The Masters of Spin: Why the Bush administration is the most arrogant in memory


http://www.msnbc.com/news/929206.asp


A WorldCom of Trouble

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet
June 20, 2003

AUSTIN, Texas - My, my, my, the great Iraqi Gold Rush is on, and who should
be there at the front of the line, right along with Halliburton and Bechtel,
but our old friends at WorldCom, perpetrators of the largest accounting
fraud in American history.


WorldCom, shortly to become MCI, has been given a contract worth $45 million
in the short term to build a wireless phone network in Iraq. I learned via
The Associated Press that Washington Technology, a trade newspaper that
follows computing-related sales to the U.S. government, "found WorldCom
jumped to eighth among all federal technology contractors in 2002, with $772
million in government sales." And that is only counting the deals in which
WorldCom is the primary contractor. It is actually getting much more as a
subcontractor.


The Securities and Exchange Commission recently reached a settlement with
WorldCom, fining the company $500 million for its $11 billion defrauding of
investors. The company did not have to admit any guilt. "The $500 million is
in a sense laundered by the taxpayers," Tom Schatz, president of Citizens
Against Government Waste, told AP.


WorldCom got the Iraq contract without competitive bidding, to the anger of
rival companies A&T, Sprint, etc., which actually have experience in
building wireless networks, according to AP. A WorldCom spokesman "also
stressed the company's deep, overall relationship with the U.S. military and
government."


Among those continuing to make a good thing out of the Iraqi war is Richard
Perle of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. According to the Los Angeles
Times, last February Perle and the board received a classified briefing on
the potential for conflict in Iraq and North Korea, including information on
new communications networks. "Three weeks later, the then-chairman of the
board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing of his own at an investment
seminar on ways to profit from possible conflicts with both countries,"
wrote reporters Ken Silverstein and Chuck Neubauer.


It's a subject on which Perle is fully qualified. He was forced to resign as
the Policy Board's chairman (though he did not resign from the board itself)
in late March after it was learned he had been employed as a consultant by
Global Crossing Ltd., then trying to get Pentagon clearance to sell itself
to an Asian concern. Perle also serves on the board of several defense
contractors and is co-founder of Trireme Partners, a venture capital firm
that invests in the defense and homeland security industries.


Also according to Silverstein and Neubauer, Perle's partner at Trireme,
Gerald Hillman, has been put on the Defense Advisory Board, despite having
no background in national security or defense.


One has to scramble to keep up with the Gold Rush and its players. Tim
Shorrock has an excellent article in the June 23 issue of The Nation
detailing the state of play: Hundreds of major corporations are interested
in getting a piece of this pie. Meanwhile, the invaluable Rep. Henry Waxman
of California is keeping an eye on Halliburton. He is raising questions
about the company's ties to countries that sponsor terrorism, specifically
Iraq, Iran and Libya.


As President Bush begins his two-week, $20 million "shock and awe" campaign
fund-raising sprint, we will naturally be keeping an eye on the connections
between the campaign contributions and government contracts. And if you
think that's too cynical, boy, have you not been paying attention.


One of the many horrors Shorrock found was a statement by Martin Hoffman,
former secretary of the Army and close adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, on the
privatization of Iraq. He told Shorrock his strategy is like that of the
strategic hamlets program in Vietnam. "That was basic economic development,"
Hoffman said.


Ooops. The only problem is that the strategic hamlet program was a colossal
failure, producing untold damage, chaos and hatred. It was a key reason we
lost that war.


Another player with business interests in all this is Paul Bremer, the
American viceroy in Iraq. Bremer's company is Crisis Consulting Practice,
set up after 9-11 to advise multinationals on how to handle terrorism. Naomi
Klein concludes in The Nation: "Many have pointed out that Bremer is no
expert on Iraqi politics. But that was never the point. He is an expert at
profiting from the war on terror and at helping U.S. multinationals make
money in far-off places where they are unpopular and unwelcome. In other
words, he's the perfect man for the job."


Other efforts to abruptly introduce a capitalist economy into a state-run
system have had awful results. The "shock therapy" applied to Russia after
the Soviet Union broke up almost destroyed the country, and it still hasn't
recovered. Argentina went through a similar process.


So where's a president like Franklin D. Roosevelt when we need him? "I don't
want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a
result of this world disaster," he said during World War II.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16215


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium