Corporations, according to the Supreme Court, are legally equivalent to "natural persons." These patriotic corporate citizens are normally satisfied with the day-to-day political influence which brings them little (or no) taxes, subsidies ($1.5 billion to Big Oil) and immunity from criminal prosecution for damaging us. But when it's wartime for the troops it's showtime for the elite. A War For Freedom has to be financed, so the banks' profits jump. We neeed equipment, so armaments makes a bundle. And Big Oil pumps up its profits with high octane. United They Stand, The Sky's The Limit. Let all the casualties be on the battlefield, not on Wall Street, because not all natural persons are created equal. So the Pentagon starts deploying troops and writing 'corporate welfare' checks to benefit corporations. We make war to make profits. It's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, and corporations are behind it all. Think of it as War, Inc.
Iraq, with the third largest oil reserves in the world, was intended to be a quick gift to corporations, primarily Big Oil, like Chevron. And it wasn't going to cost the U.S. anything. This is particularly important now that the major oil companies are nearly tapped out . Also, the US was upset that Iraq replaced the dollar with the euro for oil purchases and there was a desire to block China from moving into Iraq.
A similar situation existed in Afghanistan, with both interventions being planned well before 9/11. For an excellent exposition of the planning that went into both wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, read The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War by R.W. Behan.
Iraqi oil was made 'safe' for US oil corporations when President Bush signed Executive Order 13303, which unilaterally declares Iraqi oil to be the unassailable province of U.S. corporations. In the short term, through the Development Fund and the Export-Import Bank programs, the Iraqi people's oil has financed U.S. corporate entrees into Iraq. In the long term, Executive Order 13303 protects anything those corporations do to seize control of Iraq's oil, from the point of production to the gas pump -- and places oil companies above the rule of law. 'Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq's Oil Wealth' reveals that current Iraqi oil policy will allocate the development of at least 64% of Iraq’s reserves to foreign oil companies. Iraq has the world’s third largest oil reserves. Figures published in the report for the first time show: (1) the estimated cost to Iraq over the life of the new oil contracts is $74 to $194 billion, compared with leaving oil development in public hands. These sums represent between two and seven times the current Iraqi state budget. (2) the contracts would guarantee massive profits to foreign companies, with rates of return of 42% to 162%. As Greg Palast reports, it's always been about the oil, and Alan Greenspan, retiring Fed Chairman, agrrees that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil..
Those darn Iraqis are resisting, but plans for eleven new oilfields
and six new refineries have already been approved, and Big Oil companies
(including Shell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron) are now jockeying for a contract
to build a three billion dollar "super refinery." Big Oil has determined
that Iraqi oil will stay under state/Big Oil control, and meanwhile
there is massive
corruption which has cost at least $300
million. And where has all the Iraqi
money gone? A lot of it was money
for nothing. And now there are reports that the Iraqi oil industry
is threatened
by failure to rebuild properly.Control of Iraq's future oil wealth
is being handed to multinational oil companies through long-term contracts
that will cost Iraq hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a
recent report.
THIS JUST IN: The US's Iraqi oil grab is a
done deal. Read more in
Iraq, Inc. by Pratap Chatterjee.
Ooops -- The Kurdish Regional government has given the Norwegian
oil company DNO the first deal in the whole of post-Saddam Iraq
to pump new crude oil. DNO have rented a drilling rig from China, complete
with a troop of Chinese drillers. They struck oil at the first attempt,
finding a 250 million barrels.
June 19, 2008, NYT
-- Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations
this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after
losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose
to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners
in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number
of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry
for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according
to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation
for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since
the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country
for their operations.
According to the Guardian Iraq was a free-fraud zone to the tune of $23 billion: The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. "American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone," says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. "In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did." Sex and money bought Iraq contracts and careers are in jeopardy. Billions of dollars are being made by private contractors in Iraq, where reconstruction is a boondoggle by design. Back home, executives are cashing in bigtime.
The need for an oil pipeline (the Taliban wasn't co-operating) motivated us to go to war in Afghanistan, and the buildup to war with Iran, with the second largest oil reserves in the world, has already begun because of their intention to shift from the dollar to the stronger euro-based oil market, which would ruin the American economy. The whole Caspian Sea area, bordering Russia, Iran, and the 'Stans,' is the focus of a US military buildup, with Chevron (former employer of Condi Rice) as chief benefactor. If there is a coup in Saudi Arabia we might invade that country, and another of our biggest oil suppliers Venezuela is now on the Pentagon hit list.
The Pentagon also deploys units in many other areas in the world to support oil companies in developing energy sources and pipelines. The 'forgotten oil wars' are in:
Bases are also being established in Eastern Europe to support wars in the Middle East and let people know these countries are "a safe place for business." In fact, we have over 700 bases throughout the world.
The oil wars are paying off big time to corporations. Wartime annual profits have increased dramatically in four years from their previous levels (2002 to 2007): Top five US banks, up 38%; top five armaments, up 143%; top three oil, up 483% (!!!). Exxon Mobil, for example, enjoys quarterly profits of ten billion dollars; that's $108 million per day, or $1,250 per second!!! March 2007: General Dynamics Corp., Harris Corp. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. benefited most among the Pentagon's 25 largest military suppliers from five years of conflict in Iraq, based on a combination of war-related sales and stock gains. General Dynamics and Harris, the Melbourne, Florida-based maker of combat radios, both tripled in stock price in the five years ended March 20, the anniversary of the war's start. L-3, which provides translators, rose 164 percent.
Smedley Butler said: "Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. . . They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise (idealogues not experts were selected), bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft. A good example, and certainly not the only one, of a well-connected corporation benefitting from war in Iraq (it's called disaster capitalism) and elsewhere is Halliburton (hikes dividend, splits stock), which--now being connected to the Vice President has nothing to do with this--operates under no-bid contracts. Eighty billion more dollars has just been approved to finance our occupation of Iraq, but war profiteering won't be investigated. A just-completed UN-sponsored study reports that efforts to rebuild Iraq have been wasteful, ineffective and rife with corruption. "The foreign contractors have actually done very little work," it states. One Long Island businessman made a killing selling shoddy equipment to the Marines. From a crooked California congressman to Florida senators the blood money poisons our society. Contractors have bilked hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraq funds. A new study shows US lawmakers have as much as $196 million invested in war companies.
The waste is getting deeper. Mar 28, 2008: — The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will investigate the award of a federal contract for nearly $300 million to provide ammunition for Afghanistan army and police units, the panel’s chairman said Thursday. Efraim E. Diveroli, the 22-year-old president of the Miami-based AEY, will be invited to appear, as will senior Defense Department officials, the committee said. AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces. The company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. September 2008: A former Iraqi official has estimated that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.
In Iraq the United States has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in three years, and more than $50 billion of it has gone to private contractors hired to guard bases, drive trucks, feed and shelter the troops and rebuild the country. For example, the $2 million initially given to one company, Custer Battles, was the first installment on a contract to provide security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had been started by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger and Mike Battles, an unsuccessful congressional candidate from Rhode Island who claimed to be active in the Republican Party and have connections at the White House. They arrived in Baghdad with no money. Yet within a year they landed $100 million in contracts, even though they had no experience. NEWS REPORT: Custer Battles found guilty of $3 million fraud. Corruption extrends to the $592 million embassy now rising skyward in Baghdad.
From the Chicago Tribune, Feb 21 2008: Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand. The graft continued well beyond the 2004 congressional hearings that first called attention to it. And the massive fraud endangered the health of American soldiers even as it lined contractors' pockets, records show.
Even US officials haven't failed to get in on the war racket.For more information on war profiteers, including the Bush family, go to the upcoming links page. THIS JUST IN -- CHENEY'S HALLIBURTON STOCK OPTIONS ROSE 3,281% LAST YEAR, FROM $241 THOUSAND TO MORE THAN $8 MILLION. That means that Cheney -- read his story here -- has the blood money to purchase a $2.9 million house "right out by Rumsfeld's."
********************************************************************************************************************
Lockheed Martin remains the company with the most incidents — 47 — detailed by POGO. Boeing can breath a sigh of relief having slipped from second place, exchanging places with Exxon Mobil, which has 32 incidents. Northrop Grumman yielded third place to General Electric, who had 30. POGO offers a cumulative number of incidents, starting in 1995.
*******************************************************************************************************************
Military contracts are a boon to members of the US Congress, and they load large numbers of useless pork projects onto military spending bills. Congressional represenatives have loaded 1,776 (that's the spirit!) 'earmarks' onto the 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill. See a list of them here.
All of this war-mongering is giving our country a bad name, but, not to worry, we have several well-connected public relations firms making gravy with their Pentagon pals. In June, 2005, three PR firms were awarded contracts worth up to $300 million dollars to inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military (napalm, 500 pound bombs and white phosphorus is bad for our image).
Well-connected US corporations will receive at least 1.3 billion dollars for training the Iraqi police force. They'll need a lot of training. Their performance so far has included fraud, corruption and enough human rights abuses to recall the old days. Police have killed political opponents, falsely arrested people to extort money, and systematically raped and tortured female prisoners. The US claims that there are 55,000 trained police, but no one knows how many there really are. The important numbers are the ones with the dollar signs: Dynacorp International, $500 million; SAIC, $200 million; US Investigative Services, $200 million; and L-3 Communications Holdings, $400 million. Politicians, bought with PAC funds, enable war profiteers to flourish. Exxon-Mobil, for example, gave the pols (95% to Repubs) $728,545 in the 2003-2004 cycle. Now the Iraqis are upset that much of the $18 billion allocated for rebuilding their country has been diverted, and no new funds willl be provided.
The Nation has reported that military contractors accounted for $294.9 billion in 2006 war spending (up 63% since the invasion). CEOs made out like the bandits they are: Robert Stevens, Lockheed Martin $24,399,747; average income of 30 military CEOs, $9,095,756.
"Defense budgets have risen significantly since the late 1990s and, although growth is likely to slow after 2007, the total level of funding is still significant," according to Standard & Poor's. "Higher revenues, earnings, and cash flows, coupled with divestitures of noncore assets, have allowed companies to reduce debt, pursue targeted strategic acquisitions, or return cash to shareholders through moderate share repurchase programs and increased dividends in recent years."
Share values of the top six military contractors have increased 250% from their previous six year lows.
