In the early spring of l992, Bush and his inner circle were ready to collect their payoff—hundreds of millions of dollars in blood money—for the war they had instigated, and its devastating aftermath.The former president's entourage on the flight to Kuwait included three of his sons—George W., Neil and Marvin—as well as James Baker, his former secretary of state, and John Sununu, his former chief of staff.
On arrival, Bush and his group were received with full honors and heaped with "presents" by the oil emirates' grateful rulers.
Not just the members of the al-Sabah dynasty, but "wealthy Kuwaitis flocked to the ceremonial dinners and receptions given for the Bush group, and patiently stood in line for hours to shower the former president with expensive gifts—Cartier watches, diamond jewelry, strings of gold coins—aggregately worth millions of dollars," says a former New York Times reporter who covered the visit.
But that was just the beginning.
"Each member of the Bush team had a proposition to sell to the Kuwaitis—deals on which they were to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions and 'bonuses', " DeJongh said.
With the former president providing the supporting pitch, al-Sabah was pressured by Baker to grant his client, the giant Enron Corporation, a $4 billion contract to refurbish Kuwait's power grid. The project began with the al-Shuaiba facility, a 1,000-megawatt power plant just south of Kuwait City that had been destroyed by U.S. bombing.
Sununu came to promote another deal: billion-dollar contracts for a consortium of defense contractors headed by the Westinghouse Corporation who were anxious to sell the tiny emirate sophisticated weapons and security systems.
Bush's sons were seeking lucrative concessions for various Houston oil corporations, including the giant Ultraflote Corporation and the Link Group, in which the Bush family was reportedly a shareholder.
Just how much blood money these powerful promoters took home from Kuwait may never be known. An ingenious cover-up scheme arranged by Neil Bush set up a chain of offshore corporations reaching all the way from the Gulf to the Caribbean.
Commissions and kickbacks were laundered through these interlocking overseas fronts so that, in the end, "How the hell would you know that Bush was in it for the big payoff?" asked the Times reporter.
SCHWARZKOPF SAYS 'NO'
But a measure of the vast rake-offs involved in these scams can be gauged from another source: retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who despite his controversial role as chief warlord of the Gulf campaign, refused to shake down the Kuwaitis afterward.
One of the transnational corporations involved in seeking defense contracts from Kuwait approached Schwarzkopf for help.
"They offered me $150 million as a down payment if I would participate in their efforts to lobby the Kuwaiti government," the former Gulf war commander-in-chief recalled.
Schwarzkopf decided, however, that his personal integrity was not for sale.
"I told them I won't do it," he recalled. "American men and women were willing to die in Kuwait. Don't ask me to profit from their sacrifice; I will not betray their trust."
But the general proved to be the exception. As it turned the Gulf war's leading instigators and strategists, from President Bush on down, were willing to betray their trust and honor for blood money extorted from Arab oil magnates.
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