[First we should review what happened circa 1990 and who did and said what to cause that "Gulf conflict".  It would not be surprising that many of you never heard what happened, and others may have heard it in passing, but did not include it when making up your mind on these matters.  There is no doubt there are people who will say it does not matter who said what, or did what, and that the US government is justified in whatever it has done, or will do, but history has begrudgingly revealed truths that belie what public opinion of the time supported.

The following articles and news reports help show some motivations for attacking Iraq and how it was staged and who stands to benefit (follow the money trail) and who can be trusted when they say one thing then do another.]

The invasion was the result of a long-standing territorial dispute. Iraq accused Kuwait of violating the Iraqi border to secure oil resources, (on July 17, 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of flooding the world oil market. In addition, he singled out Kuwait for the production of oil from a disputed supply, the Rumaila oil field), and demanded that its debt repayments should be waived. Direct negotiations were begun in July 1990, but they were destined soon to fail; along with reassurance from the United States making a claim that they would not get involved (the famous meeting of Saddam Hussein with April Glaspie, the United States Ambassador to Iraq, on the 25th of July, 1990). This was the go ahead that Hussein needed.

On July 25, 1990, eight days before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a meeting took place between Saddam Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie at the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. The transcript of this meeting is as follows:

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie: "I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I have lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your other threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?"

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie:"What solutions would be acceptable?"

Saddam Hussein: "If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (which, in Saddam's view, includes Kuwait) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?"

(Pause, then Ambassador Glaspie speaks carefully)
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."

“Down the Memory Hole” With Weapons of Mass Destruction?
by Paul Street; April 11, 2003
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=3444&sectionID=10

“Who Controls the Past…”

In 1984, George Orwell’s haunting dystopian novel set in a totalitarian state called Oceania, the government and its informational apparatus have a chilling knack for instantaneous historical revision.  Whenever Big Brother, the all-powerful outer face of the ruling circles of the Inner Party, changes the official government line on some area of foreign or domestic policy, closely monitored functionaries in the Ministry of Truth are put to work transforming the official record of the past.  Historical facts that seem to contradict or otherwise challenge the new turn(s) are thrown “down the memory hole.”  New facts are invented to create the illusion of flat continuity between past, present and future, consistent with a key party slogan: “Who controls the past controls the future.  Who controls the present controls the past.”

For most of his adult life, chief 1984 protagonist Winston Smith knows, Oceania had been at war with rival totalitarian state Eastasia and allied with a third similar nightmarish formation called Eurasia.  In 1984 (“if it was 1984”), however, Oceania was now officially at war with Eurasia and allied to Eastasia.  Winston and other ideological functionaries worked to annihilate all record and indeed consciousness, including their own, of the earlier alignment, now embarrassing to the Party, official “guardian of democracy” and practitioner of “Permanent War.”

Most of 1984’s many readers in the western liberal-capitalist world shuddered at the horror depicted by Orwell.  We were certain, however, that the threat Orwell described found its only relevant real-life representation or potential in the pseudo-socialist Soviet empire that provided the main living model for 1984.  Orwell’s novel directed our fears externally – the totalitarian threat was “over there.”  Surely, we liked to think, the threats he pointed up collapsed with Stalinism.

A Junior High School Research Proposal

We might want to re-think that. Consider, for example, the impressive rapidity of the recent shift in Big Brother Bush’s party line on why the current Oceanic “coalition” (America, England and a ragtag scrum of the “bullied and bribed”) illegally invaded and overthrew the government of a formerly sovereign nation in a tinderbox region of the world.

The essence of the shift is suggested in the recent comments of official Chicago Police Department spokesperson Pat Camden, explaining why the CPD arrested hundreds of protestors the day after the bombing of Baghdad commenced.  According to Camden, who apparently enjoys a long leash from city police superintendent Terry Hilliard, “You have to ask yourself, what’s the cost of liberty? What’s the cost of protest?  We’re sending people to Iraq to put their lives on the line so that the people of Iraq can exercise liberties,” says Camden (quoted in Ben Joravsky, “Taken By Surprise,” in Chicago’s weekly Reader, April 4, 2003), brushing aside the arguments of numerous world intellectuals, who think the White House is driven by less elevated objectives related to the projection of American power.

There’s a lot to question in Camden’s remarks, including the appropriateness of local law enforcement editorializing on the purposes of US foreign policy.  The most remarkable thing about Camden’s statement, however, is the expeditious ease with which it pours that policy out from the new mould manufactured by the White House and its corporate-state media in the post-invasion era.  Wasn’t this hopelessly one-sided “war” on Iraq sold to the American people first and foremost as self-protection against a “reckless” regime that intended to attack us with an awesome stockpile of deadly chemical, biological and (someday soon) nuclear weapons and its supposed alliance with al Qaeda and other?

Yes, and it remains entirely possible that the US and its compliant media will find or claim to find some significant stock of WMD, but that’s all pretty much over for now, for reasons that are easy to guess.  These include the simple absence of serious evidence of WMD (hardly surprising to those who read between the lines of US propaganda during the already apparently ancient pre-invasion era that ended nearly three weeks ago) so far.  Also relevant is the need to construct new justifications for a transparently illegal and monumentally expensive occupation. The White House hopes, further, to set up new invasions of countries not so strongly linked in the admittedly ever-changing public mind to WMD. It is relevant, finally, that recent polling data is giving the Bushies a green light to downplay WMD. A recent Los Angeles Times survey found that 83 percent of American “war” supporters will continue to support the military action “even if the [US and UK] forces don’t find weapons of mass destruction.”  (Elaine Povich, “Support Grows for Bush, War,” Newsweek, 6 April, 2003)

So here’s an interesting research project for all you junior high social studies students.  Go to the web site of the United States White House (www.whitehouse.gov), click on the president’s radio addresses over the last six months (upper left section of the web site), and print each one that relates in anyway to Iraq.  Read all of the addresses (they usually run less than a page) with two magic markers on your desk – one yellow and one blue.  Mark with yellow every time you see the president mention Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Saddam’s link to al-Quaeda or other terrorists, Saddam’s “threat” to Americans and/or the world or the goal of “disarming” Saddam. Mark with blue every time you see the president speak about the struggles or difficulties of the Iraqi people, the domestic oppression practiced by Saddam, or the goal of freeing or liberating those people. Mostly yellow-marked printouts are basically about protecting ourselves from the ruler of Iraq.  The mostly blue-marked ones are about freeing the Iraqi people. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you will be marking your printouts up with a lot more yellow than blue until maybe just the last two radio addresses.

On the last Saturday prior to the commencement of American bombing, the presidential radio address Camden might have heard mentioned Saddam’s “terrible” “weapons of mass destruction” at least five times and claimed that Saddam “sponsors terror.”  Bush specified “mustard agent, botulinum toxin and sarin, capable of killing millions” (the previously standard nuclear threat was revealingly absent).   He spoke of Saddam only as a threat to Americans and others outside Iraq.

As portrayed in Bush’s address, the goal of the then still impending “war” was thoroughly defensive: it was to “protect ourselves” from a reckless maniac determined to attack us and destroy “the peace of the world.”  Neither the situation of the Iraq people nor the goal of liberating them were mentioned even once, unless we want to count Bush’s credible claim that Iraq was using innocent people as human shields.

In his last radio address (April 5th) as of this writing, by contrast, Bush used the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” exactly once and only once suggested a link between Saddam and global terrorism. The “Iraqi people” were mentioned seven times, and the “freedom” or “liberation” (or their roots) of Iraqis was mentioned five times. The no longer imminent “war” is now being sold as a practically selfless campaign on behalf of what Bush rightly calls “the long suffering people of Iraq,” victims of what Bush rightly terms “one of the cruelest regimes on earth.”  Bush naturally deletes the powerful role that American policy played in entrenching that very regime not only before but also after its invasion of Kuwait.

Official Deletions in the Pre-Invasion Era

Back in the already officially ancient Pre-Invasion Era (a bit more recent than the Age of Mesopotamia), when America was content to merely contain Saddam, other Orwellian deletions were required in relation to Iraq by the White House and agreed to by the US media.  The leading erasure concerned America’s critical support of Saddam and his various weapons programs prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which was carried out with a green light from the US State Department. The support included the US-approved export of deadly biological agents.   It also involved the leading ambassadorial hand of (for goodness sake!) Donald Rumsfeld.

Then as now, honest discussion of that history was forbidden not simply because it contradicted America’s false and narcissistic image of itself as the benevolent historical homeland and exporter of democratic civilization. Equally if not more significant, that history contradicted the official line that Saddam was a “reckless,” practically suicidal fanatic determined to risk his life and regime to strike his hated American enemy.  It may be disgusting but it isn’t suicidal or reckless to use chemical weapons against defenseless Kurds or Iraqis when you do so with the approval and support of the most powerful nation on earth. (See John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy, January-February 2003 and Carl Kaysen et al, War With Iraq: Costs, Consequences and Alternatives, The Committee on International Security Studies of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, December 2002).

For these and other reasons, Reagan, Bush 41 and “Rummy’s” little affair with Saddam, is a little bit like Oceania’s previous alliance with Eurasia – best swept into history’s ashcan in light of current events.

The New Millennium’s Ministry of Truth

Of course, Camden doesn’t need instruction from the White House to spout the new official justification for an illegal war on Iraq and mass political arrests on American streets. He only needs to watch CNN, the supposed “fair” alternative to the openly crypto-fascist Fox News, observing its anchors and carefully selected commentators jump to the snap of their masters’ doctrinal whip like the finely trained neo-Orwellians they’ve allowed themselves to become.  They zeroed in on the oversold drama of Saddam’s falling statue (near a hotel where western reporters had just been slaughtered by “errant” US artillery) as American personnel scoured the grounds of ancient Mesopotamia for evidence of the practically forgotten weapons that supposedly necessitated the “war” in the first place.

They and other parts of the Corporate Communications Empire make up the new millennium’s de facto Ministry of Truth.  Their owners and managers have moved decisively into the vanguard of the Permanent Warrior class.

----   More articles by Paul Street
Paul Street (pstreet@cul-chicago.org) is the author of “Free to Be Poor: The Devil’s Gift at Millennium’s Turn,” Z Magazine (June 2001)
This article first appeared in ZNET (www.zmag.org/weluser.htm).  Paul Street is the author of “Color Bind," a chapter in Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (Routledge Press, 2003), edited by Tara Herivel and Paul Wright. Email: pstreet@cul-chicago.org.

==================

Welcome aboard the Iraqi gravy train
Terry Jones, The Observer, Sunday April 13, 2003
http://r.searchhippo.com/r2.php?i=1&q=%22Bechtel%22+AND+%22terry+jones%22&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2F

Congratulations to all the winners of tickets to take part in the greatest rebuilding show on earth

Well the war has been a huge success, and I guess it's time for congratulations all round. And wow! It's hard to know where to begin.
First, I'd like to congratulate Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) and the Bechtel Corporation, which are the construction companies most likely to benefit from the reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts in the region of $1 billion should soon coming your way, chaps. Well done! And what with the US dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles on Iraq so far and with more to come, there's going to be a lot of reconstruction. It looks like it could be a bonanza year.

Of course, we all know that KBR is the construction side of Halliburton, and it has been doing big business with the military ever since the Second World War. Most recently, it got the plum job of constructing the prison compound for terrorists suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Could be a whole lot more deluxe chicken coops coming your way in the next few months, guys. Stick it to 'em.

I'd also like to add congratulations to Dick Cheney, who was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and who currently receives a cheque for $1 million a year from his old company. I guess he may find there's a little surprise bonus in there this year. Well done, Dick.

Congratulations, too, to former Secretary of State, George Schultz. He's not only on the board of Bechtel, he's also chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group with close ties to the White House committed to reconstructing the Iraqi economy through war. You're doing a grand job, George, and I'm sure material benefits will be coming your way, as sure as the Devil lives in Texas.

Oh, before I forget, a big round of appreciation for Jack Sheehan, a retired general who sits on the Defence Policy Board which advises the Pentagon. He's a senior vice president at Bechtel and one of the many members of the Defence Policy Board with links to companies that make money out of defence contracts. When I say 'make money' I'm not joking. Their companies have benefited to the tune of $76bn just in the last year. Talk about a gravy train. Well, Jack, you and your colleagues can certainly look forward to a warm and joyous Christmas this year.

It;s been estimated that rebuilding Iraq could cost anything from $25bn to $100bn and the great thing is that the Iraqis will be paying for it themselves out of their future oil revenues. What's more, President Bush will be able to say, with a straight face, that they're using the money from Iraqi oil to benefit the Iraqi people. 'We're going to use the assets of the people of Iraq, especially their oil assets, to benefit their people,' said Secretary of State Colin Powell, and he looked really sincere. Yessir.

It's so neat it makes you want to run out and buy shares in Fluor. As one of the world's biggest procurement and construction companies, it recently hired Kenneth J. Oscar, who, as acting assistant secretary of the army, took care of the Pentagon's $35bn-a-year procurement budget. So there could also be some nice extra business coming its way soon. Bully for them.

But every celebration has its serious side, and I should like to convey my condolences to all those who have suffered so grievously in this war. Particularly American Airlines, Qantas and Air Canada, and all other travel companies which have seen their customers dwindle, as fear of terrorist reprisals for what the US and Britain have done in Iraq begins to bite.

My condolences also to all those British companies which have been disappointed in their bid to share in the bonanza that all this wonderful high-tech military firepower has created. I know it must be frustrating and disheartening for many of you, especially in the medical field, knowing there are all those severed limbs, all that burnt flesh, all those smashed skulls, broken bones, punctured spleens, ripped faces and mangled children just crying out for your products.

You could be making a fortune out of the drugs, serums and surgical hardware, and yet you have to stand on the sidelines and watch as US drug companies make a killing.

Well, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, has some words of comfort for us all. As he recently pointed out, this adventure by Bush and Blair will have created such hatred throughout the Arab world, that 100 new bin Ladens will have been created.

So all of us here in Britain, as well as in America, shouldn't lose heart. Once the Arab world starts to take its revenge, there should be enough reconstruction to do at home to keep business thriving for some years to come.

==================

Halliburton: All In The Family
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/25/60minutes/main551091.shtml

(CBS - 60 Minutes - April 27, 2003) After dropping more than 28,000 bombs on Iraq, the United States has now begun the business of rebuilding the country.

And it promises to be quite a business. With at least $60 billion to be spent over the next three years, the Iraqi people won't be the only ones benefiting. The companies that land the biggest contracts to do the work will cash in big-time.

Given all the taxpayer money involved, you might think the process for awarding those contracts would be open and competitive. Well, so far, it has been none of the above. And the early winners in the sweepstakes to rebuild Iraq have one thing in common: lots of very close friends in very high places, correspondent Steve Kroft reports.

One is Halliburton, the Houston-based energy services and construction giant whose former CEO, Dick Cheney, is now vice president of the United States.

Vice President Dick Cheney was the former CEO of Halliburton. (AP / CBS)

Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well fires and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.

But Robert Andersen, chief counsel for the Army Corps of Engineers, says that oil field damage was much less than anticipated and Halliburton will end up collecting only a small fraction of that $7 billion. But he can't say how small a fraction or exactly what the contract covers because the mission and the contract are considered classified information.

Under normal circumstances, the Army Corps of Engineers would have been required to put the oil fire contract out for competitive bidding. But in times of emergency, when national security is involved, the government is allowed to bypass normal procedures and award contracts to a single company, without competition.

Halliburton nearly doubled the value of federal contracts it received – from $1.2 to $2.3 billion – during the five years Cheney was its CEO.
The Lincoln Plaza in downtown Dallas, where Halliburton's corporate headquarters are located.(AP)

And that's exactly what happened with Halliburton.

“We are the only company in the United States that had the kind of systems in place, people in place, contracts in place, to do that kind of thing,” says Chuck Dominy, Halliburton’s vice president for government affairs and its chief lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

He says the Pentagon came to Halliburton because the company already had an existing contract with the Army to provide logistical support to U.S. troops all over the world.

“Let me put a face on Halliburton. It's one of the world's largest energy services companies, and it has a strong engineering and construction arm that goes with that” says Dominy.

“You'll find us in 120 countries. We've got 83,000 people on our payroll, and we're involved in a ton of different things for a lot of wonderful clients worldwide.”

“They had assets prepositioned,” says Anderson. “They had capability to reach out and get sub-contractors to do the various types of work that might be required in a hostile situation.”

“The procurement of this particular contract was done by career civil servants, and I know that it's a perception that those at the very highest levels of the administration, Democrat and Republican, get involved in procurement issues. It can happen. But for the very most part, the procurement system is designed to keep those judgments with the career public servants.”

But is political influence not unknown in the process? In this particular case, Anderson says, it was legally justified and prudent.

But not everyone thought it was prudent. Bob Grace is president of GSM Consulting, a small company in Amarillo, Texas, that has fought oil well fires all over the world. Grace worked for the Kuwait government after the first Gulf War and was in charge of firefighting strategy for the huge Bergan Oil Field, which had more than 300 fires. Last September, when it looked like there might be another Gulf war and more oil well fires, he and a lot of his friends in the industry began contacting the Pentagon and their congressmen.

“All we were trying to find out was, who do we present our credentials to,” says Grace. “We just want to be able to go to somebody and say, ‘Hey, here's who we are, and here's what we've done, and here's what we do.’”

“They basically told us that there wasn't going to be any oil well fires.”
Grace showed 60 Minutes a letter from the Department of Defense saying: "The department is aware of a broad range of well firefighting capabilities and techniques available. However, we believe it is too early to speculate what might happen in the event that war breaks out in the region."

It was dated Dec. 30, 2002, more than a month after the Army Corps of Engineers began talking to Halliburton about putting out oil well fires in Iraq.

“You just feel like you're beating your head against the wall,” says Grace.
However, Andersen says the Pentagon had a very good reason for putting out that message.

“The mission at that time was classified, and what we were doing to assess the possible damage and to prepare for it was classified,” says Andersen. “Communications with the public had to be made with that in mind.”

“I can accept confidentiality in terms of war plans and all that. But to have secrecy about Saddam Hussein blowing up oil wells, to me, is stupid,” says Grace. “I mean the guy's blown up a thousand of them. So why would that be a revelation to anybody?”

But Grace says the whole point of competitive bidding is to save the taxpayers money. He believes they are getting a raw deal. “From what I’ve read in the papers, they're charging $50,000 a day for a five-man team. I know there are guys that are equally as well-qualified as the guys that are over there that'll do it for half that.”

Grace and his friends are no match for Halliburton when it comes to landing government business. Last year alone, Halliburton and its Brown & Root subsidiary delivered $1.3 billion worth of services to the U.S. government.
Much of it was for work the U.S. military used to do itself.

“You help build base camps. You provide goods, laundry, power, sewage, all the kinds of things that keep an army in place in a field operation,” says Dominy.

“Young soldiers have said to me, ‘If I go to war, I want to go to war with Brown & Root.’"

And they have, in places like Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo and now Iraq.

“It's a sweetheart contract,” says Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center For Public Integrity, a non-profit organization that investigates corruption and abuse of power by government and corporations. “There's no other word for it.”

Lewis says the trend towards privatizing the military began during the first Bush administration when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense. In 1992, the Pentagon, under Cheney, commissioned the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to do a classified study on whether it was a good idea to have private contractors do more of the military's work.

“Of course, they said it's a terrific idea, and over the next eight years, Kellogg, Brown & Root and another company got 2,700 contracts worth billions of dollars,” says Lewis.

“So they helped to design the architecture for privatizing a lot of what happens today in the Pentagon when we have military engagements. And two years later, when he leaves the department of defense, Cheney is CEO of Halliburton. Thank you very much. It's a nice arrangement for all concerned.”

During the five years that Cheney was at Halliburton, the company nearly doubled the value of its federal contracts, and the vice president became a very rich man.

Lewis is not saying that Cheney did anything illegal. But he doesn't believe for a minute that this was all just a coincidence.

“Why would a defense secretary, former chief of staff to a president, and former member of congress with no business experience ever in his life, not for a day, why would he become the CEO of a multibillion dollar oil services company,” asks Lewis

“Well, it could be related to government contracts. He was brought in to raise their government contract profile. And he did. And they ended up with billions of dollars in new contracts because they had a former defense secretary at the helm.”

Cheney, Lewis says, may be an honorable and brilliant man, but “as George Washington Plunkett once said, ‘I saw my … seen my opportunities and I took them."

Both Halliburton and the Pentagon believe Lewis is insulting not only the vice president but thousands of professional civil servants who evaluate and award defense contracts based strictly on merit.

But does the fact that Cheney used to run Halliburton have any effect at all on the company getting government contracts?

“Zero,” says Dominy. “I will guarantee you that. Absolutely zero impact.”

“In fact, I wish I could embed [critics] in the department of defense contracting system for a week or so. Once they'd done that, they'd have religion just like I do, about how the system cannot be influenced.”
Dominy has been with Halliburton for seven years. Before that, he was former three-star Army general. One of his last military assignments was as a commander at the Army Corps of Engineers.

And now, the Army Corps of Engineers is also the government agency that awards contracts to companies like Halliburton.

Asked if his expertise in that area had anything to do with his employment at Halliburton, Dominy replies, “None.”

But Lewis isn’t surprised at all.

“Of course, he’s from the Army Corps. And of course, he’s a general,” says Lewis. “I’m sure he and no one else at Halliburton sees the slightest thing that might look strange about that, or a little cozy maybe.”

Lewis says the best example of these cozy relationships is the defense policy board, a group of high-powered civilians who advise the secretary of defense on major policy issues - like whether or not to invade Iraq. Its 30 members are a Who's Who of former senior government and military officials.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but as the Center For Public Integrity recently discovered, nine of them have ties to corporations and private companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts. And that's just in the last two years.

“This is not about the revolving door, people going in and out,” says Lewis. “There is no door. There's no wall. I can't tell where one stops and the other starts. I'm dead serious.”

“They have classified clearances, they go to classified meetings and they're with companies getting billions of dollars in classified contracts. And their disclosures about their activities are classified. Well, isn't that what they did when they were inside the government? What's the difference, except they're in the private sector.”

Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the defense policy board last month after it was disclosed that he had financial ties to several companies doing business with the Pentagon.

But Perle still sits on the board, along with former CIA director James Woolsey, who works for the consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. The firm did nearly $700 million dollars in business with the Pentagon last year.

Another board member, retired four-star general Jack Sheehan, is now a senior vice president at the Bechtel corporation, which just won a $680 million contract to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

That contract was awarded by the State Department, which used to be run by George Schultz, who sits on Bechtel's board of directors.

“I'm not saying that it's illegal. These guys wrote the laws. They set up the system for themselves. Of course it's legal,” says Lewis.

“It just looks like hell. It looks like you have folks feeding at the trough. And they may be doing it in red white and blue and we may be all singing the "Star Spangled Banner," but they're doing quite well.”

==================

What About Syria?
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/28/60minutes/main551326.shtml

(CBS - 60 Minutes - April 27, 2003) Damascus, Syria's capital, proudly calls itself the oldest continuously inhabited city in history, dating back to 6000 B.C.

Now, even though America's attitude toward Syria has recently softened, the U.S. still sees Syria as a roadblock to peace in the Middle East. Correspondent Mike Wallace reports.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa (CBS)

Syria is still officially at war with Israel. It insists that Israel give back the Golan Heights - 400 square miles of land within 25 miles of Damascus - that Israel captured and has occupied since the 1967 war.

For years, Syria has provided weapons to Hezbollah and Palestinian militants who send suicide bombers and missiles into Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have offices in Damascus. But Syria's foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, told 60 Minutes that Syria is simply providing a home for Palestinians who were displaced by Israel back in 1948.

“If Syria has accepted refugees we are a terrorist country,” asks al Sharaa. ”You call the Syrians as harboring terrorists. This is absolutely - what shall I say - insane.”

Syria is now one of only six countries that the U.S. says supports terrorism. But al Sharaa denies this allegation, saying, “This is absolutely false.”

He also insists that Palestinians who attack Israel are not terrorists but freedom fighters trying to liberate their land from Israeli occupation. The real terrorists, he told us, attacked on Sept. 11, and he said Syria has joined with America to crush al Qaeda.

There is some truth in that.

The U.S. has acknowledged that Syria has been very helpful to the U.S. in battling al Qaeda. 60 Minutes learned that Syria warned the U.S. about a plot to attack an American installation in the Middle East. The warning enabled the U.S. to prevent the attack and save American lives.

And the main reason President Bush toned down his criticism of Syria this week is that the CIA did not want to risk losing Syria's cooperation against al Qaeda. Syria is a dictatorship, a one-party, one-family state.

President Bashar Assad took over three years ago when his father died. Hafez al-Assad had ruled with an iron hand for 32 years. Bashar was not supposed to become president - his older brother Basil was, but he died in a car crash nine years ago. As a result, Bashar left a comfortable life in London, where he'd been an ophthalmologist in training, and returned to Syria to become a dictator in training. When his father died, Bashar took over the family business - the presidency. He was just 34 years old.

When Wallace asked Syrians what they think of their government, their response was always, "I don't talk politics."

The fact is, dissent in Syria can get you arrested. Speech is not free. The government runs the press -and television.

Syrian TV did not show Saddam's statue coming down. When American troops took Baghdad, Syrian TV switched from that coverage to a five-hour program on Islamic art and architecture. But Syrians could see it anyway, because they get Al Jazeera and other Arab TV stations.

In Damascus, no roof is complete without a satellite dish so that Syrians can keep up on the news - not as reported by their government or CNN, but by Arab partisans. As a result, Syrians have come to believe that America's foreign policy has been hijacked by Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon.
 

The foreign minister says the U.S. has rattled its saber at Syria, to distract the world's attention from America's current difficulties in post-war Iraq. And when Wallace asked him why he thought America had gone to war in Iraq in the first place, his answer had nothing to do with weapons of
mass destruction. Instead he suggested it was about contracts to rebuild Iraq.

“The administration, [they] signed with some companies some contracts in anticipation even before the war,” says al-Sharaa.

So did the U.S launch the war so that it could tear Iraq apart and then make money rebuilding it?

“I don't rule it out,” says al-Sharaa.

In Damascus earlier this week, Wallace met for a moment with President Assad. He declined to be interviewed on camera and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) who was also there, thinks he knows why.

“I think he's more timid than most people that find themselves in his position,” says Issa. ”He is camera shy. He's soft-spoken, but in fact he's well read, Western educated.”

Issa, a California Republican, and Rep. Nick Rayhall, a West Virginia Democrat, are Lebanese-Americans. They spoke with President Assad for two hours and they disagree with some hawks in Washington who have tried to portray Assad as Saddam Light.

“Some will try to lump them together, put them in the same package, but Saddam Hussein, he is not,” says Rayhall. “He is not an enemy of America.”

“But he's not yet a friend,” adds Issa. “And one of the things that we came here to do is to try to encourage this regime to become a friend of America.”

Syria’s young people want to be friends with America, and 60 percent of Syrians are under 20 years old. For an Arab state, a 90 percent Muslim state, Syria's lifestyle is remarkably permissive. Women don't have to cover their heads, and Syrians can drink alcohol in public. But they are frustrated by the stagnant state-run economy. Per capita income is just a $1,000 dollars a year. Having lost its old benefactor, the Soviet Union, Syria desperately needs American economic aid.

Western diplomats told Wallace that Syrians had hoped President Assad would move faster to improve the economy, cut down on corruption, even permit some dissent. But so far, he has mainly let them down.

Ed Jerejian has been U.S. ambassador to both Israel and Syria, and he knows President Assad quite well.

“Instinctively he would like to reform. But for a host of political reasons, I think he's holding back for the moment,” says Jerejian.

“There's a lot of hope placed in him, especially by the young, that he'll reform the country. And I think he'll be judged by that.”

The foreign minister says Syria is being unfairly judged by Washington. He said that Syria wants to be friends with America, but that Israel has so distorted America's view of Syria, that in Washington, Syria is totally misunderstood.

“It’s a horrible act of misunderstanding,” says al-Sharaa.

And who is responsible?

“Israel,” says al-Sharaa. “To put it bluntly, without any ambiguity.”

Syria told the United Nations that the United States is not being reasonable about weapons of mass destruction. Syria is said to have chemical weapons, while Israel is believed to have chemical, biological, and nuclear. The U.S. is insisting that Syria destroy its chemical weapons, but saying nothing about Israel's more powerful arsenal.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has more immediate concerns about the human traffic between Syria and Iraq.

American officials have named several top Iraqis who they say have fled to Syria, but not one has actually been found. But then there's the problem of fighters moving the other way - from Syria to Iraq.

Now, America's biggest fear is that armed Syrians will continue to cross into Iraq to attack Americans. But the border is 350 miles long. So, America will have to expect some of that, according to Syria’s foreign minister.

Al-Sharaa says that Syria has passed some strict orders to prevent Syrians from crossing the border. But he reiterated that strict orders can't stop them.

“We are unable to seal in our borders just like any other country, because people who are smuggling or crossing illegally from one country to another cannot be stopped totally,” says al-Sharaa. “This happens in the United States. It happens in Syria.”

Admittedly, the U.S. is flexing its muscles here. With more than 100,000 troops in neighboring Iraq, the U.S. is demanding that Syria stop its fanatics from attacking Americans and stop Palestinians from attacking Israelis.

Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to fly to Syria, probably next month, to spell out what the U.S. now expects from Syria, and what Syria can expect from the United States.

Meantime, since 60 Minutes returned from Damascus, credible sources in U.S. intelligence have said that no Iraqis from the deck of cards are now in Syria. No Iraqi scientists have fled there. And there was no transfer of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria.