Source:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=594
In 1917, at the height of World War I, Wisconsin Sen. Robert M. La Follette
caused quite a stir when he suggested that one of the best ways to support the
US troops fighting in Europe was to expose and challenge American corporations
that engage in all forms of war profiteering. Even as attention is focused
abroad on battles still raging, La Follette said, it is important to remain
ever mindful "that there are enemies of democracy in the homeland." "These,"
the Senator continued, "are the powers of special privilege that take advantage
of the opportunity which war affords to more firmly entrench themselves in
their control of government and industry. These interests are amassing enormous
fortunes out of the world's misery." More than 85 years later, America finds
itself embedded in a very different conflict, yet La Follette's words still
ring true. No matter what Americans think about the Bush Administration's
preemptive invasion of Iraq, there should be broad agreement on the need to
ensure that corporations do not turn the war and its aftermath into a bonanza
for their bottom lines and a boondoggle for US taxpayers. In other words: Now
that the statues of Saddam Hussein have been toppled, it is time to topple the
war profiteers. But where to begin? Recent days have brought news of the
awarding of a contract worth up to $680 million to rebuild Iraqi roads,
schools, sewers and hospitals damaged in the war. Bechtel, which is jokingly
referred to in business circles as Bushtel, donated $1.3 million to political
candidates during the last two election cycles -- with most of it going into
the coffers of Republican campaigns, including the 2000 Bush for President
effort. Surely, Bechtel is an attractive target for a Congressional
investigation of war profiteering--like those begun after World War I and
during World War II. But if Congress is going to get serious about war
profiteering, there is no better place to begin than the Texas-based
Halliburton Corp. energy conglomerate that Vice-President Dick Cheney once
headed. According to a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers released this
week, a Pentagon contract given without competition to a Halliburton subsidiary
to fight oil well fires in Iraq is worth as much as $7 billion over two years.
The contract allows Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, to
collect as much as a 7 percent profit. That could amount to $490 million.
Cheney, who collected more than $33 million in compensation from Halliburton
when he quit to become vice president--and who still receives deferred
compensation from the company of about $180,000 a year--says that he has not
intervened on behalf of his old company. And National Security Council
spokesman Michael Anton says, "The White House has no role in selecting
individual contractors." But Kellogg Brown & Root has had quite a run of luck
since the Bush Administration took over. The federal government and the
Pentagon have paid the firm tens of millions of dollars to build cells for
detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. And the company is earning hundreds of
millions as the exclusive logistics supplier for the Navy and the Army,
providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel
transportation. The best accounting so far available suggests that, between
October 2000 and March 2002, the government awarded Kellogg Brown & Root work
worth more than $624 million. Two senior members of the US House--Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., and John Dingell, D-Mich.--have asked the General Accounting Office,
the investigative arm of Congress, to review contracts received over the last
two years by Halliburton and its subsidiaries. "The ties between the vice
president and Halliburton have raised concerns about whether the company has
received favorable treatment from the Administration," Waxman and Dingell
bluntly declared in their letter to the GAO. The investigation of Halliburton
should coincide with congressional action to tighten procedures for awarding
government contracts and with steps to ensure that corporations are prevented
from profiteering in wartime or its aftermath--as in World War II, when the
chair of the Senate's Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense
Program referred to war profiteering as "treason." That Senator was Harry Truman.