October 25, 2006
Massive war profiteering by Bush family members.
Via
Common Dreams is this excellent round-up by Heather Wokusch of the various ways the Bush family is profiteering from their wars,
How the Bush Family Makes a Killing from George's Presidency. I can't believe that people are just turning their eyes from this level of corruption and perfidy, not when it's so widespread and so very, very well documented. And it's
everyone in the family, not just a few of them. That's what's so disgusting. It's worth reading the whole thing, about Neil and Marvin and Uncle Bucky, but I guess the most interesting is on what the senior George Bush has been up to.
Bush's dad has strong connections to the Carlyle Group, a massive private equity investment firm whose Chairman Emeritus is Frank Carlucci, a former college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's and former Defense Secretary under Ronald Reagan. Imagine the pull Carlucci has with today's White House.
But Carlucci has another secret weapon - Bush Sr. Amid conflict-of-interest allegations, the elder Bush resigned from the Carlyle Group in 2003, but reportedly remains on retainer, opening doors to lucrative profits in the Middle East and elsewhere. Bush Sr.'s specialty is Saudi Arabia; in fact, he was at a Carlyle investment conference with Osama bin Laden's estranged brother, Shafiq bin Laden, when the 9/11 attacks took place.
Carlyle specializes in military and security investments, and with Bush Jr. in office, the company's profits have soared; it received $677 million in contracts in 2002, then a whopping $2.1 billion in 2003. Carlyle's investors currently enjoy an equity capital pool of over 44 billion dollars.
In January 2006, Bush Sr. wrote China's Foreign Affairs Ministry that it would be "beneficial to the comprehensive development of Sino-US relations" if Beijing approved the sale of a Chinese bank to a consortium which included Carlyle. Bluntly put, Bush Sr. asked China to grant Carlyle a lucrative business deal or risk his son's wrath. Foreign policy at its finest.
I did not realize that at the moment of the 9/11 attacks, while George Jr. was reading 'My Pet Goat' to the kids, Bush Sr. was actually in a meeting with a bin Laden. Unbelievable.
I also think that people should know that Vice President Cheney continues to hold over 400,000 options on shares in Haliburton, while openly steering them all the business they can handle. It's beyond scandalous that a sitting vice president should be openly making so much money war profiteering at such a critical time.
But what she's talking about is just the tip of the iceberg. She's just discussing current profit making activities, not those from the larger investments that the Bush family and their many relatives and retainers have in the larger military-industrial-financial-legal-media complex. It's spread out and shielded and well hidden, but they own staggering chunks of the world. They are making tens of billiions out of this war, if not more. This is the most massive war profteering in world history. By far.
