(1998) Halliburton chief calls U.S. 'sanctions-happy'

Role of Aipac in the Iranian sanctions in 1995-1996, when U.S. oil companies were Iran's biggest customers by far.

I'm not completely sure what to think of Cheney. I've seen some of his speeches and interviews from the 1990s; he was reasonable, intelligent, and pragmatic, and he didn't give the sense of being venal and predacious. I've heard that he is a family man and is really great to his grandkids, and he did come from nothing, so it's hard to not like the guy. The Neo-Cons are bleeding-heart idealists for the most part, and some are Israel as 51st staters, but Cheney, insofar as he is a neo-con--is the jury still out?-- strikes me as one of the few, very few, who could have supported the war because of the gains for the oil industry. Never, not once, has he convinced me that he gives a shiat about domestic security or spreading liberal democracy.

Text of Cheney's 1998 speech

Compare Iraq/Iran parts with the authors^[1][2] who wrote
1996
1998

Suicidal Writer:I'm not completely sure what to think of Cheney.

the earliest I can see this flip is August 2002

Ron Paul Revere:9/11 Pancakes changed everything!

Seems to get them all eventually.

Suicidal Writer:gains for the oil industry.

By the way, he wasn't alone here. In addition, he Oil execs were lobbying not to invade, but to drop sanctions on Iraq, too ^[1][2].

Don't be suck a dick, Dick!

Sounds like he was making sane arguments for the wrong reasons.

FTFA:

Additionally, while Cheney headed Halliburton the company engaged in secret business dealings with Saddam Hussein's regime by selling Iraq oil production equipment and spare parts to get the Iraqi oil fields up and running, according to confidential United Nations records.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney vehemently denied that Halliburton did business with Iraq while he was chief executive. He acknowledged that Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, Cheney said, "Iraq's different."

"I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal," Cheney said on the ABC-TV news program "This Week" on July 30, 2000. "We've not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that."

But it turns out that Cheney was not telling the truth.

In 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc, the unit that sold oil equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War, the Post reported in a June 2001 story.

/iz it timez for impeechmant plz?

Love Boat:And we must remain frozen in the past with regards to Iran as well. It's... teh liberal way.

You seem to be stuck in 2003 with your liberal use of the word `liberal'.
Obtain a new bumper sticker.

Hmm, who's new alt is Love Boat?

Login: Love Boat
Account created: 2008-06-30 19:32:33

We haven't had the pleasure to meet yet. So tell me, are you a brand new freepazoid? Or just an alt?

Love Boat:How much different was the world from the years 1938 to 1948 or from 1968 to 1978? How about America from 1860 to 1870?

You do have a point. Although, 9/11 was the major change in the past 10 years, yet Iraq had nothing to do with that. It's understandable that people's positions may change, but it still doesn't explain away Iraq.

Suicidal Writer:but it still doesn't explain away Iraq.

...since the neocons have been talking about

• This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right
• In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

Since the 1990's

Suicidal Writer:Love Boat:How much different was the world from the years 1938 to 1948 or from 1968 to 1978? How about America from 1860 to 1870?

You do have a point. Although, 9/11 was the major change in the past 10 years, yet Iraq had nothing to do with that. It's understandable that people's positions may change, but it still doesn't explain away Iraq.

Or Iran either for that matter.

Love Boat:How much different was the world from the years 1938 to 1948

Yeah, but in those ten years the Republicans stuck to their belief that we shold interfere with Nazi Germany, and stuck to their guns condemning the Nurnberg trials as "victors' justice".

So why do they flip flop now?

APPEASER!

Love Boat:

The world changes exactly how much the population is willing to allow it. This generation are cowering vapid scum. So, you lose your countries values embossed at birth. Enjoy.

BTW, you're also going to lose your primacy as well. This is the collapse of an empire at the hands of vandals and looters.

Party Boy:Suicidal Writer:I'm not completely sure what to think of Cheney.

the earliest I can see this flip is August 2002

From the article:Oil as a geostrategic factor also figured in the neo-conservative mission to unseat Saddam as the first step of politically transforming the Middle East. Removal of his regime was seen as crucial to undermining the other established oil powers in the region, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Ironically, this is why we will be bogged down for at least a generation, maybe even two generations. If liberal democracy, at least on the level of stability as Turkey, doesn't take hold, we have to install a puppet with one of the most powerful militaries, other than Israel, in the ME, and oversee the oil fields. China would be more than willing to prop up an anti-American regime, and if Sierra Leonne taught us anything, it's that militias will hit the state's most precious resource first in order to fund their campaigns. Every state needs oil, this isn't true of diamonds, so we have created one of the worst foreign policies since the overthrow of Mosaddeq . These people are supposed to be smart, so I still have a hard time believing they couldn't see this coming, but I also don't have solid evidence Cheney knew this would happen and wanted it.

Suicidal Writer:so weneocons have created one of the worst foreign policies since the overthrow of Mosaddeq . These people are supposed to be smart, so I still have a hard time believing they couldn't see this coming, but I also don't have solid evidence Cheney knew this would happen and wanted it.
---
more Neocon/Big oil split on Iraqi oil
Secret US plans for Iraq's oil (BBC)
(Note the privatization, nationalization is still not resolved.
▬▬▬▬▬▬

The Guardian,
Tuesday August 5 2003
In a dream ending for the chapter of history being written now in Iraq, neo-conservatives fantasised before the war about a privatised, pro-American Iraqi oil industry. This would have access to the world's second largest hydrocarbon reserves and produce so much oil that Saudi Arabia, in charge of Opec, would lose its grip on petrol prices.

The world would then be swimming in inexpensive petrol - the cost of which would be dictated by the market, not by an anti-American price-fixing club run by Riyadh. Low prices would also mean falling revenues for oil-producers, which in the Middle East might precipitate the collapse of regimes hostile to the US. These hopes are now being dissipated like sand before the desert wind.

Oil is dribbling, rather than pumping, from Iraq's bomb-blasted oil industry. Sabotage and theft mean Iraq's oil production remains at a fraction of the levels achieved under Saddam. With reconstruction failing to take off, there is little sign of a post-Ba'athist dividend in the form of low oil prices. The result is that US action in Iraq has not weakened Opec, and hence Saudi Arabia, but strengthened it.
---snip---


http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/download/papers/Stiglitz_testimo n y.pdf
Macro-economic costs
Finally, I want to turn to the macro-economic costs. First, I want to dispel a widespread misconception that wars are good for the economy-a misconception that arose from the role that World War II played in helping the US emerge from the Great Depression. But at least since Keynes, we know how to maintain the economy at or near full employment in far better ways; there are ways of spending money that stimulate the economy in the short run while at the same time leaving it stronger for the long run. This war has been especially bad for the economy. Some of the costs are becoming apparent only now; others we will face for years to come.
There are four major categories of macro-economic impacts. The first is through the war's effect on oil prices. Before the war, five years ago, the price of oil was under $25 a barrel. As you know, now it has hit $100 a barrel. Before the war, future markets expected the $25 price to persist for at least a decade. Yes, there would be increased demands from China and India; but in well-functioning markets, supply responds to meet new demands. With large supplies and low extraction costs in the Middle East, markets expected production would increase in tandem with demand. The war changed this equation. How much of the increased price should be blamed on the War? In our book, we have taken a very conservative position-that only $5 to $10 of the increase is due to the war, and that the price increase will last for only 7 to 8 years. We think those assumptions are unrealistically conservative. For instance, futures markets today expect that the price will remain in excess of $80 for at least the next decade. We chose to be excessively conservative, simply because we did not want to have an unnecessary squabble: as it was, even with these very conservative estimates, the costs of the war are vastly higher than its advocates were willing to admit. (Even the CBO, at the time we did our earlier study in 2006, was projecting that the total cost of the war would amount to only a half trillion dollars, still ten times greater than the Administration had estimated at the beginning of the war. Our objective was the more modest one of trying to get people to realize that this war was going to be far more expensive than that.)
Money spent to buy oil is money not available to be spent here in the U.S. It's as simple as that. Lower aggregate demand leads, through a multiplier, to lower national income.
The second impact arises from the fact that Iraq expenditures do not stimulate the economy in the short run as much as expenditures on, say, infrastructure or education that are so badly needed here at home. A dollar spent to hire a Nepalese contractor-or even an Iraqi-in Iraq does not have the first round, second round, or nth round impacts that a dollar spent here does.
----continues in link----

Something about absolute power, something about corruption.

Alphax:Hmm, who's new alt is Love Boat?

I don't know, but he's exciting and new.

No, wait, he's tedious and annoying.

I don't know about you, but I love these impotent psychotics that are running this country.

Especially on the 4th of July. It's so great knowing we're held hostage by such hypocrites. It's the new Stockholm Syndrome. Only it's American.

saintstryfe:Alphax:Hmm, who's new alt is Love Boat?

I don't know, but he's exciting and new.

No, wait, he's tedious and annoying.

I think I saw him in the Jesse Helms thread talking about "no hate like liberal hate" so...

What's the likelihood of copycat alts of famous trolls?

Party Boy: (Insert: well reasoned arguments, organized comprehensivly, and backed-up by relevent external hyperlinks .)

STFU Rationalistard. I'll see your logic, and raise you a...:

The guy at the end of the thread:..:

That other post was good.

I made a new slide, I wanted to post it to see if fark resizes it or what. It's already kinda hard to read, resizing would make it totally illegible.



So, did it post alright? Hope so.

Persepolis:So, did it post alright? Hope so.

looks fine

Party Boy:looks fine

Cool. I'm not to psyched about the colors, but that's really not that important.

Persepolis:Party Boy:looks fine

Cool. I'm not to psyched about the colors, but that's really not that important.




It looks serious.

Party Boy:It looks serious.

serious topic.

On this day of our nations independence it is hard not to see the similarities between Benedict Arnold and Dick Cheney.
Both where war profiteers and both betrayed their countries for money. The exception is that Arnold served the country in battle before becoming a sell-out not so for Dick(deferment)Cheney!

Neoconservatives are hypocritical, self-serving sociopaths.

It not surprising Cheney said it. After all a couple of years earlier the company he was CEO of was selling nuclear enrichment parts to Iran, despite the sanctions and everything else.

Persepolis:I made a new slide, I wanted to post it to see if fark resizes it or what. It's already kinda hard to read, resizing would make it totally illegible.

So, did it post alright? Hope so.

It posted right, except the left side is wrong. "Pushing back 5-10 years" is the best possible outcome of air strikes, not the most likely.

pup.socket:Persepolis:I made a new slide, I wanted to post it to see if fark resizes it or what. It's already kinda hard to read, resizing would make it totally illegible.

So, did it post alright? Hope so.

It posted right, except the left side is wrong. "Pushing back 5-10 years" is the best possible outcome of air strikes, not the most likely.

Right. That's what I was going for. It's part of my profile. It's the best case scenario from limited, targeted airstrikes,(What most pro-war people sell it as) and it takes a lot of assumptions to even get to that point to be plausable.
Again, it's all in my profile. Check it out. let me know what you think. It's a work in progress.

Persepolis:I made a new slide, I wanted to post it to see if fark resizes it or what. It's already kinda hard to read, resizing would make it totally illegible.



So, did it post alright? Hope so.

lol @ the ground war, I'm not fighting no cracka's war and I ain't fightin no sand n*ggas...

FTA: Cheney said, "I think we Americans sometimes make mistakes . . . There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what's best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like."

It's hilarious at this bullcrap when he has America in 2 illegal wars which is killing our economy, forcing us to live the way he likes...

Not a Cheney fan at all, but someone is allowed to change his mind after ten years, right?

Flip-flopping allegations can be a tad ridiculous at times.

whizbangthedirtfarmer:Flip-flopping

Its not the "flip-flipping" thats really relevant here. Its his divergence from the neoconservative war planners on Iraq/Iran in the 1990's.

Party Boy:The guy at the end of the thread:..:

That other post was good.

lol. Usually, I try to spread my trolling out-sparingly and at least make an attempt to try to legitimatly contribute to discussions. But it was the 4th of July, and nothing says "forced American Romantic-Nationalism" like a well (poorly) placed Cox and Forkum cartoon.

Which brings up a good point. '98 Cheney seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders, and he just went to shiat after 2001. Makes me wonder if he's been Trolling us in RL? Like he's really getting a kick... etc.