The Daily Grasshopper

Way back on January 4th I wrote:

"Big Oil is going to abandon Kazakhstan in a New York minute ("Competition for the investment dollars could intensify") for the much more lucrative option of getting in on the ground floor in a "liberated" Iraq, which has the second-largest petroleum reserves in the world (after Saudi Arabia), oil that is relatively easy to refine and transport."

http://www.netway.com/~pkeaney/010403chicken.html

And more recently, on February 13th, I wrote:

"The war will not only provide some of the cheapest, most easily transportable oil on earth to U.S. companies, it will also provide incredibly lucrative construction contracts to companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root (a unit of Halliburton, the world's #1 oil services company - http://www.halliburton.com/) and Schlumberger (http://www.slb.com/oilfield/). For more, read http://www.progressive.org/dec02/sca1202.html.

Hmm... Halliburton, Halliburton... where have I heard that name before? Oh, right. That's the company that former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney joined after the Bush I administration and the one he left to join Bush II as his second in command. He was the CEO from 1995 until 2000, a period during which government contracts increased by 91 percent, to $2.3 billion. I'm sure they're not lobbying for a war on Iraq, though."

http://www.netway.com/~pkeaney/021303boot.html

And in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, you could read this story:

"U.S. Prepares for Rebuilding of Iraq

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is preparing to award a contract valued at as much as $900 million to begin rebuilding a postwar Iraq, in what would be the largest government reconstruction effort since Americans helped to rebuild Germany and Japan after World War II."

That's the lead paragraph. Here are some other interesting parts (I can't link to WSJ articles, unfortunately):

"Some observers have raised concerns about how the plan ultimately would be funded. 'One must convince the world that this is not profiteering while also acknowledging the need to get the work done quickly,' said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. 'But what bothers people is that some of these contracts may not be real aid, but may obligate Iraqis to pay for the work. There is also a concern that work may be given only to U.S and British companies.'"

The article then goes on to list the companies ("five large domestic construction companies with international operations") that the Bush administration invited to bid on this billion-dollar boondoggle. Are you ready?

• Bechtel Group
• Fluor Corporation
• Kellogg Brown & Root (Halliburton)
• Louis Berger Group
• Parsons Corporation

The nation's business newspaper also reports the same story that the San Francisco Chronicle reported last Friday:

"The Pentagon has already tapped Kellogg Brown & Root to lay out a plan for fighting oil-well fires in Iraq should that prove necessary. Vic President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's chief executive until 2000, when he quit and sold his stock in the company to join the Republican presidential ticket with George W. Bush."

So while the usual suspects are looking forward to getting ever fatter at the public trough (you'll recall that the Pentagon contracts are underwritten by U.S. taxpayer dollars), there is the pesky question of what's going to happen to the Iraqi people. You remember them, right? The ones we're going to liberate? Those people whose freedom our president so piously invokes when he needs to close the deal with the American people on his oil war? Here's how the Wall St. Journal article ends:

"American humanitarian groups praised the rebuilding effort, but complained that the administration is still unprepared to deal with much more immediate wartime needs in Iraq."

(Editor's note: I guess that would depend on your definition of "immediate wartime needs," wouldn't it?)

"They are also eager to see the U.S. offer more moeny for humanitarian work to non-governmental organizations, along with the contracts now being offered to for-profit companies.

The U.S. has moved three million daily food rations to the region, but Iraq is home to about 25 million people. The World Food Program has an additional 150,000 metric tons in the region - about enough to feed Iraq's most vulnerable population for a little more than a week."

Call me cynical, but I don't think I have anything on the Brits and the Americans putting together this U.N. Security Council vote on a second resolution. Their "coalition of the willing" is anything but, as this weekend's latest round of "diplomacy" has made clear. And as for respecting democratic processes, there's the usual lip service to the will of the people and consent of the governed (from the Wall Street Journal's "For Bush, Outcome of U.N. Vote Could Have Effects Beyond Iraq," Mar. 10, p. A1):

"As a sign of how fragile support is for the U.S. and Britain, one British official said that the resolution now being pushed, and the political pitch to the fence sitters, has been carefully crafted so that no country ever has to say it is voting for a war. Under a new version the U.S. and Britain agreed to Friday, the resolution simply says that Iraq is failing to disarm and that Baghdad has until March 17 to change that.

'It would allow a country to vote for the resolution and still criticize our military action if that's what their internal politics requires,' said the British official."

Everyone remembers the "internal politics" in Turkey, and how, last weekend, the overwhelming (near-total) opposition to war on Iraq resulted in a "stunning" defeat for U.S. war plans in the region. You may recall that the Bush administration's "best hope" for a second crack at troops in Turkey was a pre-emptive strike on the local stock market by international financiers. Well, imagine my surprise when I read Charles Radin's Boston Globe story on Monday about the election in Turkey on Sunday. Here's what he had to say about the proposal's chance of passing now that Recep Erdogan is going to be Turkey's Prime Minister:

"There were unconfirmed reports that President Bush spoke with Erdogan yesterday and asked that parliamentary support for the United States be secured this week. Some Turkish media are reporting that a vote could come as early as Thursday.

The proposal is considered highly likely to pass the second time around for a number of reasons - more direct leadership from Erdogan, advocacy of the proposal by the powerful and influential chief of the Turkish armed services, and lack of complacency on the part of the ruling party's political whips."

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/069/nation/Party_s_win_paves_way_for_pro_US_leader+.shtml

How about that? The attack by the "virtual senate" on Turkey's economy had nothing to do with the inevitability of American troops being stationed on Iraq's northern border against the will of just about every last Turk - it's just removed from history. Apparently, now that "democracy" (the American kind) has prevailed in Turkey, we can count on "internal politics" like leadership from Erdogan (and the country's leading general) to get the deal done. That's the Globe for you - although, to be fair, the Globe's parent company, the New York Times, also omitted any mention of the dramatic swoon in Turkey's stock market the day after the vote. But on Sunday, the Times had an article entitled, "Will Turkey Pay for Its Defiance?" in its "Week in Review" section that acknowledged reality: "the Turkish government appears to have been unnerved by the 15 percent plunge in the Turkish stock market."

You can read the article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/weekinreview/09MILL.html

And, finally, I know you're going to think I'm making this up, but I swear, it's in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. There's an article on the front page of the "Marketplace" section called "CNN's Own War," about the news giant's plan to "fight its own battle in Iraq because what happens there is key to the network's future." The basic gist of the article is that this war is being as eagerly anticipated in the boardrooms of News Corporation (FOX) and AOL Time Warner Inc. (CNN) as it is in those of Halliburton and ExxonMobil.

But the really funny part is the graphic that accompanies the story. Here's the description of the chart, which shows two spikes in CNN viewership over the last decade:

"Despite bumpy ratings, viewers have traditionally turned to CNN when hard news breaks."

The second spike, in 2001, is labelled "The U.S. invades Afghanistan." The first one? Well, that bit of "hard news" came to us back in 1994, as I'm sure you all remember. It's labelled "O.J. Simpson SUV chase." I'm serious. I haven't lied to you yet.