posted on Oct, 18 2004 @ 01:33 AM
Newsflash: Scientists discover that governments and big business are sometimes corrupt. Back to you, Skip.
Wow. That's great news. I hope they prosecute France and Germany.
Meanwhile, why don't we worry about our own country, and let French and Germans worry about their country.
Speaking of our country, here's our Vice President profiting from Iraq as well:
Cheney said sanctions against countries such as Iraq were hurting corporations such as Halliburton.
"We seem to be sanction-happy as a government," Cheney said at an energy conference in April 1996, reported in the oil industry publication
Petroleum Finance Week. "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic
governments," he observed during his conference presentation.
Sanctions make U.S. businesses "the bystander who gets hit when a train wreck occurs," Cheney told Petroleum Finance Week. "While virtually every
other country sees the need for sanctions against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's regime there, Cheney sees general agreement that the measures have not
been very effective despite their having most of the international community's support. An individual country's embargo, such as that of the United
States against Iran, has virtually no effect since the target country simply signs a contract with a non- U.S. business," the publication reported
"That's exactly what happened when the government told Conoco Inc. that it could not develop an oil field there," Cheney told Petroleum Finance
Week. Total S.A. "simply took it over."
In 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., the unit that sold oil equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a
joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.
The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and
pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump
also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the
GGulf War, the Post reported in a June 2001 story.
What pisses me off is when propagandistas who aren't as good as I am try and provide a counter-scandal. People with ten-second attention spans
suddenly forget current crimes to focus on new crimes. And since hating 'Old Europe' is in vogue among the easily-led these days, an oil-for-food
scandal gets their flea-like minds onto something other than our countries current embarrasing, massive, deadly, and costly #ups.
Pay no attention here, folks, look at France and Germany. That's right, suckers.