Rand Paul: Dick Cheney used 9/11 as excuse to invade Iraq for the benefit of Halliburton

[marble falls]

Rand Paul: Dick Cheney used 9/11 as excuse to invade Iraq for the benefit of Halliburton

By Tom Boggioni
Monday, April 7, 2014 7:53 EDT

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/07/rand-paul-dick-cheney-used-911-as-excuse-to-invade-iraq-for-the-benefit-of-halliburton/

In a videotaped 2009 speech before student Republicans at Western Kentucky University, Rand Paul — who was just beginning his run for the Senate seat he eventually won — explained that former Vice President Dick Cheney, who counseled against war in Iraq in 1995, pushed for war following 9/11 to benefit his former employers at military contractor Halliburton.

In the video, discovered by David Corn at Mother Jones, Paul can be seen standing at a lectern describing Cheney’s opinion in 1995, when he said that invading Iraq would be, “a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it’d be civil war, we would have no exit strategy.”

Paul said:

There’s a great YouTube of Dick Cheney in 1995 defending [President] Bush Number One [and the decision not to invade Baghdad in the first Gulf war], and he goes on for about five minutes. He’s being interviewed, I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it’d be civil war, we would have no exit strategy. He goes on and on for five minutes. Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea. And that’s why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars, their CEO. Next thing you know, he’s back in government and it’s a good idea to go into Iraq.

<snip>

The day after 9/11, [CIA chief] George Tenet is going in the [White] House and [Pentagon adviser] Richard Perle is coming out of the White House. And George Tenet should know more about intelligence than anybody in the world, and the first thing Richard Perle says to him on the way out is, ‘We’ve got it, now we can go into Iraq.’ And George Tenet, who supposedly knows as much intelligence as anybody in the White House says, ‘Well, don’t we need to know that they have some connection to 9/11?’ And, he [Perle] says, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ It became an excuse. 9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq.

<snip>

It’s Dick Cheney in 1995 being interviewed on why they didn’t go into Baghdad the first time under the first [President] George Bush. And his arguments are exactly mirroring my dad’s arguments for why we shouldn’t have gone in this time. It would be chaos. There’d be a civil war. There’d be no exit strategy. And cost a blue bloody fortune in both lives and treasure. And this is Dick Cheney saying this. But, you know, a couple hundred million dollars later Dick Cheney earns from Halliburton, he comes back into government. Now Halliburton’s got a billion-dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. You know, you hate to be so cynical that you think some of these corporations are able to influence policy, but I think sometimes they are. Most of the people on these [congressional] committees have a million dollars in their bank account all from different military industrial contractors. We don’t want our defense to be defined by people who make money off of the weapons.

<snip>

Watch the Western Kentucky video below:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/07/rand-paul-dick-cheney-used-911-as-excuse-to-invade-iraq-for-the-benefit-of-halliburton/

[WhiteTara]

1. Now can we send the bastard to the Hague? nt

[OnyxCollie]

2. I would like to agree with Rand Paul,

but according to a certain mindset here, that would mean I would be fully endorsing the 2016 Paul for President campaign.

What to do, what to do...

[MindMover]

9. That is the problem with libertarians, some of there ideas are almost progressive ...

until you realize ...

""

[marble falls]

11. Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke pot.

[mac56]

22. Or

[marble falls]

24. And that is the fatal fail of Libertarianism to me.

[OnyxCollie]

12. That doesn't address hard core partisans

who use the fallacy of guilt by association to dismiss legitimate criticism of President Obama's policies, but you knew that.

[obxhead]

14. even a stopped clock is right once a day.

Not that RP is right often, but on this single issue he's saying the correct things.

Otherwise he and his ilk can go fuck themselves.

[OnyxCollie]

16. Twice a day.

But, yeah, I agree with what you are saying.

My comment was toward the hardcore partisans who use the guilt by association fallacy against even the most general consensus to dismiss criticism of the President.

(Keep watching this thread, and you'll likely see some examples develop.)

[obxhead]

17. I was going with a clock set at "military" time

I know exactly what you were talking about. Many of those same people have the BOG as their main posting location.

[marble falls]

21. Good save!

[obxhead]

28. Actually

I was originally going to post "twice a day" but that felt like I was giving him too much credit. Even once a day is too much, but in this one RARE instance, RP is correct, partly anyway.

It was profit for a lot of mega companies, not just Halliburton, that drove the war drums for the Iraq invasion.

[OnyxCollie]

26. I was thinking of a digital clock

with an am/pm display.

But stopped digital clocks don't work at all.

[Thor_MN]

30. Flip leaf clocks fit the bill

[OnyxCollie]

31. I thought those were the coolest thing when I was a kid.

[eppur_se_muova]

27. Nicely done.

[Roy Rolling]

20. I am torn, too

I agree with the point, I detest the pointer.

[frazzled]

3. And what did he say in 2002?

Who cares what Rand Paul said in 2009, seven years after Shock and Awe, long after everybody knew about Dick Cheney's lies and motives, and about what he'd said to the contrary in 1995.

This wins for the big yawn, no import "news." We know his big daddy opposed the war, but for reasons entirely unrelated to those we on the left did. I'm not impressed by isolationists, or their sons. It doesn't mean they're right on anything else.

[marble falls]

5. This is more about the GOP than the war.

[mountain grammy]

6. well said and exactly correct!

[yurbud]

4. so if a Republican has said, does that mean it's okay for MSM to acknowledge it's true?

[nxylas]

8. I doubt it

They probably regard him as the wrong sort of Republican.

[stonecutter357]

7. libertarians strike me as very odd.

[JDPriestly]

10. I disagree with Rand Paul on economic and other issues, but I think he is right about

Cheney's motive for going into Iraq -- Halliburton. Please note that this is just a possible theory. Not even Cheney can go back and reconstruct his thoughts or the range of his thoughts when considering attacking Iraq. But the war did produce a lot of revenue for Halliburton at a time when the company needed it.

Here is what may have been one part of Cheney's motive: While at Halliburton, Cheney had the company purchase or complete the purchase of Dresser Ind. which had huge liability for asbestos damages. Here are some articles on how that purchase imposed a lot of debt on Halliburton.

"Back in 1998, when he was CEO of oil-services giant Halliburton Co. (HAL), Vice-President Dick Cheney bought smaller rival Dresser Industries Inc. On Dec. 7, the deal exploded on his former company. When a little-known former Dresser subsidiary suffered defeat in a key asbestos litigation case, worried investors sent shares plunging 42%, to $12.

Halliburton was already well off its 52-week high of $45 because of falling energy prices. Now investors are scared the company is about to get eaten by the asbestos monster--the same one that bankrupted Johns Manville and Owens Corning. With their coffers empty, asbestos lawyers are now going after other companies such as Halliburton, Viacom (VIA), and Pfizer (PFE). Although none of them produced the flame retardant, all sold products containing it or bought companies with asbestos exposure.

. . . .

Halliburton is laying the blame for its woes on a predictable target: the runaway jury. The company says that from 1976 until this year, it settled 194,000 claims for an average of about $200 apiece after insurers chipped in their share. Then, this fall former Dresser unit Harbison-Walker, which marketed a variety of products containing asbestos, suffered four big losses in a row whose awards totalled $152 million.FEWER DEFENDANTS. These cases, for complex reasons, were not originally handled by Halliburton's litigation team. As a result, Lesar argues, they're anomalies. Over the long run, he says, the cost of the company's lawsuits will return to its long-term average. "There has been a huge overreaction to these events," explains the embattled chief.

Problem is, that's not the way asbestos litigation works. Pointing to earlier damage awards is all but useless because the liability keeps expanding. As more companies go bankrupt, the number of defendants left to make payments decreases. And under legal rules that are more concerned with compensating victims than protecting shareholders, a company with partial responsibility for a person's injuries can be held responsible for all of the damages. "Halliburton has been able to go under the radar without making big payments because we were focused on the other defendants," says Karl E. Novak, an attorney in Mount Pleasant, S.C., who brought one of the Texas cases. "Now that some of those other companies are bankrupt, people are starting to look more closely at Halliburton."ACE CARD? That's not the only reason attorneys will be looking at Halliburton in a different light. Trials are like focus groups: Opposing lawyers get to tell their stories and see which one jurors like better. Now that plaintiffs' attorneys have been successful at trial, others bringing suit won't accept cheap settlements.

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2001-12-23/the-asbestos-monster-how-scary-for-halliburton

Had he still been Halliburton's chief executive, Wall Street might have forced him to take responsibility for the asbestos problem he imported to his company. But because he wasn't around -- and because his successor, Dave Lesar, was a stand-up guy -- Cheney has largely escaped scrutiny for this fiasco.

Now that Halliburton has managed to extract itself from its asbestos liability by paying a ton of cash and stock to trusts that will compensate victims and their lawyers, we can get a handle on how much Dresser's piece of the problem cost Halliburton. It turns out to be almost as much as Halliburton paid for the company.

While Halliburton's all-stock takeover of Dresser was valued at $7.7 billion when it was announced in February 1998, it was worth only $5.3 billion when it was completed seven months later. The bankruptcy settlement is costing Halliburton just about that much: around $2.8 billion in cash, Halliburton stock with a market value of $2.3 billion the day before Dresser's bankruptcy was resolved and miscellaneous odds and ends and potential payments.

The bankruptcy resolution, which became final on Jan. 3, covered both the Dresser problems and the smaller asbestos problems that Halliburton already had.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64535-2005Jan10.html

Worth reading all of the Washington Post article if you are interested in this.

Recent news on this:

Halliburton Co. suffered a legal setback Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to make it harder for shareholders to proceed with some class-action securities-fraud lawsuits against publicly traded companies.

The justices unanimously ruled that a U.S. appeals court erred in rejecting class certification in a securities fraud lawsuit filed in 2002 on behalf of all buyers of Halliburton stock between June 1999 and December 2001.

The high court reinstated a lawsuit by a group of mutual and pension fund investors who claimed the oilfield services company understated its asbestos liabilities while overstating revenues in its engineering and construction business and the benefits of its merger with Dresser Industries.

The alleged misstatements artificially pumped up Halliburton’s stock price, the lawsuit said, adding that the Houston-based company eventually made corrective disclosures that caused its stock price to fall.

. . . .

http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2011/06/07/186648.htm

Dick Cheney and the giant energy company he will leave to run for vice president have contributed more than $150,000 to members of Congress who sponsored legislation that would limit the ability of workers to sue companies for asbestos exposure.

The Halliburton Co., an oil-field services company based in Dallas, and its subsidiaries have had about 273,300 suits filed against them since 1976 by workers suffering from asbestos-related disease. Many of those suits were filed before Cheney became chairman of the board and chief executive officer in 1995.

At the end of 1999, 107,650 suits for damages were still pending, including 46,400 new suits filed against the corporation last year, according to the firm's annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cheney, 59, says he will resign Aug. 16 to concentrate on the Republican campaign.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/080400-02.htm

We'll never know the truth about the motivations for going into Iraq, but they may have been more complex than we generally realize and may have included the "noble cause" of bailing out Halliburton and its investors.

[Zambero]

13. This will push Liz Cheney into full Benghazi mode

For gawdsake stop all the !%!$@#!$!! talk about Irag! More Bengahzi, Benghazi, Benghazi!!!

[marble falls]

15. That Liz is a card. And a one trick pony.

[SummerSnow]

18. Eww, I agreed with Rand Paul on this now my eye wont stop twitching.

[marble falls]

23. A drink might help. Rand is like his dad. About 10% I agree with, 20% I kinda agree with, the rest..

is a mix of racism, Libertarian booshwa, nonsense that's keeps me from trusting him even a little bit. But he certainly got it right it time.

[SummerSnow]

25. I got some Vodka

[lunasun]

19. duh!

[rppper]

29. Well Ethell, good observation!

12 years too late but good observation...

"Dr." Paul wins the internet!

{sarcasm off}