Let's Go Straight For the Jugular Now: I Want To See Those Energy

[Solomon]

Meeting papers. You know, those meetings that prove that Bush/Cheney/Ken Lay and other energy industry execs, plotted the Iraq war and divided up the spoils. I want to hear our democratic contenders make an issue out of the refusal to release these "energy" meeting documents.

Anybody who thinks they just met over domestic energy issues needs a brain transplant. I want to see them explain again the plotting of war BEFORE 9-11. I want them to explain why certain private interests were let in on the planning. (As an aside, it bugs the hell out of me that their post-invasion planning for american businesses was very well done, but their post-invasion planning for Iraqis takes on a "fuck-you" aspect).

Secondly. I think DU needs to document and list every business venture of Halliburton so that the public can learn something about monopolies and conflicts of interest. I mean I knew that Halliburton has it's fingers in every pie, but even I didn't know they have contracted all the way down to feeding the troops, etc, until they started showing those disgusting commercials. Is there anything that Halliburton does NOT do?

[oneighty]

1. They do not fight

They do not die.

180

[Robbien]

2. Did you see this thread last night?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1132635

Seems as if DUer bobbyboucher has the same idea that you do.

If you want to do something that helps slow them down a little, call and write your Senators and tell them to vote No on the energy bill that is being considered this week. Most of the money in the bill go to Cheney's cronies as pure pork. It is being called a 'slimmed down' bill, but the only way they were able to slim it down was by extending the start date of many provisions into next year. Smoke and mirrors my friend.

[terryg11]

3. you want to see those energy papers?

here's what you do. Find ten people in your voting district who feel the same way. Have them write your congresspeople and each of them find another ten people to do the same and so on.

It's already being taken to court which who knows how long that will take. Write your senators and reps and inform them that come reelection time they may not have the votes if you don't see them making some noise about it.

I've been trying and so far have only gotten the rubber stamp letters from Grassley (dodging the subject) and Harkin who agrees wth me but as of yet hasn't said anything publicly. We'll see if their tune changes after a few hundred more letters from others come in.

Gotta start somewhere

[spanone]

4. Scalia won't recuse himself but he sure as hell put the media on his ass

you can bet they'll be watching this burrito supreme court decision a little bit closer than they otherwise would have. thanks antonin. you asshole.

[Solomon]

5. He's been promised the chief justice

spot. Disgusting bastards.

[Stephanie]

6. From an earlier thread on this - great New Yorker article with smoking gun

Old thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1125619

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact

CONTRACT SPORT
by JANE MAYER
What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?
Issue of 2004-02-16 and 23
Posted 2004-02-09

<snip>

For months there has been a debate in Washington about when the Bush Administration decided to go to war against Saddam. In Ron Suskind’s recent book “The Price of Loyalty,” former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that Cheney played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney’s newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were links between Cheney’s Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam. But Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, told me that he regards the document as potentially “huge.” He said, “People think Cheney’s Energy Task Force has been secretive about domestic issues,” referring to the fact that the Vice-President has been unwilling to reveal information about private task-force meetings that took place in 2001, when information was being gathered to help develop President Bush’s energy policy. “But if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.”

<snip>

After months spent trying to obtain more information about the classified Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman’s staff discovered that the original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a full restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. “We thought it was supposed to be a short-term, small contract, but now it turns out Halliburton is restoring the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq,” Waxman said. The Defense Department’s only public acknowledgments of this wide-ranging deal had been two press releases announcing that it had asked Halliburton to prepare to help put out oil-well fires. The most recent budget request provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq mentions the building of a new oil refinery and the drilling of new wells. “They said originally they were just going to bring it up to prewar levels. Now they’re getting money to dramatically improve it,” Waxman complained. Who is going to own these upgrades, after the United States government has finished paying Halliburton to build them? “Who knows?” Waxman said. “Nobody is saying.”

<snip>

It is not surprising that Cheney, after five years of running Halliburton, a company that considers war as providing “growth opportunities,” regards winning the peace in Iraq as a challenge for private enterprise as well as for government. Yet it is reasonable to ask if Cheney’s faith in companies like Halliburton contributed to his conviction that the occupation of Iraq would be a tidy, easily managed affair. Now that Cheney’s vision has been shown to be overly optimistic, and Iraqis and American soldiers are still getting killed ten months after Saddam’s overthrow, critics are questioning the propriety of a reconstruction effort that is fuelled by the profit motive. “I’m appalled that the war is being used by people close to the Bush Administration to make money for themselves,” Waxman said. “At a time when we’re asking young men and women to make perhaps the ultimate sacrifice, it’s just unseemly.” Many of those involved, however, see themselves as part of a democratic vanguard. Jack Kemp’s spokesman, P. J. Johnson, told me, “We’re doing good by doing well.” Joe Allbaugh, Bush’s former campaign manager, who has established New Bridge Strategies, a firm aimed specifically at setting up for-profit ventures in Iraq, makes no apologies. “We are proud of the leadership the American private sector is taking in the reconstruction of Iraq,” he said.

<more>

[G_j]

7. I'm convinced this is a "smoking gun"

not the only one, but perhaps the closest to being brought to the light of day.
Then again, it may not actually exist anymore, which means they'd have to make something up. Either way, not good for them. i agree, we can't let up on this.

[Arbustosux]

8. they could have discussed domestic topics

gas prices are way up....reserves are down....drilling in the artic....I think the energy companies got their money's worth with the Bush admin

[anarchy1999]

9. Just go to Judicial Watch - they have the maps.

They have docs and maps dividing up Iraq from subpeona, it just seems to be a really slow moving case.