulf War there were only a few hundred battle casualties, but the Veterans Administration reported recently that in the ten years following the Gulf War, 8000 veterans died. Two hundred thousand of the 600,000 veterans of the Gulf War filed complaints about illnesses, diseases incurred from the weapons our government used in the war. We have yet to see the effects, in the current war, of depleted uranium and other deadly weapons, on the young men and women sent there."
        - Howard Zinn, "An Occupied Country September 29, 2003", ZNet Commentary

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"In this new age of empire, when nothing is as it appears to be, executives of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy decisions. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington found that at least nine out of the thirty members of the Bush Administration's Defense Policy Board were connected to companies that were awarded military contracts for $76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former Secretary of State, was chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest in the case of war in Iraq he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." In April 2003, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction."
     - Arundhati Roy, "The New American Century"
     http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040209&s=roy

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2. Alternatives to War Spending

Interesting comparison of what we could do with $87 billion other than send it to war--public and higher education, environmental, low income programs...

http://www.ourfuture.org/issues_and_campaigns/economic_stimulus/9_10_03_ 87.cfm/

Economic Stimulus

Compiled by the Center for American Progress

On September 7th, President Bush asked Congress for an additional $87 billion for the war in Iraq, acknowledging that the engagement in Iraq is going to cost many hundreds of billions of dollars. This was a surprise considering that prior to the war, the Administration dismissed such estimates, and even fired it  top economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey for suggesting those estimates were correct. To get some perspective, here are some real-life comparisons about what $87 billion means.

$87B  IS MORE THAN THE COMBINED TOTAL OF ALL STATE BUDGET DEFICITS IN THE UNITED STATES [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities] - The Bush Administration proposed absolutely zero funds to help states deal with these deficits, despite the fact that their tax cuts drove down state revenues

$87B IS ROUGLY THE TOTAL OF TWO YEARS WORTH OF ALL U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS [Source: Budget Committee] - The U.S. spends about $50 billion a year on unemployment insurance. At least 1.1 million people have exhausted all of their unemployment benefits without finding a job, and yet Congress has refused to extend benefits [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]

$87B IS ENOUGH TO PAY THE 3.3 MILLION PEOPLE WHO HAVE LOST JOBS $26,363 EACH [Source: Economic Policy Institute] - The unemployment benefits extension passed by Congress at the beginning of this year provides zero benefits to "workers who exhausted their regular, state unemployment benefits and cannot find work" [Souce: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities].  All told, two thirds of unemployed workers have exhausted their benefits. [Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]

$87B IS MORE THAN DOUBLE THE TOTAL AMOUNT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON HOMELAND SECURITY [Source: Department of Homeland Security] - The U.S. spends about $36 billion on homeland security. Yet, Sen. Warren Rudman (R-NH) wrote "America will fall approximately $98.4 billion short of meeting critical emergency responder needs" for homeland security without a funding increase [Source: Council on Foreign Relations]

$87B IS 7 TIMES WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON TITLE I FOR LOW-INCOME SCHOOLS [Source: House Appropriations Committee] -  President Bush proposed a budget of just $12 billion for Title I, leaving a $6.2 billion hole in what he promised to spend on Title I in his No Child Left Behind Bill [Source: House Appropriations Committee]

$87B IS 87 TIMES THE AMOUNT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAMS   [Source: House Appropriations Committee] - President Bush proposed a budget that reduces the $1 billion for after-school programs to $600 million - cutting off about 475,000 children from the program [Souce: House Appropriations Committee]

$87B IS ABOUT 9 TIMES WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON SPECIAL EDUCATION  [Source: House Appropriations Committee] - Legislation authorizes the federal government  to pay 40% of the cost of special education, but because of budget  shortfalls, it only pays roughly 18% (or $9.9 billion), driving up local property taxes [Source: House Appropriations Committee]

$87B IS MORE THAN 10 TIMES WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON ALL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION  [Source: Environmental Protection Agency] - The Bush Administration  requested just $7.6 billion for the entire Environmental Protection Agency. This included a 32% cut to water quality grants, a 6% reduction in enforcement staff, and a 50% cut to land acquisition and conservation [Source: Natural Resources Defense Council]

  $87B IS 8 TIMES THE TOTAL FOR PELL GRANTS - THE MAJOR COLLEGE PROGRAM IN THE U.S. [Source: House Appropriations Committee] - In 1975, when the Pell Grant program was established, it financed about 84 percent of the cost of attending a 4-year public college. Today, that share is down to about 40 percent, and under Congress's current proposal to freeze Pell Grant funding at about $10 billion,, it would drop to 38% [Source: House Appropriations Committee]

$87B IS MORE THAN THE TOTAL COST OF THE FIRST 3 YEARS OF THE MEDICARE PRES. DRUG PROPOSAL [Source: Congressional Budget Office]

$87B IS ENOUGH TO GIVE EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN AMERICA $300

"[We] want to control spending. And I hope Congress lives up to their words. When they talk about deficits, they can join us in making sure we don't overspend. They can join us and make sure that [they are] focused those items that are absolutely necessary to the American people." -President Bush, 1/6/03

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From: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14086

12 Things to Do Now About Corporations
By Sarah Ruth van Gelder, YES! Magazine
September 11, 2002

Americans know that corporate excess is about more than flawed accounting. It corrupts democracy, drives a wedge between rich and poor, degrades the environment, and disrupts communities. So what might we the people do?

1. Give it back

The first step in any rehabilitation is to take responsibility for wrongdoing and make amends. In sentencing corporate executives, judges should consider how much of their ill-gotten gains they voluntarily returned. States should seek to recoup ill-gotten gains on behalf of pensioners, ratepayers, taxpayers, and investors. To set an example of the "new ethic of personal responsibility in the business community" President George W. Bush called for in his July 9 speech, he and Vice President Cheney should give back any gains they have earned through questionable accounting and insider trading. (See "Give it Back, Mr. President," http://www.alternet.org)

2. Three strikes, you're out

Why not a corporate death penalty; three criminal convictions and your corporate charter is history. The town of Wayne is one of several Pennsylvania towns that prohibit corporations with repeated violations from setting up shop. So far, the law has been used to keep out hog farms that have repeatedly broken the law.

3. Personhood for people

Corporations were first chartered to serve the public good. POCLAD (Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy) is developing a model charter based on that idea; it includes time limitations on corporate charters, incorporation only for specific purposes, charter revocation for violations, prohibitions on one corporation owning another. It would also require that corporations refrain from infringing on the health, dignity, and rights of employees and refrain from damaging such commons as air, water, and wildlife habitat.

The legal fiction giving corporations legal personhood was a result of an interpretation of the 14th amendment by an 1886 Supreme Court decision (Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.). But there has never been a vote of the people on corporate personhood nor on bestowing on corporations the rights contained in the Constitution. We should be clear: The rights of persons are reserved for real people. (See http://www.poclad.org)

4. Favor local

From the town council up through the UN, rules, incentives, and subsidies should favor locally owned enterprises that serve local needs. (See the Institute for Local Self-Reliance http://www.ilsr.org)

5. No deals for lawbreakers

Let's quit rewarding corporate law breakers with lucrative government contracts. White-collar crime is costing America an estimated $200 billion per year, about 50 times the cost of street crime. According to Business Ethics editor Marjorie Kelly, Lockheed Martin has 63 violations and alleged violations, yet its 1999 government contract awards totaled $14 billion. Companies with more than one criminal conviction or civil judgment in three years should face contract suspensions or debarments, says the Project on Government Oversight (http://www.pogo.org)

6. Quit exporting Enron

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, Enron-related projects have received more than $4 billion in federal financing since 1992 and $3 billion from the World Bank, the European Investment Bank, and other public sources. Now Enron wants more; the company is after a $125 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to expand a Bolivian gas pipeline through ecologically sensitive areas and the lands of indigenous people. Of course, Enron is not the only one. Public money should not subsidize exploitation. (See http://www.ips-dc.org)

7. Clue in the public

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. All those with a stake in a corporation-employees, communities, customers-should have access to information about its practices and impacts. (See page 19.) Here's one example: Studies by EPA and others show that many corporations under-report environmental liabilities. Get real about costs; report them honestly.

8. Serve all stakeholders

Corporations are required by law to maximize profits for shareholders. Robert Hinkley, a corporate lawyer, is pressing for a law that prohibits making profit at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public safety, the welfare of the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of employees. Groups in several states have taken up this Code for Corporate Citizenship. (See http://www.citizen works.org or call 202/265-6164)

9. Tax the casino

Every day, $1.5-$2 trillion is exchanged on world currency markets; over 95 percent of that is speculative. The Tobin tax, a proposed small tax on currency transactions, would calm financial markets, protect developing countries, and generate billions of dollars to address global poverty. (See http://www.waronwant.org.) A similar tax on stock transactions could slow stock speculation.

10. End corporate welfare

After working hard to get impoverished mothers and children off public assistance, Congress should turn its attention to CEOs. To start, we could help executives learn self-reliance by sunsetting corporate giveaways; eliminating tax breaks for companies that move off shore; and doing rigorous, independent assessments of tax incentives and subsidies to see which, if any, work.

11. Hands off public assets

Those who propose privatization of public assets or services carry the burden of proof to show that long-term public benefits outweigh the costs.

12. Restore democracy

Lord John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum, announced in February a halt to BP political contributions anywhere in the world. "We mustn't confuse our role," he said. "We must be particularly careful about the political process-not because it is unimportant-quite the reverse-but because the legitimacy of that process is crucial both for society and for us as a company working in that society." We can hope that other corporations will follow BP's example.

Realistically, though, we need to enact clean-election reform of the kind that is helping to restore democracy in Maine, Arizona, and Massachusetts. (See http://www.publicampaign.org)

Reprinted from Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, PO Box 10818, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Subscriptions: 800/937-4451 Web: http://www.yesmagazine.org

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3. Cost Control in Iraq

   EPIC Iraq Alert - 10/1/03  
 
 
 
In This Issue:  
 
 
 • Senate and House Expected to Vote on $87 Billion Request Soon
 • TRANSPERENCY and OVERSIGHT of Funds Must Take Place
 • Full Iraqi PARTICAPATION
 • INCREASE International Involvement
 • PROHIBIT Pentagon Control of Reconstruction Funds
 • REQUIRE dismissal of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz
 • REDUCE Tax Cuts to Responsibly Fund Iraq Reconstruction
 • Talk to Congress and Let Us Know About It!
 
    Senate and House Expected to Vote on $87 Billion Request Soon

The $87 billion supplemental request for Iraq has now reached the floor of the Senate. The Senate vote was expected to happen this week, but in a complete turnaround, it now looks as though the vote will be delayed - possibly until after the Senate recess ends. If that indeed occurs, this is an important chance for you to meet with your members of Congress while they are in their home districts during recess. Push for transparency, increased international involvement and Iraqi participation. The House is expected to vote on the supplemental next week.

While EPIC remains adamantly opposed to the process that has gotten us to this point, the Iraqi people still need assistance. Given the President´s ongoing failure of leadership and honesty in addressing what is needed in Iraq, Congress must act now by setting conditions to ensure that the U.S. effort to secure peace and restore Iraq is adequately and responsibly funded.

There is still time to act! Call your members of Congress via the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121 or 226-3121.

*EPIC wishes to acknowledge the Iraq Revenue Watch for their essential information and analysis which helped inform this Alert*

TRANSPERENCY and OVERSIGHT of Funds Must Take Place

Congress must ensure transparency and oversight of the $87 billion supplemental request. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) should provide a public budget. There must be an open bidding process for contractors, and Congress should require information about companies who are competing for bids. Transparency and oversight will help ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not abused.

Read more information from Iraq Revenue Watch (IRW)

www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/reports/091803.pdf  

Full Iraqi PARTICAPATION

Iraqis must be given a greater amount of decision making power. The transfer of control to Iraqis must begin. However, so far, the Iraqis on the Iraq Governing Council have been appointed by the U.S., not elected by Iraqis. Iraqis must be able to choose their own representatives, and to do that, a clear plan must be established for a constitution and elections with the oversight of an international body. Iraqis should be allowed to comment extensively on the 2004 Iraqi budget, just as we debate our own budget. Iraqis must have representation and voting rights on the boards and councils that are making decisions.

See more from IRW

www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/reports/091803.pdf  

INCREASE International Involvement

In addition to sharing authority with Iraqis, the US must have a clear plan to involve the UN and international community. The US should set a clear plan for international involvement. The United Nations is best suited to transition post-war Iraq. The President has thus far failed to secure real international help, and only the UN has the legitimacy and experience needed to partner with the Iraqi people. Even in his address before the UN last week, Bush failed to secure much needed support.

Read A Failed Address from the Washington Post

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55306-2003Sep23.html  

PROHIBIT Pentagon Control of Reconstruction Funds

The Pentagon has neither the neutrality nor ability needed to oversee the $21 billion requested for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts. John J. Hamre, a deputy defense secretary under Clinton who testified before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, stated that the Pentagon is managing tasks "for which it has no background or competence" (Washington Post 9/23/03)

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54478-2003Sep23.html  

REQUIRE dismissal of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz

Within the administration, no one questions the role that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had in relentlessly pushing our nation to wage war on Iraq. They are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, the international backlash against the U.S., increasing the threat of terrorism, and the colossal misjudgments of the war and its aftermath. Congress must require the dismissal of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

Read Fire Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (Boston Globe)

www.iht.com/articles/103155.html  

REDUCE Tax Cuts to Responsibly Fund Iraq Reconstruction

Senator Biden (D-DE) has introduced Resolution S.1634 that, if passed, would pay for the Iraq supplemental by reducing the size of the Bush tax cut for the wealthiest one percent of Americans from $690 billion to $600 billion (thus covering Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq). Ask your Senators to sign onto S.1634. Urge your Representative to sponsor companion legislation in the House.

www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/21/iraq.congress/index.html  

Talk to Congress and Let Us Know About It!

If the Senate or House delays their vote until after the recess, this is an important chance to meet with your elected officials while they are in their home districts. If you are able to meet or talk with your Member of Congress or a staffer, we'd love to hear about it. Please take a minute to report back using EPIC's easy-to-use online form at:

www.epic-usa.org/action/report.php#top  

Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC)
1101 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Washington DC 20003
Tel. 202.543.6176 - Fax 202.543.0725  www.epic-usa.org  
 
 
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4a. Support Peace, Not War Profiteering

Before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration promised a short war and estimated low costs. But one year has passed since the start of the war and the costs keep rising. Last November, American taxpayers were asked to foot the bill and Congress gave the Bush administration $18.6 billion to cover the ongoing reconstruction of Iraq.

After decades of war, sanctions and tyranny, Iraq can clearly use a massive influx of funding to rebuild the country, but the Pentagon has been more willing to dole out multi-billion contracts to many companies with long-standing connections to the Bush administration, than to the Iraqi people.

Well-connected, U.S. corporations such as Halliburton and Bechtel, are making hundreds of millions of dollars in war profits despite growing stories of financial fraud, cost over-runs, and poor performance in Iraqi communities. Recent revelations about contract abuse and corruption raise important questions about the quality of government oversight in Iraq and whether the Bush Administration is adequately protecting the interests of American taxpayers.

The following are key recommendations for Congress and the Bush administration.

Improve oversight and open bidding. End all no-bid contracts and open-ended “cost-plus’ multi-billion dollar contracts such as those awarded to Halliburton and Bechtel before the start of the war. All companies bidding for contracts should meet rigorous standards of accountability, and should be required to submit their history of compliance with the law for any contract bid.

End war profiteering. To stop the excesses of military contractors and the military itself, increased oversight of the rebuilding process is required. During previous U.S. wars Congress has used war oversight committees to investigate corruption and root out waste.

Cancel all contracts that work against Iraqi self-determination. Contracts that give U.S. companies the right to "privatize state-owned enterprises" should be cancelled or amended. Under the principle of self-determination, such decisions are best left to a sovereign Iraqi government once it is established. To help curb unemployment and increase Iraqi self-determination, the ban on awarding contracts to Iraqi state enterprises should be lifted; contracts should give preferential treatment to Iraqi companies and to contracts that include Iraqis as subcontractors.

Demand an end to the Pentagon´s control of Iraq reconstruction funds. Even after the CPA is replaced by the world´s largest U.S. embassy on June 30th, the Bush administration plans to keep the Pentagon in charge of postwar contracting. Yet the Pentagon´s control of Iraq reconstruction funds has led to billions of dollars of waste, obstructs economic and political rebuilding by Iraqis, and discourages the support and participation of the international community.

Click here to read more on war profiteering. This article on Bechtel, which ran in the Washington Post in February, is an example of U.S. firms being awarded contracts while capable Iraqis are left out in the cold.

How Bechtel Profits while Iraqi Experts Are Ignored http://epicalert.c.topica.com/maab4tdaa5qDcbdH349e/

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4. Costs of Halliburton

Subj: Waxman to Rumsfeld on Halliburton's business with Terrorist states  
Date: 5/8/03 1:59:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time
 

Shall we just say we're happy that we're finding more about special interests and profiting from government offices, and then forgive everyone and get on with creating heaven on earth? Some have written to me that they know about "corruption" in the U.S. government. Well, I will send the following on to my congressional representatives and ask them if they will please verify the facts and, if true, then do something about it.
All the best
S

Gone are the days like when F.D.R., during WW2, said "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster" or when Harry Truman referred to war profiteering as "treason".

from  www.truthout.org/docs_03/050603C

April 30, 2003

The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld:

I am writing about Halliburton's ties to countries that sponsor terrorism.

Halliburton has recently been awarded a leading ‹ and lucrative ‹ role in the U.S. war against terrorism. Yet there is also evidence from press accounts and other sources that indicates that Halliburton has profited from numerous business dealings with state sponsors of terrorism, including two of the three members of President Bush's "axis of evil." I would like to know what the Defense Department knows about these ties and whether you think this should be a matter of concern to the Congress and the American taxpayer.

Republicans in the Administration and Congress have previously expressed great concern about American citizens and companies trading with countries despite U.S. embargoes. For example, the Vice President's chief of staff testified that Marc Rich, who was granted a pardon by President Clinton, could be considered a "traitor" for trading with Iran even if his actions were technically legal. These same concerns appear to be implicated by Halliburton's conduct, yet rather than being criticized, the company is rewarded with valuable government contracts.

Halliburton's Activities in Nations that Sponsor Terrorism

In press accounts and SEC filings, Halliburton and its subsidiaries have been linked to three nations known for their support of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, and Libya. Since at least the 1980s, federal laws have prohibited U.S. companies from doing business in one or more of these countries. Yet Halliburton appears to have sought to circumvent these restrictions by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries and territories such as the Cayman Islands. These actions started as early as 1984; they appear to have continued during the period between 1995 and 2000, when Vice President Cheney headed the company; and they are apparently ongoing even today.

Iran

President Bush has declared that Iran poses a potential threat to the United States. In his 2002 State of the Union address, he described how Iran "aggressively pursues" weapons of mass destruction and "exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." Iran, he memorably declared, is part of: an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.1

According to the State Department, Iran stands out as "the most active state sponsor of terrorism." Iran's government is "involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and supported a variety of groups that use terrorism to pursue their goals."2

As a result of the country's terrorist links and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, President Clinton issued an executive order in 1995 banning U.S. trade and investment in Iran, including the trading of Iranian oil overseas by U.S. companies. Earlier that same year, President Clinton had issued an executive order barring U.S. investment in Iran's energy sector. In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which allowed for U.S. sanctions against foreign companies participating in Iran's oil industry.

Halliburton, however, was among several U.S. companies that circumvented these restrictions on trading with Iran by providing the country with oil equipment.3 It apparently did this by conducting its business in Iran through foreign subsidiaries. Indeed, Vice President Cheney has even defended this policy. According to the Financial Times 9 he "has said the company is allowed to operate legally in Iran through its foreign subsidiaries."4 Analysts have
disagreed with this claim, suggesting that Halliburton's deals with Iran may, in fact, have violated U.S. law.5

The company apparently continues to do work in Iran even now. This work is reportedly being done through a Cayman Islands subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services, which opened an office in Tehran in February 2000.6 A company brochure offered by the subsidiary apparently states that the company has done work on two offshore Iranian drilling contracts and says that "[w]e are committed to position ourselves in a market that offers huge growth potential."7 Halliburton recently agreed to reevaluate its work in Iran after sustained pressure from shareholders, particularly the New York City Police and Fire Department Pension Funds,8

Iraq

In 1990, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush imposed economic sanctions, including a complete trade embargo, on Iraq. The sanctions ban the export of goods, technology, and services to Iraq. Criminal penalties for violating the Iraqi sanctions range up to 12 years in jail and $1,000,000 in fines.9

Despite these sanctions, the Washington Post has reported that Halliburton performed work in Iraq while Vice President Cheney was leading the company. Halliburton had stakes in two companies that signed contracts to sell over $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Mr. Cheney was CEO. The companies were subsidiaries of a joint venture between Dresser Industries ‹ which Halliburton acquired in 1998 ‹ and Ingersoll-Rand, another large equipment maker. From 1997 through mid-2000, the subsidiaries sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities, and pipeline equipment to Iraq.10

The Vice President initially tried to deny this involvement in Iran. In July 2002, he stated on national television: "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even ‹ even arrangements that were supposedly legal.... [W]e've not done any business in Iraq since the sanctions [were] imposed, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."11 A month later, confronted with an admission by a Halliburton spokesman that the company indeed did business with Iraq, Vice President Cheney admitted that "[w]hen we took over Dresser, we inherited two joint ventures with Ingersoll-Rand that were selling some parts into Iraq," but he said he did not know of this at the time. Mr. Cheney also said that "[s]hortly after we took control of Dresser, we divested ourselves of those two companies."12

Both of these statements, however, have been contradicted by other evidence. Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say they knew of no policy against doing business with Iraq.13 One of the executives also said that hb was certain that Mr. Cheney would have known about the business with Iraq.14 Furthermore, Halliburton did not divest itself of the subsidiaries "shortly" after Halliburton took control of Dresser. Instead, the firms traded with Iraq for more than a year under Mr. Cheney, signing almost $30 million in contracts.15

Libya

Libya has been implicated in a number of terrorist incidents, including attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985; the April 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub frequented by armed services personnel; and the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, which killed 270 people. As a result of these ties to terrorism, the United States has implemented a series of over 20 sanctions against Libya since 1973 that ban a
wide variety of economic activities. Some of the most significant sanctions were put in place by President Reagan in 1986, in response to the Qaddafi regime's repeated use and support of terrorism against the United States and other countries. Those sanctions ban most sales of goods, technology, and services to Libya. They provide for criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in corporate and $250,000 in individual fines.16

Despite these sanctions and the Libyan regime's well-documented history of sponsoring terrorism, Brown & Root, a Halliburton construction subsidiary, has worked on a water project in Libya since the 1980s. This project, called the "Great Man-Made River Project," is a system of underground pipes and wells that are purportedly intended to carry water. Some experts believe that the pipes actually have a military purpose. The pipes are large enough to accommodate military vehicles and appear to be more elaborate than is needed for holding water.17 According to one defense expert, referring to the late North Korean leader, Libya "seems to have taken a leaf out of Kim II Sung's book and created a potential military arsenal underground."18

When the project began in 1984, Brown & Root prepared the feasibility studies and drafted the specifications.19 After the 1986 U.S. embargo on trade with Libya, Brown & Root transferred the work to its British office. As of 1997, it was still the project manager.20
Halliburton continues to work in Libya today. The company's latest annual report specifically identifies "restrictions on our ability to provide products and services to Iran, Iraq and Libya" as among the "risks and uncertainties" that the company faces.21

In addition, Halliburton was fined $3.8 million in 1995 for re-exporting U.S. goods through a foreign subsidiary to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions.22

Halliburton's Contracts with the Defense Department and Other Agencies

Despite its apparent connections with terrorist states, Halliburton appears to be one of the main companies profiting from the war on terror. In May 2001, Brown & Root was awarded a five-year, $300-million contract to provide logistical support to the Navy. As of August 2002, the Navy had reportedly given Brown & Root $53 million in work orders over the past 15 months, including $37 million to build detention cells at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorist suspects captured in Afghanistan are being held.23

In December 2001, Brown & Root was awarded an exclusive, ten-year contract to provide support services to the Army. The contract has no dollar limit and it is reportedly the only logistical arrangement by the Army without an estimated cost.24 It allows Brown & Root to recover its expenses plus profits.25 It appears that this contract has been quite lucrative for the company, producing over $800 million in revenues. Some of the work has involved supporting U.S. military bases in Afghanistan.26

Brown & Root was also awarded a cost reimbursable design-build contract valued in excess of $100 million for construction of the new U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul, Afghanistan.27 In addition, the U.S. Department of State awarded Brown & Root two contracts for security upgrades and general construction work at multiple facilities worth at least $70 million.28

Most recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered into a no-bid contract with Brown & Root to extinguish oil well fires and repair the oil infrastructure in Iraq. That contract is worth up to $7 billion.29 Halliburton was also one of a handful of companies secretly invited to bid on a USAID construction contract to rebuild Iraq worth up to $680 million.

Halliburton regards this work fighting terrorism as a "growth opportunity" for the company. According to its 2002 annual shareholder report:

We expect growth opportunities to exist for additional security and defense support to government agencies in the United States and other countries. Demand for these services is expected to grow as a result of the armed conflict in the Middle East and as governmental agencies seek to control costs and promote efficiencies by outsourcing these functions. We also expect growth due to new demands created by increased efforts to combat terrorism and enhance homeland security.30

Questions

If true, these facts have potentially serious implications. It appears that a company that has performed ‹ and apparently is continuing to perform ‹ work for state sponsors of terrorism is being given a prominent role in the Administration's war on terrorism.

Republicans in the Administration and Congress have been quick to express concern about Americans trading with nations upon which the U.S. has imposed embargoes. After President Clinton pardoned a fugitive financier, Marc Rich, who had allegedly violated the Iranian oil embargo, Republicans and Democrats alike expressed outrage. A House report detailed Mr. Rich's trades with such countries as Iran, Iraq, and Libya and denounced Mr. Rich as a man who "built his fortune by trading with so many enemies of the United States."31 Rep.

Christopher Shays, Vice-Chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, labeled Mr. Rich a "traitor."32 Even Lewis Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff and a former lawyer for Mr. Rich, conceded that, while his former client's conduct may not have been illegal, "you could consider him a traitor for trading with Iran during that period."33

While Halliburton's activities appear to raise similar concerns, the Administration has avoided criticizing the company and has instead rewarded it with lucrative contracts. Congress and the American taxpayer should know more about these contracts and Halliburton's relationship with Iran, Iraq, and Libya. I therefore respectfully request answers to the following questions:

1.     What does the Defense Department know about the work of Halliburton or any of its subsidiaries in any nation that is suspected of supporting terrorism?

2.     Has the Administration determined whether Halliburton's work in Iran, Iraq, and Libya complies with all applicable laws and regulations? If not, does the Administration intend to make such a determination before issuing further contracts or task orders to Halliburton?

3.     Was the Administration aware of and did it take into account Halliburton's work in Iran, Iraq, and Libya when it awarded contracts and task orders to the company and its subsidiaries?

4.     What steps, if any, has the Administration taken or does it plan to take to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not go to companies that do business with state sponsors of terrorism ‹ particularly when those dollars are being spent to combat terrorism?

5.     How many contracts has the Defense Department awarded to Halliburton since September 11, 2001, and what is the value of these contracts?

6.     How many task orders has the Defense Department issued to Halliburton since September 11, 2001, and what is the value of these task orders?

I look forward to receiving a response to these important questions.

Sincerely,
Henry A. Waxman
Ranking Minority Member

References

'The President, State of the Union Address (Jan. 29, 2002) (online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-l l .html <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-l%20l%20...html> ).

2U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001 (May 2002).

3U.S. Companies Move Quietly into Iranian Markets, Financial Times (Oct. 5, 2000).

4Id.

5Iran Throwing off Its Isolation, Washington Post (Mar. 31, 2001); See Halliburton Connected to Office in Iran, Wall Street Journal (Feb. 8, 2001).

6.Halliburton Connected to Office in Iran, Wall Street Journal (Feb. 8, 2001). "[A] U.S. official said a Halliburton office in Tehran would violate at least the spirit of American law." Id.

7Id.

8In 2002, the New York City Comptroller submitted a shareholder resolution on behalf of the New York City Police and Fire Department Pension Funds asking for a review of Halliburton's actions in Iran. New York City Comptroller, Press Release (Mar. 21, 2003). After the Securities and Exchange Commission refused to let the company avoid putting the resolution to a vote, Halliburton agreed to review its Iranian operations and the resolution was withdrawn. Id. See New York City Police and Fire Pension Funds, Proposed Shareholder Resolution re. Halliburton Company Review and Report on Operations in Iran (online at http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/press/pdfs/HalliburtonResolution3-21-03.pdf).

9.U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Iraq: What You Need to Know about the U.S. Embargo (Mar. 12, 2003).

10. Firm 's Iraq Deals Greater than Cheney Has Said, Washington Post (June 23, 2001).

11. This Weekt ABC News (July 30, 2000).

12. uThis Week, ABC News (Aug. 27, 2000).

13.  Firm 's Iraq Deals Greater than Cheney Has Said, supra note 10.

14.Id.

I5ld.

16U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Libya: What You Need to Know about the U.S. Embargo (July 26, 2001).

11 Libya's Vast Desert Pipeline Could Be Conduit for Troops, New York Times (Dec. 2, 1997).

l8Id.

I9ld.

20Id.

21Securities and Exchange Commission, Halliburton Company Form 10-K (Dec. 31, 2002). The report also identies [sic] Libya as one of the "[countries where we operate which have significant amounts of political risk." Id.

22 Cheney Profited Richly from His Time in Office, Baltimore Sun (Aug. 16, 2000).

23Halliburton Subsidiary Overcame Bid Protest, Fraud Investigation to Land Military Contracts, Associated Press (Aug. 4, 2002).

24Id.

25A Contract to Spend, MotherJones.com (May 23, 2002).

26Will Halliburton Clean Up? The Company That Dick Cheney Once Ran Stands to Make Millions Rebuilding Iraq, Fortune (Apr. 14, 2003).

27Halliburton, Halliburton Announces Third Quarter Results (Nov. 7, 2002).

28Id.; Fair Disclosure Wire, Fourth Quarter 2002 Halliburton Company Earnings Conference Call (Feb. 20, 2003).

29Letter from Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Apr. 8, 2003). 30Halliburton, 2002 Annual Report (undated).

31House Committee on Government Reform, Justice Undone: Clemency Decisions in the Clinton White House, 107th Cong., 2nd Report, v.l, 110-115 (2002) (H. Rept. 107-454). Describing Mr. Rich's activities in Libya, the report noted that "[u]nlike the other American oil companies, Rich ignored the oil embargoes and executive orders of the Reagan Administration designed to punish the terrorist-sponsoring state." Id.

32House Committee on Government Reform, Hearing on the Controversial Pardon of International Fugitive Marc Rich, 107th Cong., 109 (Feb. 8, 2001) (H. Rept. 107-11).
 
33House Committee on Government Reform, Hearing on the Controversial Pardon of International Fugitive Marc Rich, 107th Cong., 491 (Mar. l, 2001) (H. Rept. 107-11).

[ Top of Page ]

5. Costs of Halliburton in Iraq

Testimony of William D. Hartung
Director, Arms Trade Resource Center
World Policy Institute at the New School
Before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee
February 13, 2004

Introduction: Iraq and the Hidden Costs of War

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to address this committee this morning. Although much of my testimony will deal with Halliburton's role in Iraq, its implications go far beyond one company or one conflict. As taxpayers and as citizens of this Republic, we need to determine how best to provide effective support for our men and women in uniform, at a reasonable cost, with transparency and accountability. That's true whether we are talking about Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Philippines, or Colombia, or Kosovo, or Liberia, or anywhere else we send American military personnel on short notice to face down tyrants or keep the peace.

Wars are costly undertakings. They almost always cost more than government officials claim they will. Yale economist William D. Nordhaus has suggested that governments have an incentive to understate the costs of conflict because "If wars are thought to be short, cheap, and bloodless, then it is easier to persuade the populace and the Congress to defer to the President." As Robert Hormats, the Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, observed during the run-up to the current war in Iraq:

History is littered with gross underestimates of the cost of war. Lincoln originally thought the civil war could last 90 days. His Treasury told him it would cost $250 million. It lasted four years and cost $3.3 billion. The First World War was originally forecast to be short and inexpensive. The Vietnam war cost 90 percent more than forecast.

Even conflicts that appear at first to be relatively "cheap," like the 1991 Persian Gulf War, often end up having substantial hidden, long-term costs. In that conflict, the bulk of the $76 billion in direct war costs were paid for by U.S. allies, and U.S. combat deaths were relatively low, at 148 personnel lost. But more than a decade later, U.S. taxpayers are absorbing billions of dollars in costs for treating the service-related injuries and disabilities of the veterans of that conflict. More than one-third of the veterans of the 1990/1991 Gulf War – over 206,000 in all – have filed for service- related disabilities, and as of early 2003, more than 159,000 of those claims had been approved. This extraordinary "postwar casualty rate" puts the lie to the idea that the first Gulf War was either a cheap or easy victory.

Likewise, when former White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey suggested to the Wall Street Journal in September of 2002 that a U.S. intervention in Iraq could cost about 2% of our Gross Domestic Product – roughly $200 billion – the White House quickly dismissed his estimate. A few months later, they also dismissed Lindsey from his post as White House economic advisor. Roughly a year and one- half after Lindsey made his prediction, and less than a year into the war in Iraq, his rough guess is beginning to look like a gross underestimate of the cost of intervening in Iraq. To date, U.S. taxpayers have committed roughly $180 billion to the buildup to war, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime, and the ongoing occupation and rebuilding effort in Iraq. That doesn't count the costs of "buying allies" through special aid and trade deals, or any projections forward of how long we may have "boots on the ground" in Iraq. And I don't need to tell any member of this Congress that you should not expect this administration to be forthcoming about these future costs. They are going to pretend they don't exist, or let them out in dribs and drabs.

Needless to say, there are no realistic projections of the costs of the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in the FY 2005 budget documents that were submitted to Congress recently. The biggest source of the underestimate in the case of this war was the notion among some in this administration that the war would be a "cakewalk," and that once Saddam Hussein's regime had crumbled, building a functioning democracy in Iraq would be a relatively straightforward, inexpensive affair. In fact, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and AID administrator Andrew Natsios cited figures as low as $1.5 billion for Iraqi rebuilding, on the theory that most of the funds could come from the sale of Iraqi oil. This is particularly ironic when we consider that some of the charges of fraud and abuse relating to Halliburton have to do with overcharges in the importation of fuel into Iraq – a classic case of bringing coals to Newcastle, as it were. If Iraq's oil infrastructure had been up and running as quickly as the cock-eyed neo-conservative optimists in this administration had suggested, one would not have envisioned the need to spend $1.2 billion to date to import gasoline and diesel fuel products into an oil-rich country like Iraq. How much of that $1.2 billion represents price gouging is a separate, and equally important, question.

As for hidden human costs of this war, we are already past 500 deaths of our military personnel, and combat injuries are occurring at a much higher rate than in the first Gulf War. In addition, because it is an occupation and not an air war, I think we will need to keep an eye on trauma-related issues for veterans returning from Iraq – the impact of seeing friends and fellow unit members killed and maimed, of serving in close combat, of seeing the impacts of the years of brutality that Saddam Hussein imposed on his own people, and so forth. We will need to make sure that our combat personnel get all the support they need to process these experiences, which will undoubtedly include needs for traditional health care as well as psychological and emotional support services. This will cost money, and it is not something that we can in good conscience cut corners on once we have asked our men and women and uniform to go into harm's way in a very difficult situation in Iraq. If our contracts with companies like Halliburton are "indefinite cost, indefinite quantity," our social contract to meet the ongoing needs of the men and women of our armed forces – and their families – needs to be firm, fixed, enduring, and non-negotiable.

The Halliburton Factor: The High Price of Privatized War Just as many in the Bush administration underestimated the challenges posed by the postwar occupation and stabilization of Iraq, they overestimated the ability of private companies like Halliburton to bear a lion's share of the burden in the rebuilding process. In the January/February issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows has done us all a great service by pointing out the degree to which the Pentagon cast aside all of the detailed pre-war planning that had been done not only by the State Department, but also by the Agency for International Development, the CIA, and the Army War College. As the magazine's own summary puts it, "The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge."

A related point that Fallows doesn't mention is that there was were two sets of plans that the Pentagon did have well under way before the start of the war: 1) to drop its hand-picked Iraqi exiles into the country, and the Iraqi ministries, as soon as possible; and 2) to hand over as much of the rebuilding process – and the sustainment and support of U.S. troops – to private firms like Halliburton, Bechtel, Dyncorps, and SAIC, as quickly as possible. On one level, "exiles- plus-Halliburton" was the Pentagon's plan for post-war Iraq. This raises problems in terms of cost and accountability, but it also raises problems in terms of our larger objectives in Iraq, such as promoting security and democratization. I'll stick primarily to the narrower points in my prepared testimony, but I'd be glad to address the broader points in the question and answer period if there is interest in doing so.

What do we know so far about Halliburton's work in Iraq? We know that it has been secretive. If it hadn't been for persistent questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman's office, from Sen. Daschle and the members of this Committee, from the media, and from non- governmental organizations like Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Center for Corporate Policy, the Project on Government Oversight, and the Center for Public Integrity, Halliburton's Iraq work might still mostly hidden from public view. The company was already doing significant work in the region under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contract, a ten-year arrangement in force since 2001 under which the company is in essence the on-call logistics and supply arm for the United States Army. Under LOGCAP and other non- Iraq-related contracts, Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root division (KBR) has done everything from throw up "temporary" military facilities in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Iraq to build prison facilities for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

So, with or without Iraqi rebuilding money, Halliburton would be a significant Pentagon contractor. The company has been in this line of work for some time, going back to when then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney first asked the firm to do a study of whether a private firm might be able to provide logistics planning and support for U.S. contingency operations. Its first big contract for military support operations was in Somalia, followed by a multi-billion dollar payday in the Balkans, where the company made itself essential to the conduct of U.S. operations.

But what really drew public attention was not the pre-existing LOGCAP work, it was the no-bid contract that Halliburton received to put out potential oil fires in the wake of an intervention in Iraq, and repair Iraqi oil infrastructure. The company was asked to do a scope of work prior to the war, and then they were awarded the contract. As an Army spokesman put it in an interview with Dan Baum for a piece he wrote for the New York Times Magazine, "They were the company best positioned to execute the oil field work because of their involvement in the planning." This is circular logic, to put it mildly. Who was checking Halliburton's assessment of what work needed to be done, to make sure they weren't tailoring the scope of work to what they could do rather than what needed to be done? Who was going to monitor Halliburton, which was already providing a wide array of services for the U.S. military worldwide? And if there were problems, who was going to discipline Halliburton, a company that U.S. forces were already depending on for meals, clean laundry, vehicle maintenance, base building and repair, and a host of other essential functions?

One of the arguments made for rushing to give the contract to Halliburton was simple expediency. We needed to be ready to hit the ground running, we were told, particularly if Iraq's oil fields were up in flames as had happened with the Kuwaiti fields in the first Gulf War. But it turns out that there were firms far more capable than Halliburton at putting out oil well fires that were never allowed to bid. As the late, great Mark Fineman of the Los Angeles Times pointed out in a piece filed with his colleague Dana Calvo in April of 2003, Boots and Coots International Well Control Inc., the Halliburton affiliate that would have been utilized to put out oil well fires, was actually in financial trouble at the time of the Iraqi contract and had limited "surge capacity" to deal with a major outbreak of oil well fires in the Persian Gulf. Luckily, the number of oil well fires were limited, but even to deal with a small number, Halliburton had to bring in a second firm, Wild Well Control, Inc. Bill Mahler of Wild Well told Fineman and Calvo "We would have liked to participate in the pre-planning. It was frustrating we weren't included." So, the rush to hire Halliburton didn't serve the need to get the best oil fire fighting firm in place, and could well have proved a major problem had there been more oil fires to deal with. Secrecy didn't serve the needs of expediency, but it did serve to exclude other qualified firms from bidding on the work.

A similar story emerges in the case of the gasoline overcharges out of Kuwait. It appears that Halliburton overcharged by about $1 a gallon on 57 million gallons brought in from Kuwait, using an intermediary firm called Altanmia. When pressed, Halliburton claimed that they were directed to use the firm, or alternately that the firm was the most expedient firm to truck the gasoline in from Kuwait. But when Rep. Waxman's office asked a few questions it emerged that Halliburton had spent only one day looking for companies to assist in this work, that Altanmia had no track record in fuel supply, and that there may have been nepotism involved, in the form of a relative of a member of the Kuwaiti ruling family associated with the firm. Yet both Halliburton and the Army Corps of Engineers had argued that the company had done its best under difficult circumstances to get fuel into Iraq in the most expeditious way possible. Other Pentagon officials seem to disagree, since there is now an investigation under way to see if there was criminal wrongdoing involved in the fuel overcharges.

Then of course we have the "meals not served" scandal, in which Halliburton was billing the Pentagon for 42,042 meals a day at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait while only 14,053 were actually served. That's not a small undercount, a case of being a little off in playing "guess who's coming to dinner?," as one Halliburton PR person put it. That means day in, and day out, billing U.S. taxpayers for three times as many meals as were actually served. And according to press accounts the quality of the meals was so unappealing that many U.S. soldiers in Kuwait skip out of the mess hall and go out and buy food from vendors on the street. So far, $27 million in overcharges have been detected in just five facilities, with roughly another 50 to be checked. This sounds like a case of a company that was not just "stressed out." This sounds like a company that was taking advantage of the fog of war and occupation to take U.S. taxpayers for a ride.

Finally, we have the case of at least $6.3 million in kickbacks on yet another Halliburton contract in Iraq. If there are kickbacks, that means there has to be enough "padding" in the contract to allow for the kickback, plus a profit for all concerned. And if there's a kickback on one contract, plus an overcharge on another, plus a systematic overbilling on a third, we have to ask ourselves when we stop treating these as isolated instances and acknowledge that there is a systematic problem of waste, fraud, abuse, and possible criminality involved in Halliburton's operations in Iraq. Are we going to let them rip off the taxpayers first, and then just pay back the overcharge from future contracts, as has been the case so far, or are we going to demand systematic accountability and monitoring to make sure that the examples we have learned about thus far are not the tip of a very large iceberg?

Towards Greater Accountability: A Question of Balance A number of members of Congress and representatives of good government groups have called for Halliburton to be debarred from government contracts altogether, or from future contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq, based on the overcharges, kickbacks, and overbilling practices that have emerged in its work in the Iraqi theater to date. This may well be warranted, but it is as important to think about how we would go about doing this as whether to do it. As my friend and colleague David Isenberg of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) put it recently, for our armed forces as they are currently structured, private military companies like Halliburton are like the American Express card – they can't leave home without them. So in order to contemplate punishing a company like Halliburton, you also need to think about how to accomplish the support and logistics tasks that Halliburton is currently shouldering on behalf of our armed forces. I happen to believe that we have gone too far down the road of privatization when it comes to military support services. There are certain levels of discipline, risk, and discretion that one an expect from a person who has agreed to wear the uniform of their country that one cannot necessarily expect from a person or entity who is performing a similar task for a fee. Lieutenant General Charles S. Mahan, Jr. has asserted that there were points during the current Iraq war when the refusal of contract employees to go into harm's way deprived U.S. troops of fresh food, showers, toilets, and other basic services for months at a time.

Unlike for U.S. military personnel, no one is keeping figures on the numbers of civilian contract employees killed and wounded in Iraq, but it is believed to be substantial, and some press accounts have suggested that the security costs tacked onto contracts by private companies doing rebuilding and troop support work in Iraq are anywhere from 6% to 25%. Speaking on the issue of the numbers of contract employees present in Iraq at any given point, Brookings Institution expert Peter Singer says flatly "No one knows the figures. The accounting and accountability is Enron-like." The early departure of 60 Korean engineers from Iraq in early December after two of their colleagues were killed in an ambush was only the most dramatic case of how the security issue may be affecting foreign subcontractors working for U.S. firms.

I raise the issue of what one can expect from contract employees because in situations like Iraq they are increasingly becoming explicit targets of terror-bombers, resisters, and "dead-enders." They are viewed as a potential weak link in the support system for our forces in the field that can be exploited to undermine morale, deprive them of vital supplies, and so forth. A company like Halliburton might well argue in response to this that they are better equipped than most firms to operate in dangerous environments, and that therefore they are a better choice than a firm that might otherwise seem like a logical choice based on more traditional business skills alone. But it is on the efficiency front that the case for privatization, Halliburton-style is perhaps the weakest of all. The advantage of privatization is supposed to be that it shakes up complacent government bureaucracies by introducing an element of competition. Other advantages include cutting overhead by not having to invest in full-time, long-term employees to do short-term tasks, and hiring individuals with specialized skills (such as integrating certain kinds of technologies) for as long as needed and no longer. The problem with the Halliburton case is that once you have handed over a huge swath of your operation to them for a 10-year period, mostly in the form of open-ended, cost-plus contracts, there is no more competition. If you become dependent upon a company like Halliburton for essential functions, while eliminating the people you would need to carry out those functions, then you are setting yourself up for the death of a thousand cuts. Or, in this case, a thousand cost over-runs. And that's particularly true if you don't have a good system for monitoring their activities on a regular basis.

So, where does that leave us? I think the independent investigations of Halliburton need to continue, but the punishments may have to proceed in parallel with a sort of "policy audit." If we take away this function from Halliburton, who should do it? What about this one?

This process would be helped substantially if we open the doors to genuine competitive bidding, not only among big U.S. companies, but also between private companies and units of the U.S. government that may be able to do the job better. We also could do a better job of involving indigenous Iraqi entrepreneurs. And we should lift the absurd limits on who and who cannot bid on Iraqi rebuilding work. There are qualified companies from France, and Germany, and Russia, and other countries that disagreed with us about the imminence of the threat posed by Iraq. And they happened to be right, by the way – the Iraqi threat wasn't as imminent as our President claimed it was last spring when he rushed off to war against the wishes of most of the international community. But right or wrong then, that's not the main issue now. Our allies, and all nations of good will, should be part of the bidding process. If you only bring them in at the subcontracting level, then you aren't getting competition on price at the prime contractor level, which is where you would be able to save taxpayers some money.

Over time, we should re-examine which functions we want in the hands of private companies, and which ones we want the military itself to handle, particularly with respect to logistics and support functions that involve being in the midst of combat and occupation operations. But for now, part of holding Halliburton and other private companies accountable may involve scaling their responsibilities down to size, so they are not "too big to punish," without also punishing our men and women in uniform. That doesn't mean we can't hold them accountable, it just means we need a short- and long-term strategy for doing so, not a one-shot answer. The privatization of military support functions has evolved over a decade or more. Restoring the proper balance between government and corporate roles in this area could take at least that long.

_________________________________________________________________

[ Top of Page ]

6. Costs of War & Depleted Uranium Poisening

Subj: [snow] Major Rokke interview  
Date: 2/26/03 9:45:00 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: jensenmk@plu.edu
To: snow@lists.riseup.net
 

[Forwarded from the DU-watch listserv.  Here's something we
in the peace movement can do to support our troops:
publicize this information, especially in every context
where the question of supporting our troops is raised.  They
deserve better than they're getting. –Mark Jensen.]

http://www.yesmagazine.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.htm

THE WAR AGAINST OURSELVES
An Interview with Major Doug Rokke
Yes! (Spring 2003)

   Doug Rokke has a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist. When the Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, and sent to the Gulf. What he experienced has made him a passionate voice for peace, traveling the country to speak out. The following interview was conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors.

      QUESTION: Any viewer who saw the war on television had the impression this was an easy war, fought from a distance and soldiers coming back relatively unharmed. Is this an accurate picture?

      ROKKE: At the completion of the Gulf War, when we came back to the United States in the fall of 1991, we had a total casualty count of 760: 294 dead, a little over 400 wounded or ill. But the casualty rate now for Gulf War veterans is approximately 30 percent. Of those stationed in the theater, including after the conflict, 221,000 have been awarded disability, according to a Veterans Affairs (VA) report issued September 10, 2002.

      Many of the US casualties died as a direct result of uranium munitions friendly fire. US forces killed and wounded US forces.

      We recommended care for anybody downwind of any uranium dust, anybody working in and around uranium contamination, and anyone within a vehicle, structure, or building that´s struck with uranium munitions. That´s thousands upon thousands of individuals, but not only US troops. You should provide medical care not only for the enemy soldiers but for the Iraqi women and children affected, and clean up all of the contamination in Iraq.

      And it´s not just children in Iraq. It´s children born to soldiers after they came back home. The military admitted that they were finding uranium excreted in the semen of the soldiers. If you´ve got uranium in the semen, the genetics are messed up. So when the children were conceived—the alpha particles cause such tremendous cell damage and genetics damage that everything goes bad. Studies have found that male soldiers who served in the Gulf War were almost twice as likely to have a child with a birth defect and female soldiers almost three times as likely.

      Q: You have been a military man for over 35 years. You served in Vietnam as a bombardier and you are still in the US Army Reserves. Now you´re going around the country speaking about the dangers of depleted uranium (DU). What made you decide you had to speak publicly about DU?

      ROKKE: Everybody on my team was getting sick. My best friend John Sitton was dying. The military refused him medical care, and he died. John set up the medical evacuation communication system for the entire theater. Then he got contaminated doing the work.

      John and Rolla Dolph and I were best friends in the civilian world, the military world, forever. Rolla got sick. I personally got the order that sent him to war. We were both activated together. I was given the assignment to teach nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare and make sure soldiers came back alive and safe. I take it seriously. I was sent to the Gulf with this instruction: Bring ‘em back alive. Clear as could be. But when I got all the training together, all the environmental cleanup procedures together, all the medical directives, nothing happened.

      More than 100 American soldiers were exposed to DU in friendly fire accidents, plus untold numbers of soldiers who climbed on and entered tanks that had been hit with DU, taking photos and gathering souvenirs to take home. They didn´t know about the hazards.

      DU is an extremely effective weapon. Each tank round is 10 pounds of solid uranium-238 contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, americium. It is pyrophoric, generating intense heat on impact, penetrating a tank because of the heavy weight of its metal. When uranium munitions hit, it´s like a firestorm inside any vehicle or structure, and so we saw tremendous burns, tremendous injuries. It was devastating.

      The US military decided to blow up Saddam´s chemical, biological, and radiological stockpiles in place, which released the contamination back on the US troops and on everybody in the whole region. The chemical agent detectors and radiological monitors were going off all over the place. We had all of the various nerve agents. We think there were biological agents, and there were destroyed nuclear reactor facilities. It was a toxic wasteland. And we had DU added to this whole mess.

      When we first got assigned to clean up the DU and arrived in northern Saudi Arabia, we started getting sick within 72 hours. Respiratory problems, rashes, bleeding, open sores started almost immediately.

      When you have a mass dose of radioactive particulates and you start breathing that in, the deposit sits in the back of the pharynx, where the cancer started initially on the first guy. It doesn´t take a lot of time. I had a father and son working with me. The father is already dead from lung cancer, and the sick son is still denied medical care.

      Q: Did you suspect what was happening?

      ROKKE: We didn´t know anything about DU when the Gulf War started. As a warrior, you´re listening to your leaders, and they´re saying there are no health effects from the DU. But, as we started to study this, to go back to what we learned in physics and our engineering—I was a professor of environmental science and engineering—you learn rapidly that what they´re telling you doesn´t agree with what you know and observe.

      In June of 1991, when I got back to the States, I was sick. Respiratory problems and the rashes and neurological things were starting to show up.

      Q: Why didn´t you go to the VA with a medical complaint?

      ROKKE: Because I was still in the Army, and I was told I couldn´t file. You have to have the information that connects your exposure to your service before you go to the VA. The VA obviously wasn´t going to take care of me, so I went to my private physician. We had no idea what it was, but so many good people were coming back sick.

      They didn´t do tests on me or my team members. According to the Department of Defense´s own guidelines put out in 1992, any excretion level in the urine above 15 micrograms of uranium per day should result in immediate medical testing, and when you get up to 250 micrograms of total uranium excreted per day, you´re supposed to be under continuous medical care.

               Finally the US Department of Energy performed a radiobioassay on me in November 1994, while I was director of the Depleted Uranium Project for the Department of Defense. My excretion rate was approximately 1500 micrograms per day. My level was 5 to 6 times beyond the level that requires continuous medical care.

      But they didn´t tell me for two and a half years.

      Q: What are the symptoms of exposure to DU?

      ROKKE: Fibromyalgia. Eye cataracts from the radiation. When uranium impacts any type of vehicle or structure, uranium oxide dust and pieces of uranium explode all over the place. This can be breathed in or go into a wound. Once it gets in the body, a portion of this stuff is soluble, which means it goes into the blood stream and all of your organs. The insoluble fraction stays—in the lungs, for example. The radiation damage and the particulates destroy the lungs.

      Q: What kind of training have the troops had, who are getting called up right now—the ones being shipped to the vicinity of what may be the next Gulf War?

      ROKKE: As the director of the Depleted Uranium Project, I developed a 40-hour block of training. All that curriculum has been shelved. They turned what I wrote into a 20-minute program that´s full of distortions. It doesn´t deal with the reality of uranium munitions.

      The equipment is defective. The General Accounting Office verified that the gas masks leak, the chemical protective suits leak. Unbelievably, Defense Department officials recently said the defects can be fixed with duct tape.

      Q: If my neighbors are being sent off to combat with equipment and training that is inadequate, and into battle with a toxic weapon, DU, who can speak up?

      ROKKE: Every husband and wife, son and daughter, grandparent, aunt and uncle, needs to call their congressmen and cite these official government reports and force the military to ensure that our troops have adequate equipment and adequate training. If we don´t take care of our American veterans after a war, as happened with the Gulf War, and now we´re about ready to send them into a war again—we can´t do it. We can´t do it. It´s a crime against God. It´s a crime against humanity to use uranium munitions in a war, and it´s devastating to ignore the consequences of war.

      These consequences last for eternity. The half life of uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. And we left over 320 tons all over the place in Iraq.

      We also bombarded Vieques, Puerto Rico, with DU in preparation for the war in Kosovo. That´s affecting American citizens on American territory. When I tried to activate our team from the Department of Defense responsible for radiological safety and DU cleanup in Vieques, I was told no. When I tried to activate medical care, I was told no.

      The US Army made me their expert. I went into the project with the total intent to ensure they could use uranium munitions in war, because I´m a warrior. What I saw as director of the project, doing the research and working with my own medical conditions and everybody else´s, led me to one conclusion: uranium munitions must be banned from the planet, for eternity, and medical care must be provided for everyone, not just the US or the Canadians or the British or the Germans or the French but for the American citizens of Vieques, for the residents of Iraq, of Okinawa, of Scotland, of Indiana, of Maryland, and now Afghanistan and Kosovo.

      Q: If your information got out widely, do you think there´s a possibility that the families of those soldiers would beg them to refuse?

      ROKKE: If you´re going to be sent into a toxic wasteland, and you know you´re going to wear gas masks and chemical protective suits that leak, and you´re not going to get any medical care after you´re exposed to all of these things, would you go? Suppose they gave a war and nobody came. You´ve got to start peace sometime.

      Q: It does sound remarkable for someone who has been in the military for 35 years to be talking about when peace should begin.

      ROKKE: When I do these talks, especially in churches, I´m reminded that these religions say, “And a child will lead us to peace.’ But if we contaminate the environment, where will the child come from? The children won´t be there. War has become obsolete, because we can´t deal with the consequences on our warriors or the environment, but more important, on the noncombatants. When you reach a point in war when the contamination and the health effects of war can´t be cleaned up because of the weapons you use, and medical care can´t be given to the soldiers who participated in the war on either side or to the civilians affected, then it´s time for peace.

--
Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Chair, Dept. of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
253-535-7219

==============

Subj: [snow] Declassified documents on US-Iraq relations in 1980s  
Date: 2/26/03 1:14:46 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: jensenmk@plu.edu
To: snow@lists.riseup.net
 

Some gems:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm

[ Top of Page ]

Some Personal Costs of Depleted Uranium Reported

Subj: depleted uranium shocker
Date: 4/5/2004 3:36:22 PM Pacific Daylight Time

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/05/1356248

 Monday, April 5th, 2004

 Army officials at Fort Dix and Walter Reed Army Medical Center are rushing to test all returning members of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard for depleted uranium contamination.

 Army brass acted after learning that four of nine soldiers from the company tested by the Daily News showed signs of radiation exposure.

 The soldiers, who returned from Iraq late last year, say they and other members of their company have been suffering from unexplained illnesses since last summer, when they were stationed in the Iraqi town of Samawah.

 Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested the nine men at The News' request, concluded four of them "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops.

 Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), after learning of The News' investigation, blasted Pentagon officials yesterday for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq.

 "We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses," Clinton said. "We have to have a before-and-after testing program for our soldiers."

 Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she will write to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answers and soon will introduce legislation to require health screenings for all returning troops.

 During meetings with Pentagon officials last year, Clinton said "one of the issues we raised was exposure to the depleted uranium that was in the weapons, and how they were going to handle it."

 She was assured then that troops would be properly screened.

 But the soldiers from the 442nd contacted The News after becoming frustrated with how the Army was handling their illnesses.

 Six of them say they repeatedly sought testing for depleted uranium from Army doctors but were denied.

 Three who were tested in early November for DU said they had been waiting months for the results. Two of those finally got their results last week -both negative.

 Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of urine samples can cost as much as $1,000 each.

 But late last week, after learning of The News' results, the Army reversed course and ordered immediate testing for more than a dozen members of the 442nd who are back in the U.S.

 The rest of the company, comprising mostly New York City cops, firefighters and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq until later this month.

 "They ordered all of us who are here at Fort Dix to provide 24-hour urine samples by 1 p.m. today," one soldier from the company said Friday.

 Late Friday, Pentagon spokesman Austin Camacho said he could not confirm or deny that new tests had been ordered for the soldiers of the 442nd.

 "It's hard to imagine, theoretically, that these men could have harmful exposures," Camacho said, because none of them had been inside tanks during direct combat.

 Army studies of depleted uranium have concluded that only soldiers who suffer shrapnel wounds from DU shells or who were inside tanks hit by DU shells and immediately breathe radioactive dust are at risk.

 Even then, Camacho said, studies of about 70 such cases from the first Gulf War have shown no long-term health problems.

 But medical experts critical of the use of DU weapons, as well as some of the Army's own early studies of depleted uranium, say exposure to it can cause kidney damage. Some studies have shown that it causes cancer and chromosome damage in mice, according to the experts.

 Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, has been used by the U.S. and British militaries for more than 15 years in some artillery shells and as armor-plating for tanks. It is valued for its extreme density - it is twice as heavy as lead.

 Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the European Parliament called last year for a moratorium on its use.

 'Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest tightening.'

 Sgt. Agustin Matos, a member of the 442nd Military Police of the New York National Guard and a city correction officer in civilian life, has all-too-vivid memories of his stay in Samawah, Iraq.

 "The place was filthy; most of the windows were broken; dirt, grease and bird droppings were everywhere," he said. "I wouldn't house a city prisoner in that place."

 He recalled a mandated morning run of about 3 miles on a sandy track near a train depot.

 "Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest tightening," he said.

 Now, Matos, 37, believes his symptoms may be the result of radioactive dust he inhaled from spent American shells made from depleted uranium.

 The Long Island man is one of four Iraq war veterans who tested positive for DU contamination, according to a Daily News investigation.

 The soldiers and other members of the 442nd say they are suffering from physical ailments that began last summer while they were stationed in Samawah.

 Matos, who was assigned to the 4th platoon's 2nd squad, arrived in Samawah last June, two weeks ahead of the rest of the company.

 His advance team had orders from Capt. Sean O'Donnell, their commander, to ready a huge depot in a train repair yard on the outskirts of downtown Samawah as a barracks for the unit.

 Once the entire company arrived, each platoon was assigned its own space inside the depot, which was bigger than a football field.

 A locomotive that straddled a repair pit and an empty train car sat in the middle of the sleeping area, with two platoons assigned to bed down along one side of the train and two others along the other side.

 Just outside the depot, two Iraqi tanks, one of them shot up, had been hauled onto flatbed railroad cars.

 The company was so short-handed, according to the soldiers, that the commander would evacuate a G.I. only if he could no longer physically function.

 Matos was sent home last year for surgery for a shoulder injury suffered in a jeep accident.

 Since his return, he has had constant headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, joint pain and excessive urination. After he recently discovered blood in his urine, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center gave him a CAT scan and discovered a small lesion on his liver.

 A 1990 Army study linked DU to "chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."

 "Before I left for Iraq, they tested my eyes and I was fine," Matos said. "Now my eyesight's gotten bad, on top of everything else."

 Another member of the company who tested positive for DU is 2nd platoon Sgt. Hector Vega, 48, a retired postal worker from the Bronx who has been in the National Guard for 27 years.

 Since being evacuated to Fort Dix for treatment for foot surgery, Vega said he has endured insomnia and constant headaches. And like many of the sick soldiers, Vega said, "I have uncontrollable urine, every half hour."

 One day, during a trip a few hours south of Samawah, he and another soldier stopped on the side of the road to photograph and check out two shot-up Iraqi tanks.

 "We didn't think anything of walking right up to those tanks and touching them," he said. "I didn't know anything about depleted uranium."

 As for the railroad depot where they slept, Vega recalls it as "disgusting. Oil, dirt and bird droppings everywhere, insects crawling all around us."

 And then there were the frequent dust storms.

 "They would blow all that dust inside the depot all over us when we were sleeping or eating. It was so thick, you could see it."

 Carolyn McConnell, Senior Editor
 YES! magazine
 PO Box 10818
 Bainbridge Island, WA  98110
 206/842-5009  ext. 215
 www.yesmagazine.org

 "No one can terrorize an entire nation, unless we are all his
accomplices."
 --Edward R. Murrow

Poisoned?

Shocking report reveals local troops
may be victims of america's high-tech weapons

[Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found. from
http://www.nydailynews.com/04-04-2004/news/wn_report/story/180331p-156685c.html ]

By JUAN GONZALEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Army Sgt. Hector Vega at his Bronx home.  [pic]
Augustin Matos with his daughter Samantha   [pic]

Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found.
They are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.

"I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."

A nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium.

Laboratory tests conducted at the request of The News revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.

If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.

The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County. Dispatched to Iraq last Easter, the unit's members have been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police. The entire company is due to return home later this month.

"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing that was funded by The News.

"Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more depleted uranium exposure," said Duracovic, a colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

While working at a military hospital in Delaware, he was one of the first doctors to discover unusual radiation levels in Gulf War veterans. He has since become a leading critic of the use of depleted uranium in warfare.

Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, has been used by the U.S. and British military for more than 15 years in some artillery shells and as armor plating for tanks. It is twice as heavy as lead.

Because of its density, "It is the superior heavy metal for armor to protect tanks and to penetrate armor," Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said.

The Army and Air Force fired at least 127 tons of depleted uranium shells in Iraq last year, Kilpatrick said. No figures have yet been released for how much the Marines fired.

Kilpatrick said about 1,000 G.I.s back from the war have been tested by the Pentagon for depleted uranium and only three have come up positive - all as a result of shrapnel from DU shells.

But the test results for the New York guardsmen - four of nine positives for DU - suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.

Several Army studies in recent years have concluded that the low-level radiation emitted when shells containing DU explode poses no significant dangers. But some independent scientists and a few of the ­Army's own reports indicate otherwise.

As a result, depleted uranium weapons have sparked increasing controversy around the world. In January 2003, the ­European Parliament called for a moratorium on their use after reports of an unusual number of leukemia deaths among Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo, where DU weapons were used.

I keep getting weaker. What is happening to me?

The Army says that only soldiers wounded by depleted uranium shrapnel or who are inside tanks during an explosion face measurable radiation exposure.

But as far back as 1979, Leonard Dietz, a physicist at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory upstate, discovered that DU-contaminated dust could travel for long distances.

Dietz, who pioneered the technology to isolate uranium isotopes, accidentally discovered that air filters with which he was experimenting had collected radioactive dust from a National Lead Industries Plant that was producing DU 26 miles away. His discovery led to a shutdown of the plant.

"The contamination was so heavy that they had to remove the topsoil from 52 properties around the plant," Dietz said.

All humans have at least tiny amounts of natural uranium in their bodies because it is found in water and in the food supply, Dietz said. But natural uranium is quickly and harmlessly excreted by the body.

Uranium oxide dust, which lodges in the lungs once inhaled and is not very soluble, can emit radiation to the body for years.

"Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it's not going to decrease very much over time," said Dietz, who retired in 1983 after 33 years as nuclear physicist. "In the long run ... veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem."

Critics of DU have noted that the Army's view of its dangers has changed over time.

Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, a 1990 Army report noted that depleted uranium is "linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."

It was during the Gulf War that U.S. A-10 Warthog "tank buster" planes and Abrams tanks first used DU artillery on a mass scale. The Pentagon says it fired about 320 tons of DU in that war and that smaller amounts were also used in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

In the Gulf War, Army brass did not warn soldiers about any risks from exploding DU shells. An unknown number of G.I.s were exposed by shrapnel, inhalation or handling battlefield debris.

Some veterans groups blame DU contamination as a factor in Gulf War syndrome, the term for a host of ailments that afflicted thousands of vets from that war.

Under pressure from veterans groups, the Pentagon commissioned several new studies. One of those, published in 2000, concluded that DU, as a heavy metal, "could pose a chemical hazard" but that Gulf War veterans "did not experience intakes high enough to affect their health."

Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said Army followup studies of 70 DU-contaminated Gulf War veterans have not shown serious health effects.

"For any heavy metal, there is no such thing as safe," Kilpatrick said. "There is an issue of chemical toxicity, and for DU it is raised as radiological toxicity as well."

But he said "the overwhelming conclusion" from studies of those who work with uranium "show it has not produced any increase in cancers."

Several European studies, however, have linked DU to chromosome damage and birth defects in mice. Many scientists say we still don't know enough about the long-range effects of low-level radiation on the body to say any amount is safe.

Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society, has called for identifying where DU was used and is urging a cleanup of all contaminated areas.

"A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust," said Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium. "And the health impact is worrisome for the future."

As for the soldiers of the 442nd, they're sick, frustrated and confused. They say when they arrived in Iraq no one warned them about depleted uranium and no one gave them dust masks.

Experts behind News probe

As part of the investigation by the Daily News, Dr. Asaf Duracovic, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined the nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police in late December and collected urine specimens from each.

Another member of his team, Prof. Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who specializes in analyzing uranium isotopes, performed repeated tests on the samples over a week-long ­period. He used a state-of-the art procedure called multiple collector inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry.

Only about 100 laboratories worldwide have the same capability to identify and measure various uranium isotopes in minute quantities, Gerdes said.

Gerdes concluded that four of the men had depleted uranium in their bodies. Depleted uranium, which does not occur in nature, is created as a waste product of uranium enrichment when some of the highly radioactive isotopes in natural uranium, U-235 and U-234, are extracted.

Several of the men, according to Duracovic, also had minute traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, that is produced only in a nuclear reaction process.

"These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield," Duracovic said.

He and Gerdes plan to issue a scientific paper on their study of the soldiers at the annual meeting of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine in Finland this year.

When DU shells explode, they permanently contaminate their target and the area immediately around it with low-level radioactivity.

Originally published on April 3, 2004

[ Top of Page ]

7. Harken, Enron, & Bush, Etc

From: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jul2002/wp-j15.shtml

The morality of plutocracy: the Washington Post and the Harken Energy
"distraction"

By Joseph Kay

15 July 2002

The lead editorial in the July 12 Washington Post casts a great deal of light on the nature of social life in the United States. Entitled "The Harken Energy Distraction," the editorial is dedicated to a defense of President Bush and the corrupt dealings by which he made his millions. Coming from one of the bastions of American "liberalism," the defense is an indication of the insularity of the entire ruling elite from the broad masses of the American population.

The editorial begins with a recapitulation of the basic argument marshaled by the Bush administration regarding his past actions while on the board of directors of Harken Energy. Most of the questions surrounding these actions, the paper states, "have been aired over the years, and one has been the subject of a government investigation. Congress shouldn't let the temptation to play politics with this issue distract from corporate reform."

At his press conference earlier in the week, Bush made the same point. All the questions were old "stuff," and any further investigation was an unjustified attempt to win petty political advantage.

That this is actually presented as an argument against further inquiry is indicative of the poverty of Bush's defense. That these issues have been aired in the past means little. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), after all, looked into the accounting practices of WorldCom in 2000 and did nothing, only to have that company implode in financial scandal last month.

Over the past two decades, an environment was fostered in which large-scale fraud was routinely committed. Investigations carried out by the government and auditors generally sanctioned such fraud. The fact that Bush's dealings at Harken have been raised before is not an argument against further investigation, but merely an evasion-an attempt to ensure that no serious investigation takes place.

After clearly stating its sympathies for the arguments advanced by Bush, the Post identifies two major issues regarding Bush's past corporate dealings. The first is insider trading. The Post does not provide its readers with any of the background to this issue, because to do so would raise questions that do not have an easy answer.

Bush was on the board of directors and was a member of Harken's auditing committee during the late 1980s, after the company acquired Spectrum 7, which had in turn acquired Bush's own Arbusto Energy some years back. Both Spectrum 7 and Arbusto were financial failures, but Harken paid a pretty penny for the acquisition because it provided the company with a valuable asset ... namely, George W. Bush, a business failure whose father happened to be US president.

Thanks to these connections, Harken received an extraordinary contract with Bahrain to drill offshore oil wells-extraordinary because Harken was relatively small and had no experience in such matters. As Harken ran into financial trouble, it began to manipulate its accounts. At one point it gave a loan to executives to buy a subsidiary of Harken, essentially loaning money to itself to buy a part of itself, and the payment was then booked as revenue. By means of this accounting device the company was able to understate its losses by some $10 million, a massive amount for the relatively small energy company.

As a member of the audit committee, Bush was certainly privy to knowledge that the company was in crisis, and likely knew about the accounting fraud. He sold over $800,000 of stock options while the price was right, just before an announcement by the company of large losses and some months before Harken had to restate its prior earnings.

How does the Post deal with all of this? "The Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the case," the editors write, "and did not take action, apparently because it could not find firm evidence of wrongdoing." Perhaps the SEC was not really looking very hard, since the case involved the president's son and the SEC was headed by a Bush appointee. Dismissing this possibility, the Post assures us that the chairman was a "renowned enforcement hawk" and refers to the "reckonings" of "people who worked inside the SEC" that "the organization would have gone after the son of the president if it had sufficient