The F.O.G. of War:

Friends of George W cash in on Bush Wars

by Greg Palast

The Independent, London, April 17, 2003

George W. Bush is busting the US Treasury to finance an extravagant War on Terror, War against Saddam and War against ________ (the President will fill in the blank later). This may look to you like a berserker threat to the planet by a pinhead potentate, but from the perspective of certain political allies and donors to the Bush campaigns, the continuing blast of air raid sirens are the melodious announcements of new profit opportunities.

There has been much tut-tutting over Halliburton Corp, until recently led by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, locking up a multi-billion dollar no-bid deal to rebuilt Iraq. But other FOGís (Friends of George) are quietly cashing in big time on Americaís all-war all-the-time economy, from the computer firm that helped bend the vote in Florida to Madonnaís record label. Hereís a few.

ìThe war on terror hasnít been decided yet, but a few winners are emerging,î business magazine Forbes says cheerily. ìHigh up on the list of businesses that will benefit ... ChoicePoint Inc.î ChoicePoint Inc.? Few Americans know that, months before the presidential election, Katherine Harris, Floridaís rabidly Republican Secretary of State, ordered the removal of 57,700 voters from the voter rolls. Supposedly, these were convicts who are not permitted to vote in Florida. Notably, it was BBCís Newsnight that discovered that 90.2% of the people on the list were INNOCENT of any crime ñ except the crime of Voting While Black. (No guessing here: Florida lists the race of each voter on government forms.) Over half the names of INNOCENT voters on the list (54%) are Black, a group which voted 9 to 1 for Al Gore over Bush. This nasty little ethnic cleansing of the voter rolls cost Bushís opponent, Al Gore, to lose over 20,000 votes ñ 40 times Dubyaís official margin of ìvictoryî - the 537 votes that gave George Bush the White House.

Who came up with this racially-poisoned black list? Database Technologies, currently a wholly-owned division of ChoicePoint, Inc. of Atlanta. In other words, ChoicePointís unit chose the President of the USA .... and now his government has chosen ChoicePoint for the big contracts. Among ChoicePointís winnings: a contract to supply the FBI with tens of millions of profiles of Latin Americans and Europeans, data for airport profiling systems and info for the FBIís new ìvampire filesî ñ analysis of the DNA on millions of US citizens.

Typical of the big-money winners in Bushís war budget, ChoicePoint has some choice Republican ties. Itís board and payroll includes Ken Langone, Treasurer of Rudi Giulianiís aborted Senate race against Hillary Clinton and as well as the founder of Home Depot Corporation, a big Republican sugar-daddy.

For the Bushes, war profiteering is a family affair. Tucked into the recently-passed USA PATRIOT Act is a provision that REQUIRES banks to make their databases match up and link to ChoicePointís and a handful of annointed database operators. And to meet this requirement, a company named Sybase sells the ëPatriot-compliantí software patch. The lucky big investor in Sybase? Winston Partners, founded by one Marvin Bush, another son of a Barbara.

While the US Congress voted to kill Bushís Orwellian ìTotal Information Awarenessî project, that hasnít stopped John Poindexter, chief of the TIA parent agency, from issuing the lucrative contracts for this operation for spying on US citizens. (Poindexter, as the Washington Post says, ìprominently figuredî in the Iran-Contra scandal. Thatís one way of putting it: Poindexter was convicted on five counts of felonious perjury ñ later overturned on technicalities.)

At the heart of the futuristic cyber-spy system is a data-mining computer system being built for Poindexterís agency by a company called Syntech. Until his appointment by President Bush, the Senior Vice-President of Syntech was . . . John Poindexter.

Not that Poindexter initiated the first contract with Syntech. The company won the lucrative deal from the prior head of the governmentís Total Info Awareness program, one Brian Sharkey. Once Poindexter took over, he penned a big contract for spyware from Hicks & Company. Hicksí high-paid honcho on the project: Brian Sharkey.

The patriotism of some of Bushís corporate donors knows no bounds. Two of the Republican Partyís biggest contributors, General Dynamics and Lockheed-Martin, have teamed up to design the ìVirginia-classî submarine to help in the war effort. Unfortunately, they were designed for another war. These subs were designed to attack Soviet subs. The Soviet union doesnít exist and itís subs are rusting. What to do? General Dynamics and Lockheed have proposed turning the subs into War on Terror machines. Problem: Afghanistan is landlocked; Iraq has only a tiny sliver of beach; and Al Quidaís navy is limited. NO PROBLEM, according to Lockheed and Don Rumsfeldís war department: they will use the subs to sneak commandoes onto beachheads. How? The gargantuan sub canít exactly park on a beach, so they will load Marines into torpedoes - nine to a tube. You can ít make this stuff up!

George Bush thought the Marines-in-a-torpedo such a darn good idea ñ and at $1.6 billion (£1.0 billion) a pop, real cheap ñ heís ordered 3 dozen!

And in the fine print of Bushís mother of all war budgets, thereís $450 million (£280 million) for a weapon called, The Crusader, a ìself-propelled howitzer.î Besides the marketing problem of the weaponís name used in attacks on Muslim nations, the Crusader has another fault: itís so unwieldy, it has difficulty moving unless a bulldozer is sent ahead of it to clear a path.

Here, even the US Army has said no to this rolling turkey. But rather than short the howitzerís maker, Carlyle Group, Bushís White House has left in the entire $450 million sum, not to build the tank, but to ëwind downí itís construction. This cushy kiss-off has, undoubtedly, nothing to do with the fact that Carlyle is the private investment group that boasts having George Herbert Walker Bush, presidential father, on itís payroll (as well as one John Major). Carlyle, once funded in part by the Bin Ladins of Saudi Arabia, also hired the current President Bush: Dubya received substantial fees as a director of Carlyleís CaterAir divisionñ a unit which, despite Bush Jrís business acumen, went bust.

There are other lesser known winners of the various Bush wars. For example, there is a small army of US corporate lobbyists busily, and selflessly without fees, rewriting Iraqís laws. One lobbyist for the US recording industry, Hilary Rosen lobbying, is re-drafting Iraqís intellectual property rights regulations. Where once Iraqis feared Saddamís catching them listening to prohibited dissident singers, now they must fear being caught listening to a bootleg copy of ìLike a Virgin.

Other corporate lobbyists lending their hand in bringing democracy to liberated Iraq include is Grover Norquist, funded by Bush-backers Microsoft and American Express, who is graciously rewriting Iraqís tax laws.

Thatís just the beginning. Americaís chief trade minister, Robert Zoellick, formerly an Enron lobbyist, has plans to turn Iraq into a giant free-trade zone.

From free-fire zone to free-trade zone ñ Iraqis are receiving the gift of freedom from President Bush. And nothing will stop him. As the American president said in September 2001, ìWe cannot let terrorists achieve their objective of frightening our nation to the point where .... people ... donít shop.

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