Here it is, the untold tale of the latest Pentagon budget is the wastage and overpricing that continue to lard it up to the tune of perhaps $100 billion - with Congress scarcely paying attention.
Lard for the pig. They call it defense spending, but who is defending our wallets?
Wanna know whose paying for this ’security’? Here’s a clue.
In regards to the Independent UK report on the insurgency and increasing conditions of civil war in Iraq, I admit to having a slightly cynical view of the situation. It turns out that if you’re a country or a multinational corporation (and that distinction is getting blurry for the U.S.) then it’s actually cheaper and easier to exploit the resources of a country that’s in the middle of a civil war.
Rather than paying taxes or tarriffs, you just play both sides against the other, supply some old weapons and maybe give a fraction of the processed resource back to the hosts. Sure, there are periodic interruptions of the resource, let’s say when a pipeline gets bombed. But with every attack, the “legitimate” government gets more desperate for outside help until the situation develoves to what you have today in some countries where the only thing an oil company has to do to stay in the country and continue taking the oil is to protect, monitor, and repair the oil pipeline.
What people forget about Iraq (because the media has been relentless in trying to force them to forget) is that, before our invasion it was a SECULAR country. Most people in Iraq did not pay that much attention to the Mullahs under Saddam. After the invasion, after their existing society was completely destroyed, and after two years of occupation when U.S. policies ensured that there would be no jobs for the Iraqis except military, the people have, predicictably, turned to religion.
The most frequent victims of murder and assassination in Iraq for the past two years have been the professional class–Educated men and women who were the doctors, engineers, and educators in the old regime. Our occupation forces have not investigated these murders (even before the ‘insurgency’ got going), which commenced immediately with our occupation, because these voices of reason needed to be silenced before the civil strife could really get going.
In other countries, the reasons given for the conflict may be different, Maosim, Communism, Independence, but if you look at the situation strictly in terms of cash and resource extraction, you can’t make a sweeter deal than the one you can make with a rebel group–no taxes, no tarriffs, no environmental or labor regs, just pure profit.
So, yes, Iraq is heading towards civil war, but no that’s not a failure of Bush policies, it’s a success. The Busheviks have probably been tearing their hair out that it’s taken this long to get some really serious civil strife going. Remember, before they started fighting each other, the Sunnis and the Shiites were united to fight us. It must have taken a lot of agents a lot of effort to turn them away from us and towards each other.
As to the meltdown of Bush’s credibility, the oligarchs running the country have successfully shifted us to a British-style system. In Britain, poll numbers for the ruling party are typically very low in between elections. Then, just before the election, some manufactured crisis like the Falklands or mad cow disease comes along, and for just a few months people feel so insecure that they don’t dare change their government. Of course, eventually the ruling party does get ousted, but by then the opposition is so thoroughly infiltrated and comprimised that it doesn’t really matter. In England that translates to Tony Blair–a “labor” leader who has slashed labor protections and health care. In the U.S. that was Bill Clinton, a “liberal” whose welfare and trade policies did more to impoverish people and destroy the environment world-wide than any previous president.
Essential to this, of course, is absolute control of the media. We see that in the New York Times waiting until AFTER the mid-term election cycle to release the wire-tapping story. We saw it again this week as the media focused on the delightful Katrina tapes as the Senate was debating and passing the permanent Unpatriotic Act. We saw it after the 2004 elections as NPR stations carried gavel to gavel coverage of some bush appointment or another as the black congressional caucus desperately tried to contest the election results. Etc. Etc. Etc.
However, having said all that, I do agree that there is reason to hope. At least there IS a resistance. At least the black caucus DID try to contest the vote. Ten Senators DID vote against the Unpatriotic Act. The U.S. is not Britain with its history of oligarchy, slavery and servitude. We won’t settle for what they’ve got. I agree that the resistance is gaining strength and I love it.
- Posted by ‘Joe From Buffalo’ for USTV Media
David Swanson argues that this this is a pure war, but the vote for more funding will not be a pure vote. It will include nothing that the Iraqi people need, unless you think they’re longing for larger prisons. But, it will include crumbs for all sorts of noble excuses to vote buckets of taxpayers’ money for war - things like Hurricane Katrina relief, VA benefits, etc.
The Iraq War is a pure war, a war for the sake of war. Congress is debating whether to spend another fortune on it, another fortune that could completely remake this nation if spent on useful projects, and Congress has no reason for the war. The reason is purely that the media won’t like you if you vote against a war, but there’s no actual reason for the war - not the weapons of mass destruction that Bush always knew weren’t there, not the ties to 9-11 that Bush always knew did not exist on behalf of a ruler who, anyway, is no longer in power, not reducing terrorism which has been increased by this war, not improving global relations when this war has driven global opinion of the US to a record low, not preventing a civil war which the US attack and occupation have created, not supporting the troops when most of the troops want to come home - and almost half of them openly admit to pollsters that they don’t know why they’re there.
Dahr Jamail interviews American patriot Karen Kwiatkowski, who states that the neoconservatives are not new; during the Reagan era, the “Cold War” was their vehicle for credibility - this evil enemy that we must face, or else the end of the world is coming. They cannot work without this global enemy, almost a kind of class warfare. You can’t just have a mere enemy; it has to be a monstrous enemy, something that can destroy us. They’ve found that, or rather cultivated it, in what is called “Islamic Fascism.” Unfortunately this doesn’t exist.
The intellectual fathers of neoconservatism-what shapes their approach internationally-are the Bolsheviks. International revolution, international change-radical change, global revolution. And these same terms, these same ideas-of international change, revolution, transformation-these are the words of Michael Ledeen and some of the other articulators of neoconservatism. And the actual people, and they’re not ashamed to really say this, but guys like Irving Crystal and other intellectuals of the 30s had actually been Bolsheviks.
One of the characterizations of neocons today is that they are neo-Jacobins-philosophically, this idea that people are the same, all want the same thing, and should have the same thing. That ’same thing’ in a modern neoconservative view is this idea of ‘democracy.’ But is it really democracy that they want, or is democracy simply a trojan horse. Certainly for Iraq, George Bush has been left with one story as to why we went in
If they had democracy, they’d take a vote, and we’d be kicked out of there immediately.
Certainly we don’t want them to have democracy, because then they’ll make us leave. So it’s unclear that democracy is a goal, but that’s what they talk about: the God of Democracy. So it’s not like Trotskyism in the sense that they’re not advocating global communism but they are advocating universal, radical-and in effect, catastrophic-change. And this is kind of a clear thread for many years.
So the neoconservatives are not new; during the Reagan era, the ‘Cold War’ was their vehicle for credibility-this evil enemy that we must face, or else the end of the world is coming. They cannot work without this global enemy, almost a kind of class warfare. You can’t just have a mere enemy; it has to be a monstrous enemy, something that can destroy us. They’ve found that in, or rather cultivated it, in what is called ‘Islamic Fascism.’ Unfortunately this doesn’t exist. No one advocates it. No one articulates it. In the 1930s, Hitler had fascism and he talked about it. Islamic Fascism is a made up thing. But it doesn’t matter: what matters is that it’s useful in generating fear, and serves that same larger purpose-providing a platform from which to operate.
Now you can follow the money too. The neocon philosophy provides a construct within which we can-’we,’ being the establishment, corporatism-can move. So you have this construct that talks of ‘fear’ ‘protection,’ ’security.’ Which are used to advocate intervention-intervention for security, what Iraq was effectively sold as: ‘intervention for American security.’
Here’s something from Simon Jenkins’ blog on Huffington Post.
This has seemed clear to me since at least the initiation of the Iraq War, which distracted the US from bin Laden and, along with tax cuts, sucked the financial resources out of the nation’s treasury. What is not mentioned here is that bin Laden would also like to see the US go broke, in an expensive domestic conflagration, which is merely fighting shadows on the wall. Once weakened by tied-up forces in Iraq, and deeply in debt, it would be easy to come back and pick a weak spot for attack. The culture of jihad measures revenge by the century, when Americans forget who shot who last week (it was Dick Cheney). Waiting 10 years (from 9/11) for a major attack on a weakened adversary would not be a long time for them. Since then, our political “leaders” have done all the heavy lifting for bin Laden, reducing our civil liberties (remember those freedoms the enemy supposedly hated?) to ashes of the Constitution, which Bush, the American president himself, recently called “just a goddamned piece of paper.” In my view, bin Laden won decisively at that point. Our government is clearly no longer of the people.
There never was a “terrorist threat” to western civilisation or democracy, only to western lives and property. The threat becomes systemic only when democracy loses its confidence and when its leaders are weak, as now. Terror attacks are for the police. For Bush and Blair to demand a “long war” against bin Laden and, by implication, a long suppression of civil liberty is ludicrous. Western civilisation is not some simpering weakling that cowers before a fanatic’s might, pleading for leaders to protect it by all means, however illegal. It has been proof against Islamic expansionism since the 15th century. It is not at risk.
The American president and the British prime minister have spent half a decade exploiting bin Laden for political ends, in thrall to their security/industrial complex. They have relied on terrifying their electorates with new and bloodcurdling threats, with what Runciman calls “spook politics”. But they will pass. The half-baked “message” laws passed by Britain’s limp parliament last week will fall in disuse. The vitality of British and American democracy has always been its ability to produce antibodies when truly challenged by an internal or external menace. The west will rediscover its self-belief and restore the liberalism, properly defined as freedom, it once exemplified to the world.
- Posted by Pete for USTV Media
What do you want to bet the Bush administration will reverse themselves on the issue of the military draft if this actually happens.
Ray McGovern, is a former veteran CIA analyst turned outspoken opponent of American fascism and founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, recently exclaimed: “This is what our German forbearers in the 1930s did NOT do. They sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’… That is something we cannot do. Because I don’t want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?’”
Here he unravels the same M.O. at work yet again with this administration dedicated to perpetual war.
Who Makes The Profits?
By General Smedley Butler, USMC
Reader’s Digest
First Published 1935
The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven’t paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children’s children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits - ah! that is another matter - twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent - the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket - and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a few examples:
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people - didn’t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump - or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let’s look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let’s group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren’t the only ones. There are still others. Let’s take leather.
For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That’s all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company - and you can’t have a war without nickel - showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public - even before a Senate investigatory body.
But here’s how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought - and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn’t any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it - so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches - one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.
There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 - count them if you live long enough - was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them - a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers - all got theirs.
Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment - knapsacks and the things that go to fill them - crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them - and they will do it all over again the next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48- inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.
Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn’t ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn’t float! The seams opened up - and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying “for some time” methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee - with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator - to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn’t suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses - that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Administration Misleads On Prospects In Iraq
The Daily Mis-Lead
September 17th, 2004
In late July, a report prepared for the President by his National Intelligence Counsel spelled out “a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq.”[1] According to the New York Times, “the estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.”[2] But that didn’t stop Bush and other members of the administration from telling the American people that Iraq was headed in the right direction.
On August 5, President Bush said, “[Iraq is] on the path to lasting democracy and liberty.”[3] On August 24, Vice President Cheney told voters in Iowa that “We’re moving in the right direction [in Iraq].”[4] And this Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Iraqis were “working at making a success out of that country…And I think they’ve got a darned good crack at making it.” [5]
Sources:
1. “U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq’s Future,” New York Times, 9/16/04
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1202081&l=56345
2. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1202081&l=56345
3. “President Signs Defense Bill ,” The White House, 8/05/04
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1202081&l=56346
4. “Remarks by the Vice President and Mrs. Cheney Followed by Question and Answer at a Town Hall Meeting ,” The White House, 8/24/04
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1202081&l=56347
5. “Secretary Rumsfeld Town Hall Meeting at Ft. Campbell, Ky.,” U.S. Department of Defense, 9/14/04
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1202081&l=56348
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Energy Task Force Documents Feature Iraqi Oilfields Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi Oilfields
Judicial Watch
July 17, 2003
Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas Projects, Contracts & Exploration
Saudi Arabian & UAE Oil Facilities Profiled As Well
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watchís Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org
The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each countryís oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.
Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002.
The documents were produced in response to Judicial Watchís on-going efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in government on behalf of the American people. Judicial Watch aggressively pursues those goals by making FOIA requests and seeking access to public information concerning government operations. When the government fails to abide by these ìsunshine laws, Judicial Watch files lawsuits in order to obtain the requested information and to hold responsible government officials accountable.
“These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
The Private Contractor - GOP Gravy Train
By Robert Schlesinger
Salon.com
May 11th, 2004
From Blackwater to CACI, mercenary companies in Iraq have a warm and cozy relationship with the Republican politicians who are employing them.
Private armies have become ubiquitous in Iraq, supplying everything from support services to mercenary soldiers to interrogators. While Halliburton’s contracts for logistical support have been widely reported, until the firefight in Fallujah in late March left four Blackwater Security employees dead, the public knew little about the extent to which the estimated 20,000 private military forces in Iraq are participating in direct military action.
The shocking photographs of the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison raise anew questions about the U.S. military’s use of private contractors. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba’s report about practices at the prison contained information that two CACI employees “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.” Contractors from Titan International were also present during the abuses.
“This industry really didn’t exist 10 years ago,” says Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.” A decade ago, mercenary soldiering was less the stuff of corporate America than the inspiration for Soldier of Fortune fantasies. Now, as Singer reported in Salon, the industry generates over $100 billion annually worldwide.
As little known as these companies are to the general public, they are only too familiar in Washington, where they have deployed a different kind of mercenary force — phalanxes of lobbyists — along with the ammunition of modern political warfare, campaign contributions. And they have found eager friends, particularly among Republican leaders in and out of Congress.
“The move into the political game tends to happen for three reasons,” Singer says. “One, this business is growing. Second, companies that are in other industries move into the sector, bringing influence and lobbyists to bear.” Examples include Halliburton and, in the case of private security firms and other companies that provide combat- or intelligence-oriented services, firms like CACI and Titan. Finally, Singer says, “A lot of firms have picked up lobbyists as they’ve gained a public profile.”
Blackwater, the firm that guards Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer, and whose men were killed at Fallujah, has hired the well-connected Alexander Strategy Group to guide it through the current publicity storm and help influence Congress on whatever rules are generated to govern private militias in war zones, according to the Hill newspaper.
Alexander may turn out to be a clever choice: Ed Buckham, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, is Alexander’s chairman. Tony Rudy, another former top DeLay operative, and Karl Gallant, who once ran DeLay’s leadership PAC, are also onboard.
Blackwater also works other angles. One of the firm’s founders is Michigan native Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL. His father, Edgar Prince, helped religious right leader Gary Bauer found the Family Research Council in 1988. Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, is the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party. But Blackwater is a relative newcomer to the Washington influence game, especially compared with CACI and Titan, which have been trailblazers.
For more than four years, CACI has employed the Livingston Group and its “strategic partner,” Louisiana law firm Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere and Denegre, to represent the company’s interests in Washington. Since 2000, CACI has poured $160,000 into Livingston and $150,000 into Jones, Walker.
The Livingston who gave the firm its name is former House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston, the Louisiana Republican designated as Newt Gingrich’s successor to the speaker’s gavel in 1998. Amid the House debate over the impeachment of President Clinton, Livingston dramatically announced his retirement because of his own sexual peccadilloes. “Livingston is the only former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee now in private practice,” reads a bio on his firm’s Web site.
Livingston’s former top staffers, who have joined him in the private sector, also work on the CACI account, according to lobbying filings with the House and Senate. In addition, the two firms employ former legislative liaisons (bureaucratese for lobbyists) from the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard — all registered to lobby for CACI.
More than 92 percent of CACI’s $843 million in revenues last year came from the federal government — 63 percent from the Pentagon alone. The company’s lobbyists are essential in the continuing effort to grease that wheel of fortune.
Titan’s lineup of lobbyists is even broader. Its in-house team includes chairman Gene Ray, a former top Air Force official; John Dressendorfer, a former White House lobbyist under President Reagan who also worked in President Nixon’s Pentagon; Lawrence Delaney, who closed out his service to the Clinton administration as acting undersecretary of the Air Force; and, for good measure, Susan Golding, a former Republican mayor of San Diego.
Titan’s hired guns include the law firm of Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton and Shockey, which employs Letitia White, a longtime staffer to Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., to work on Titan’s issues. Lewis, by the way, is the chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The firm American Defense International, also employed by Titan, includes Van Hipp, a former deputy assistant secretary of the Army under then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney who was later appointed the No. 2 lawyer in the Navy, and Michael Herson, a former special assistant to then Secretary Cheney.
What’s more, Titan has engaged the services of NorthPoint Strategies, composed mainly of former top staffers to Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif. Cunningham, a former member of the Armed Services Committee, as it happens sits on the Appropriations defense subcommittee as well as the Intelligence Committee.
All told, Titan has spent $1.29 million since 2000 on Washington lobbying. In 2003 alone, it paid NorthPoint $240,000. And its lobbying has paid off. Last year, the company had revenues of $1.8 billion, according to its annual report: “Our revenues from U.S. government business represented approximately 96% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2003.”
This revolving door between congressional staffers or retired military personnel and lobbying firms is not circumscribed by the requirements of the House and Senate lobby registration. Most of the private contractors operating in Iraq have high-ranking retired brass in their executive suites. CACI’s board of directors, for example, features retired Gen. Larry Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff. Carl Vuono and Ronald Griffith, the president and executive vice president, respectively, of Alexandria, Va., firm MPRI, which is helping to train and equip the new Iraqi Army, are both retired generals.
But preexisting relationships are only one weapon in the Washington operator’s arsenal. Money remains one of the most important tools.
Not surprisingly, these companies have been very generous to the Republican Party. Titan’s PAC, for example, has contributed a dozen times more money to Republicans than to Democrats during this election cycle: It kicked in $182,000 to Republican committees and candidates, including $10,000 apiece to the leadership PACs of Lewis, Cunningham, Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. (whose leadership group is called Peace Through Strength PAC). Titan’s PAC also gave the maximum $10,000 to the campaign committees of Cunningham, Lewis and Hunter. Democrats have received a mere $15,000 from Titan.
In addition, top executives with Titan have contributed in excess of $58,000 to political candidates and committees since 2000, more than $49,000 of that amount going to Republicans. Ray alone gave $28,000, the bulk of it to Republicans. Reps. Cunningham and Hunter each got from Titan executives at least $10,000 (not including the $3,000 given to Hunter’s Peace Through Strength PAC). The Democrat who has received the most money from Titan executives is Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
CACI executives gave a total of $29,250 over the same time period, $25,750 of it to Republican interests. J.P. “Jack” London, CACI’s CEO, alone gave $10,000, all to Republicans.
Some of the private security firms in Iraq are clearly fresh to the political game: Three executives from Triple Canopy — whose forces fought a pitched battle against Iraqi insurgents in April — each wrote $2,000 in checks to the Bush-Cheney campaign in March.
While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has now testified on Iraqi prisoner abuse — some of it carried out by workers employed by private firms — no hearings have yet been scheduled on the widespread use of mercenaries to fill jobs once performed by U.S. soldiers. And deployment of such workers is unlikely to decrease as election year contributions grow: The number of hired mercenaries is expected to double after the June 30 hand-over of “limited sovereignty” to an Iraqi government.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
