LORDs Of War:

The News: A businesswoman in the county of Lexington, in the US state of South Carolina, pleaded guilty on August 16, 2007 to defrauding US taxpayers of $ 20.5 million in shipping costs for Pentagon supplies. According to a front-page story in The State newspaper, Charlene Corley, 46, pleaded guilty to a nine-year fraud that included charging the Pentagon $ 998,798.38 for shipping (wait for it) two 19 cent bolt washers.

At 19 cents each, the two bolt washers cost 38 cents (equivalent to less than Rs 23 at the current exchange rate). Yet the Pentagon paid C&D Distributors, a company co-owned by Corley and her twin si ster Darlene Wooten, nearly a million dollars for shipping the two bolt washers.

When Cheney was Defence Secretary in President George Bush Senior’s administration, he commissioned a study for the US Department of Defence by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Houston-based oil services giant Halliburton Corporation.

As Turnipseed noted, “The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton take over logistical support programmes for US military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defence, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defence with defence contractors and became CEO of Halliburton.”

Cheney remained CEO of Halliburton for five years (1995-2000). In the summer of 2000, he left Halliburton to become George W. Bush’s running mate in the US 2000 presidential campaign. On leaving Halliburton, Cheney received a severance package of $ 37 million from the company.

Halliburton was (surprise, surprise!) the principal beneficiary of Cheney’s privatisation efforts for the US military’s logistical support. As Turnipseed noted, “Cheney was paid $ 44 million for five year’s work (as Halliburton’s CEO) before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States.”

Before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq, Halliburton was 19th on the US Army’s list of top contractors. It zoomed to number 1 in 2003, after the US occupied Iraq and the Bush administration awarded $ 12 billion worth of reconstruction and supply contracts in Iraq to Halliburton and its construction subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) through a manifestly non-transparent no-bid process.

Turnipseed pointed out in his article, “(The US) media have always abetted war profiteering with their tradition of romanticising war because it sells papers, raises ratings, and makes profits for war-related businesses who advertise with them. Peace doesn’t make news for long.

A reader named C. Clark said, “Well done, but incomplete. Never forget that the two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), combined with tax breaks combined with the lowering of both estate taxes as well as investments, the Bush family and heirs stand to make out just fine, thank you, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush pere (former President George Bush Senior), remember, has a lovely feather bed with The Carlyle Group (a multibillion-dollar private investment firm), which used to be focused on just the defence industry but has branched off into being a fully fledged hedge fund…you know, one of those shadowy private corporations that are anything but transparent. No one knows what they own or how much. But the Bush children and grandchildren stand to gain quite a nice inheritance. Can anyone say Paris Hilton? Well, she would probably feel quite inferior considering the size of the Bush swag bag.”