This week the Bush administration revealed that megacorporation Bechtel - a former employer of Dick Cheney (according to Asia Times - the info has apparently been expunged everywhere else) and a veteran swine at the Middle East pork trough, had landed the biggest piece of the Iraq reconstruction pie. This is hardly surprising, since they had Donald Rumsfeld lobbying on their behalf behind the scenes. But this isn't the first time Rumsfeld lobbied for Bechtel - back in 1983, he engineered a sweetheart deal between the corporation and Saddam Hussein - a billion dollar pipeline across Iraq. But these actions are just two pieces of the puzzle showing a much bigger cpicture.

The modus operandi of the big natural resource-exploiting corporations (oil, mining, lumbering) past and very especially present is to move in on a developing nation, typically using the CIA (whose services are enlisted via heavy lobbying and deal-making with people within Congress and the administration) and later the military. Once the existing government in the target country is overthrown, dictators handpicked by the US are installed. These dictators, of course, then immediately owe the US corporations big time for their sudden rise to power. These puppet dictators then rob their own people in order to finance the construction of the corporate infrastructure demanded by the US companies.

For example, after the nationalistic Sukarno was overthrown in Indonesia, the US puppet, General Suharto essentially handed companies like Mobile and Henry Kissinger's Freeport McMoran huge tracts of Indonesian forestlands for free, spent Indonesian funds to help them build the pipelines and ports they required, and used Indonesian troops to protect the corporate holdings. This scenario has happened over and over, with some variations, in many other countries. Last year, the CIA was implicated in trying to overthrow the new democratic leader of Venezuela? Why? Because he has the "misguided belief" that Venezuela's oil and oil infrastructure belongs to the Venezuelans! Right now, in Nigeria, an oil corporation-friendly dictator is now being "elected" (like Saddam was "elected") to insure that the country's vast oil reserves belong to the corporations. Meanwhile, Nigerian natives can't even afford gas for their old cars.

This standard scheme has been perpetuated in Iraq, though over a longer time frame and far more slickly. Saddam was, to all intents and purposes, set up by the oil companies working through the US government. And, just as in Indonesia, Saddam was encouraged to pay off his US backers by using his people's treasury to pay US corporations like Bechtel to create the infrastructure (pipelines, pumping stations, new wells, etc.) the oil companies needed to create their a new colonial arm of their empire. The war against Iraq was nothing less than a drive by the oil companies to lay claim to their "oil colony." Once they had a more cooperative US puppet government in place, they would no longer have to deal with a "middle man."

The 'Corporate Engineering' of Iraq and the US Presidency

In July of 1968, just three years after the CIA succeeded in toppling Sukarno and installing Suharto, Major. Gen. Ahmed Hassan Al' Bakar of the Ba'ath party staged a coup and seized control of the government of Iraq. Bakar was determined to end post-WWII instability and used the nation's oil revenues to build up the military into the most powerful in the Middle East. Everything changed in 1979. In January, the US-backed Shah of Iran was toppled. In July, US-friendly Saddam Hussein was installed as the new head of Iraq. In November, the Iranians took several Americans at the Tehran US Embassy hostage, precipitating an international crisis and a political Waterloo for Jimmy Carter. Iraq invaded Iran, seizing some of its territory in late September, 1980- in a move perfectly timed to coincide with the run up to the 1980 presidential election. Many doubt that this was a coincidence, especially since Saddam Hussein was backed heavily by US oil companies, while oil-onservation-promoting Carter was despised and feared by the same companies.

With Carter out of the way and Reagan installed, the oil companies, Donald Rumsfeld, William Crowe, Jr., Cheney - the whole scurvy cast of corporate vultures, all wheeled and dealed cozily with Saddam like old poker buddies. Bechtel is heavily rumored to have brokered the sale of tons of weaponry for Saddam as well as other "services," while Wm. Crowe, Jr. has been openly accused of providing the dictator with anthrax technology. There were big bucks to be made by all!

But, as with all greedy pigs, enough was never enough for Bechtel, Halliburton, Rummy or any other other players at that time. They wanted more and Saddam grew progressively more independent and despotic - the monster the corporate barons had created soon morphed into an entity beyond their control. The true motivation for Gulf War I is not entirely clear. Some say it was merely a "warning shot" fired at Saddam by his former "handlers." Others say it was simply a political play to keep Bush I in power another term for the convenience of the robber barons. Still others say it was the staged product of a three-way inside collusion between Iraq, Kuwait and Bush I's regime in which everyone who got a piece of the pie (Halliburon, Bechtel, et al) made billions. It seems likely that such an "I owe ya" relationship could explain the apparent agreement made by Bush I NOT to march on Baghdad.
In any case, the oil corporations had other ways to get what they wanted and were apparently willing to wait to put their grand plan in place - the grand plan being using the centrally located oil rich Iraq as a platform to conquest of the rest of the oil-producing lands of the Middle East and Central Asia. So, they waited for Saddam to be starved out through sanctions and waited for Clinton's term to play out. To accelerate the latter process, the corporate barons used their bought-and-paid-for rightwing reps in Congress to instigate and prosecute an endless Lewinsky/White Water investigation, followed by a dragged out travesty of an impeachment trial. This witch-hunt-like crusade was designed not just to remove Clinton, it was also designed to induce "impeachement/investigation fatigue" in the public, who, weary of such proceedings, would tolerate far worse offenses by the coming corporate backed puppet president rather than going through the wringer again.
As it turns out, the removal of the Democrats in the White House was much harder than the corporate junta anticipated. With the election so close, they used every resource at their disposal and, incredibly, actually managed to steal the election away through the services of the pro-corporate Supreme Court majority. It has recently been revealed that even before Bush was officially inaugurated, plans were laid to go into Iraq. This plan was, in essence, to engineer a reason to invade the country and thereby lay claim to the infrastructure the same companies had build nearly 20 years before using the Iraqi people's own money.

However, one little snag was hit (and hopefully it will prove a fatal one): in addition to being a corporate puppet chosen by the oil industry Bush also happens to be a religious fanatic whose crusade in Iraq has taken on a disastrous life of its own. The same thing happened with Hitler - he was SUPPOSED to be a puppet of the Nazi party. But the puppet, also a religious fanatic, at least to start, soon slipped his strings and, ultimately, brought the Reich down with a thunderous crash.

Some recent Bechtel stories:

Ultimate Insiders
www.commondreams.org/views03/0414-02.htm

Blast from the Past, New York Times Magazine
www.yourhealthdaily.com/syndicate/fs/features/centerpiece_spl.html

Bechtel sues one of Earth's poorest nations over lost profits because the country's water policy didn't suit Bechtel's corporate needs
threehegemons.tripod.com/threehegemonsblog/id169.html

related stories (fellow corporate swine)

Outrageous human rights abuses by Kellogg. Brown & Root under Cheney's direction
www.commondreams.org/headlines/100500-01.htm
and
www.atimes.com/se-asia/BJ06Ae01.html