Photos of 20,000 Iraqi civilians killed by USA

"Tom Enright" wrote in message
om...
"Byron Canfield" wrote in message
news:m1vob.53842$275.136332@attbi_s53...
"Tom Enright" wrote in message
om...

Construtction companies getting construction contracts!?
Petro-Chemical companies getting contracts to handle petro-chemicals!?

What is the world comming to?

Two problems:

The US, and these companies, would have been far better off if Iraq
wasn't
invaded and just did business with Saddam.

Wrong.

1. The US corporatations could no longer have dealings with the ilk of
Hussein due to the more or less common knowledge that he was such a
scoundrel -- bad image.

The morality of the US government and corporations prevent them from doing
business with Hussein but not to invade Iraq?

Precisely -- it is (was) a lot easier selling the American public on the
what a bad guy Hussein is, thereby justifying invasion, that it is (was)
selling the American public on what a great guy he is.

Of course this explains why the French and the Germans were so against the
invasion. They have no problem doing business with such a scoundrel.

The second statement above does not constitute a logical conclusion based on
the first. It is not necessary for a country to do business with Iraq for
them to decry the invasion.

2. Hussein wouldn't do business with them. Contracts did not include the
U.S.

Hussein would gladly do business with the US.

And that statement is based on what?

Are actually suggesting
that he would turn down income?

He didn't need the income from the U.S. -- he already had buyers lined up
for all the oil he could produce.

"Sure I gas and torture my own people
with impunity, but hey, at least I don't do business with US energy
companies."

That has nothing to do with the issue.

3. Hussein was the leader in replacing the dollar with the Euro as the
medium of exchange in the petro industry, which would have cause
economic
collapse of the United States, particularly bringing down the U.S.
petro-chemical businesses.

These companies also gave to Democrats.

By what comparative amounts?

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? The Democrats and the
Republicans have recieved money from thousands of corporations sometimes
the Dems get more, sometimes the Republicans.

All irrelevanyt. Doesn't answer the question.

The attention Enron paid
to Clinton is really rather impressive.

Is Billy in on this scam as
well?

Probably.

"P. Tierney" wrote in message news:bhgob.63783$HS4.563945@attbi_s01...

Silly me. I forgot the other main reason for the war.
Who got the most money? Shouldn't be a surprise.

BTW, I would've given you the Fox version of this story,
if they only had it on their website.............

Why should Fox News report false stories?

--------------
Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 30, 2003

Filed at 11:32 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq
and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their
executives have had important political and military connections, according
to a study released Thursday.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090636/

"There's just one problem: The CPI has no evidence to support its
allegations."

-TOE

snip

On 4 Nov 2003 05:29:04 -0800, (Tom Enright) wrote:

"P. Tierney" wrote in message news:bhgob.63783$HS4.563945@attbi_s01...


--------------
Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 30, 2003

Filed at 11:32 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Companies awarded $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq
and Afghanistan have been major campaign donors to President Bush, and their
executives have had important political and military connections, according
to a study released Thursday.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090636/

"There's just one problem: The CPI has no evidence to support its
allegations."

-TOE

snip

The CPI report is nothing but evidence supporting the "allegations"
cited in the first sentence of the quoted article. They give a list
of 70 firms that received contracts for government work in Iraq and
Afghanistan, describe their background, and give information on their
campaign donations and links to members of current and prior
administrations. All of the firms are big donors and many of them
have close connections to administrations past and present.

All that Drezner's article demonstrates is that there is but a limited
correlation between the amount of campaign donations of the 70 firms
on the list and the size of the contacts they receive. There are a
few problems with Drezners analysis:

*First of all, it's completely beside the point. The CPI never argues
that the more you donate, the more contracts you get.

*Drezner's analysis completely ignores the argument that executives in
the companies are connected to government officials (e.g. Halliburton
with Cheney and George Schultz with Bechel.) The suggestion that a
"good-ole-boy" network might exist in Washington is just as
significant as a link between campaign donors and contracts.

*Drezner's numbers are based on an incomplete sampling, which he
himself admits:

"The perfect test would be to collect all of the firms that are both
competent and eligible and see whether the size of their contributions
affected whether they received a contract and how large the contract
was."

He then proceeds to try to cover his lack of rigor with the following
ridiculous statement:

"However, given the wide variation in both contract size (from $2.3
billion to $10,000) and campaign expenditures (from zero to $8.8
million), what's presented is still a fair test of whether there is
systemic corruption."

Given that there's likely hundreds if not thousands of firms ignored
by Drezner that are competent and eligible but neither donated or
received contracts, his numbers are extremely skewed.

*Drezner never addresses other interesting issues raised by the
report. One big item is how many of the initial contracts in Iraq
were no-bid and how on others there was limited bidding with much of
the bidding process hidden from the public. Also, it notes that
Halliburton is subcontracting much of its work to Iraqi firms? Why
then aren't the contracts going directly to the Iraqi's? Why should
Halliburton be skimming profits off of the work. The point of the
whole operation is to get the Iraqi's running their own country again,
n'est-ce pas?

I'd suggest skimming through some of the actual report:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/default.aspx

It's not just a sensationalist headline with a little bit of evidence
to back it up. It's an extensive look at the contracting process in
Afghanistan and Iraq. While if you read between the lines, you'll
find obvious critiques of the Bush administration, you'll also see
indictments of past adminstrations as well, and a condemnation of the
government contracting process on the whole. It's not just partisan
blather. There's a lot of meat in there and to try to dismiss it with
a single quote is both silly and lazy.

"Tom Enright" wrote in message
m...
"P. Tierney" wrote in message
news:bhgob.63783$HS4.563945@attbi_s01...

Silly me. I forgot the other main reason for the war.
Who got the most money? Shouldn't be a surprise.

BTW, I would've given you the Fox version of this story,
if they only had it on their website.............

Why should Fox News report false stories?

The fact that the report was issued isn't false.
If they think that the conclusions are, then they
can surely provide analysts to do the work.


P. Tierney