::armed:: If we weren?t spending the money on the war, we would just be wasting it on dumb shit like Social Security Education Health Care and Welfare. Look at the good it?s doing for companies like the Carlyel Group and Halliburton. You can go you Iraq and work seven days a week living in a tent, and make the same money I make working at Miami Beach.
And let?s face it the cost of $332 billion plus the additional $122 billion Bush is asking for in 2007 is a small price to pay for all the weapons of mass destruction we have uncovered. Oh that?s right the only weapon of mass destruction we have uncovered is President Bush. The cost of human life, 2359 U S deaths, and 17269 wounded and 30260 Iraqi deaths, mostly civilian?s seams so small when you see how happy the Iraqi people are that we liberated them. Like I said the money to be made is outstanding, and look who?s getting a slice of the pie?
In the mid-1990s, George H.W. Bush joined up with the Carlyle Group. ?Under the leadership of ex-officials like Baker and former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, Carlyle developed a specialty in buying defense companies and doubling or quadrupling their value. The ex-president not only became an investor in Carlyle, but a member of the company's Asia Advisory Board and a rainmaker who drummed up investors. Twelve rich Saudi families, including the Bin Ladens, were among them. In 2002, the Washington Post reported
? The bin Laden family first invested in Carlyle in 1994. Representing Carlyle?s Asia Board, George H.W. Bush visited the bin laden family's headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Kurt Eichenwald, ?Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings With Carlyle Group,? The New York Times, October 26, 2001.
Halliburton an "emergency" contract for oil fields reconstruction, which was awarded without the usual government bidding process because of said "emergency" (and despite the fact Just before the Iraq war started, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded that the invasion wasn't on any particular timetable and the fact it had been in the works for a year and a half).
The deal was authorized for up to $7 billion, but the Army didn't trash the country with sufficient enthusiasm to make the whole amount, and the actual size of the deal is now estimated at $600 million (assuming Halliburton survives the lawsuits from competitors who inexplicably feel that something fishy is going on here).
