Is it proven that Cheney did business with Iraq?

Great Debates
1

Has it been established that Cheney did in fact do business with Iraq when he was with Halliburton? A Google search comes up with acres of links, but none from what I would call a mainstream news source.

2

Does mainstream therefore not mean reliable? Show us some of these links you found and let us decide for ourselves.

3

Washington Post do ya? :smiley: Says “yeah”, sort of. Depends on how much involvement you wanna believe Dick had with it all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/20/197l-022000-idx.html

4

I assume you meant “does NOT mainstream therefore not mean reliable”. I wished to discuss the hypocrisy of Cheney calling for war against against Iraq, and felt it would be best having mainstream cites.

Thanks for the link, DDG.

5

Yeah, that’s what I meant. You want hypocrisy? Try Donald Rumsfeld visiting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and not uttering a peep about Saddam gassing the Kurds. I do have cites for this, just not to hand (as usual) so will get back to you on this. But it’s more fuel for the fire, to be sure.

6

I hadn’t heard about Rumsfeld, that sounds relevant too.

7

Sorry it took me so long in getting back to you; my memory for sources is sometimes poor and I had to ask around if anyone else had seen it. Finally got lucky. Here’s the link:

http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill0802.html

It’s an article by Jeremy Scahill in CounterPunch. I admit I got one detail wrong; Saddam hadn’t gassed the Kurds at that point, but he had used gas against Iranian soldiers in the first Gulf War. Other than the detail about the victims, I stand by the assertion that Rumsfeld was aware of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons while he was there reopening diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein and didn’t do a thing about it.

8

There was a recent article in CNN saying that during the Iran-Iraq war the US provided intelligence to Iraq knowing full well the information would be used to use poison gas against the Iranians. In other words, the US was an accomplice in war crimes. I do not remember if specific individuals were mentioned.

Another recent article in Newsweek says American troops stood by in Afghanistan while the Northern Alliance loaded Taliban prisoners into containers where they would suffocate. Mass graves are being uncovered.

9

I don’t think it matters whether there were specific individuals cited in this instance, sailor - it just seems quite clear to me that the crew who are beating the war drums against Saddam today didn’t seem to have all that much of a problem with his criminal acts before 1990. Smacks of sheer hypocrisy to me.

Your Newsweek cite illustrates the same US method in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance and the Taliban are both a bunch of skunks, but Clinton and Bush didn’t seem to have too much of a problem working with them up until 363 days ago (although it does seem Bush had a plan for war with Afghanistan in place for October 2001 if the Taliban didn’t start playing ball.)