General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Have We Ever Gotten to the Bottom of Exactly 'Why' Bush and the Neocons Disastrously Invaded Iraq? [View all]DFW
(54,341 posts)My personal take is that Cheney was behind the whole thing (he got the rest on board quickly enough, of course) for his own personal gain.
Halliburton wasn't doing too well at the close of the Clinton administration. It's stock was below $20 a share, and Cheney was its CEO. He knew two things. One: if he ran the government, he could arrange for his company to get vast amounts of contracts, which, if he was running the government, would not be all too closely scrutinized. Two: if he had lots of stock options before he took office as VP, he could place them in a blind trust, secure in the knowledge that he would be far richer when he left office than he was when he entered. For $1 apiece, he bought 200,000 options on Halliburton stock at the level of $19 before taking office. After the Iraq invasion and all the no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton for their (shoddy) logistics "support" of the invasion, Halliburton's stock soared to $87. That meant 200,000 times $67 (i.e.$87 minus $19 for the price at the time of the option minus a dollar per share per option) in Cheney's pocket, or a gain of $13,400,000 and that's just on that one transaction I know of.
Oh, he got to play the big neo-con game, and had Wolfowitz, Libby, Rice and the rest of them run interference for him, but I think Cheney was behind the whole thing. He took two countries to war to pad his bank account. Halliburton then moved their world HQ from Texas to the United Arab Emirates. Just a little beyond Uncle Sam's jurisdiction. A mere coincidence, of course, right?