Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Profili di ladri imperiali.

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_xymphora_archive.html#107752560538206625
Monday, February 23, 2004
Dick Cheney's corruption is breathtaking:
1-Cheney was CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000.
2-During that time he managed to revive the long-suffering stock price of
Halliburton by using some Enron-style fancy accounting. In what has to be
one of the biggest bone-head moves in American corporate history, he also
managed to acquire liability-rich Dresser Industries (Dresser is one of the
great corporations in American conspiracy theory, being the first place
where father George Bush worked, and being connected to Tom Slick and
through him to the use of cryptozoology as a cover for spying and to the JFK
assassination).
3-Cheney is still receiving a salary of something over $100,000 a year from
Halliburton.
4-Cheney's main continuing benefit from Halliburton takes the form of stock
options. No one seems to be certain how much these are worth, but it is in
the millions of dollars, and increases as the value of Halliburton stock
goes up. If you want to do the math, you can see how the increased value of
Halliburton stock in recent months is crucial, given the option prices, for
Cheney to make a killing on the options. Cheney has proposed to deal with
this obvious conflict by donating profits from these stock options to
charity and not taking a tax deduction for the donation (and buying
insurance to cover the possibility of Halliburton going under). There are
four issues with this:
*Just when is he going to get around to do this? He started talking about it
during the election campaign, and it is now three or four years later. How
hard can it be for him to pick up a phone and tell his lawyer to make it
happen? He can't argue that he is waiting for the share price to go up,
unless he is also prepared to concede that he has some control over the
share price. You can see what is going to happen. He will drag this out
until he is out of politics, and then claim that he no longer has to donate
the profits to charity as he is no longer in a conflict situation! In any
event, who is in a position to monitor his compliance with his promise?
*Donating the profits to charity doesn't solve the problem, as he will still
have the benefit of controlling the use of the money (like funding another
right-wing think tank).
*Cheney, as well as others connected to the Bush Administration, has other
very large financial interests that will benefit greatly with the financial
health of Halliburton.
*In all the discussions about the stock options and buying insurance for the
unlikely event of Halliburton's insolvency, especially unlikely with Cheney
in control of the American government and the disposition of military
contracts, everyone seems to have forgotten that Cheney is still receiving
the cash payments from Halliburton.
5-Cheney's philosophy of mega-privatization of practically every function of
the military that can be ceded to a parasitic corporation has allowed
companies like Halliburton and its ilk to flourish. This is at the expense
of American soldiers who have to suffer under the shoddy, overpriced service
provided by Halliburton and similar companies.
6-Halliburton is making out like a bandit in Iraq. Literally. The amount of
corruption in what seems like every massive contract awarded to Halliburton
is staggering.
7-Halliburton has suddenly become the largest private contractor for
American forces in Iraq ($11 billion in contracts and counting), all on the
basis of contracts awarded when Cheney is effectively running the United
States. No one can possibly believe that he has nothing to do with this. The
Pentagon staff surely knows the wrath they would face if contracts were not
awarded in accordance with Cheney's obvious wishes.
8-The war on which these contracts depend was waged based on a series of
lies largely told by none other than Dick Cheney.
Sometimes they make it too easy to be a conspiracy theorist. The
Cheney-Halliburton connection has to be the largest and most blatant example
of corruption in modern American history. Cheney is the effective President
of the United States, and is clearly behind the awarding of massive
contracts to a corporation that continues to pay him. If this were happening
in Nigeria we'd sneer at the corruption, but in the American context it is
beyond belief. Spiro Agnew had to resign over allegations that he received
payoffs from engineers seeking contracts when he was Baltimore county
executive and governor of Maryland. Spiro had nothing on Dick. The amounts
of money Spiro stole would be chump change for Cheney. The best part of all
this is that Cheney is going to get away with it.

 
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_xymphora_archive.html#107752560538206625
E la fonte delle tue informazioni sarebbe una ca***ta scritta su un
blog? :)
*ROTFL*
-Stefano