Originally posted by Rustling Leaf
Anyone who wants an example of this racketeering should do a search for "Cheney Haliburton contracts".
Dave.
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..or how about this story from the yesterday's (Saturday) Globe and Mail's Report on Business section:
Iraq a field of dreams for big oil firms
Calgary Ñ The war for oil is only just beginning.
Three trillion dollars Ñ that's trillion, with a T Ñ in profits and royalties are up for grabs in Iraq as the world's largest oil companies vie for the rights to rebuild, expand and exploit the massive reserves in the country.
Hundreds of billions of barrels of cheap crude may lie beneath the sands of the Iraqi desert, waiting for the drill bits of Western companies that have been largely shut out of the country since the oil industry there was nationalized three decades ago.
The prospect of such a bonanza could hardly come at a better time for the big players in the global oil industry, who have long eyed Iraq's reserves and who face a tough task in replenishing their reserves of oil in order to maintain production and revenue...
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(N.B.: The entire quote box above is the hyperlink to the the Globe website's full version of the story.)
{EDIT}Or here, in a second Globe story from yesterday, hounourability from a second angle:
Robbing the cradle of civilization
By Graeme Smith and Caroline Alphonso ÑPriceless antiquities stolen from museums
...Prof. Gerstenblith was among the antiquities experts who met with Pentagon war planners in January to warn them about 4,000 vulnerable cultural sites in Iraq.
The national museum in Baghdad was at the top of the list, she said.
"The U.S. military was told repeatedly by members of the archeological community about the tremendous significance of the collections and museum itself. It was in the area that was under the control of the U.S. military for at least the last two or three days.
"To have not taken what would have been a very simple step to protect it is extremely disappointing and, depending on the damage, could be considered a disaster."
Like other archeologists, Prof. Gerstenblith noted that the U.S. troops who allowed the looting to happen may have violated the 1954 convention signed at The Hague that guarantees protection of cultural property during war.
John Malcolm Russell, an archeologist at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, said he called a high-ranking friend inside the Pentagon as soon as he heard about the looting.
"He can't imagine what happened because he thought there were troops in place," Mr. Russell said. "It should have been a priority for protection."
McGuire Gibson, a professor of Mesopotamian archeology at the University of Chicago, agreed: "It's a great tragedy."
But at the Pentagon yesterday, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shrugged off the concerns about looting. "Stuff happens," he said. ". . . Where they [U.S. forces] see looting, they're stopping it. And they will be doing so."
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Stuff happens indeed!
(N.B.: Once again, the entire quote box above is the hyperlink to the the Globe website's full version of the story.)
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