I read Thomas Ricks book "Fiasco"which seemed to be a pretty thorough explanation of the events in play, but one part of the intertwined “confederacy of dunces” scenario I never really got my head around was VP Cheney’sinvolvement with various neo-cons in cherry picking the intelligence that would present a (fake) case for going to war. There seemed to be no objective reason why he would do this or involve himself this way. Some have suggested his overt paranoia was reason enough
Ricks alludes to some opinions floated at the time that the neocons were behaving more like actors for Israeli interests vs US interests in Cheney’s operation, but makes no direct accusations. I understand Cheney was paranoid and 9-11 was a fresh wound, and people wanted to do *something * but setting up an office to specifically (and fraudulently) frame the case for going to war seems kind of over the top.
Some have suggested that the influential (mainly Jewish) neocons involved with Cheney, and Cheney himself, were effectively acting as de-facto agents for the geo-political interests of Israel and breaking up and re-making the middle east political landscape (and in theory reducing the threat to Israel) was the ultimate goal. Some of the neocons had actually written papers for the think tanks they worked for outlining how this mid-east political re-alignment (basically dictatorships become democracies) might work and now here was an opportunity to field test the hypothesis. The suspicion was that *this *was why the extra-ordinary effort went into subverting and cherry picking the intelligence that was used in making decisions.
I get there were numerous elements in play in the decision to go to war with Iraq, but was this (from the Israeli perspective) just a fortunate scenario of the US being aggressively pointed at a potential enemy of Israel through happenstance, or were there potentially deeper machinations where Israel was actively assisting and directing the intelligence cherry picking activities of the neocons and by extension VP Cheney?
I think people are overlooking an obvious reason. Wars get the money flowing. The invasion saw hundreds of billions of government dollars being spent. Cheney and his cronies were well positioned to tap into that flow.
Cheney was very much a part of the neo-con group and a founding member of the Project for the New American Century that actively promoted an invasion of Iraq even before the 2000 presidential election.
That there might have been various connections between the neo-cons and Likud and similar Israeli parties is probable, but one hardly needs to seek an Israeli “connection” to the Iraq invasion. The PNAC had the misguided belief that removing Hussein would be a wonderful thing among easing some tensions in the Middle East, projecting more American power and influence into the Middle East, and gaining access to a directly “friendly” source of petroleum.
Without putting this forward as a primary motive, Cheney only resigned as CEO of Halliburton to become vice-president and still had a lot of connections to the company. Halliburton then received a lot of (often no-bid) contracts to provide support to the invasion troops and to “re-build” Iraq.
IIRC, the general consensus here in Israel at the time was that, while we appreciated the sentiment, invading Iraq would be pointless - Saddam was no longer a real threat, and taking him down would only strengthen Iran.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that certain neocons weren’t doing what *they *thought was right for Israel, but that’s not really Israel’s fault.
While Cheney officially resigned his position at Halliburton, he still had substantial financial interests in the company, like deferred bonuses and stock options. He collected a share of the profits Halliburton made during the war.
But there were a substantial number of others who supported the war who had zero financial interest. Wolfowitz, Lieberman, Kristol, Feith, and so on.
The simple answer is that some people in and around US Government thought that everything changed after 9/11. It really has nothing to do with Israel, oil, or whatever. It’s more like a simple political will to use military force in spite of common sense.
The deferred salary was just that… deferred. That is, money already earned, but paid later. The stock options were set up under contract so that all profits were donated to charity, and no tax benefit taken.
I thought deferred bonuses and stock options was pretty specific. If you want a dollar amount it was $1,451,398 in deferred bonuses - this is the total amount for them that Cheney claimed on his financial disclosure statements in 2001, 2002, and 2003. I can’t get quite as precise a figure for the stock options, but Cheney made approximately $9,900,000 from them between 2000 and 2005.
These are the lowest figures and are based on documents Cheney himself has submitted. Other sources say he received significantly higher sums - perhaps in excess of thirty million dollars.
The OPs theory really downplays how popular military adventurism was among the US/UK political elites. It wasn’t for “Israel’s sake,” but it was merely for the chance to remake the Middle East in the modern-day west’s image (pro-capitalism, pro-secularism, pro-democracy, pro-ethnic-nationalism/anti-Islamic-internationalism, etc). If you didn’t 100% support this war that meant you were against freedom or you were a totalitarian/dictator lover. Christopher Hitchens often framed the debate as a fight between the civilized west against Islamofacists (and their leftist/liberal protectors).
In other words it was a chance to finally re-do colonialism…but RIGHT this time! Like what was done in South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore.
Such unthinking interventionism is still common in the west. When it looked like Libya/Syria were being affected by the Arab spring, both countries were bombed by the west in hopes of toppling Gaddafi and Assad; little to no thought of the end result was made (the current result is a non-stop civil war and the rise of ISIL in both countries).
So, Cheney in 2002 was pushing for war to pump up Halliburton’s stock price, so that he could exercise the options three years later when the tax deduction rules were changed for a short period of time, allowing him a $2 million refund?
My only question is, did Cheney know in 2002 that Katrina would hit in 2005, making the hurricane just another part of his devious plan to install Chalabi in Baghdad and make large charitable contributions soon thereafter?
Did Cheney plan on a hurricane striking in 2005? Of course not.
When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, did Cheney use it as an opportunity to get a tax law enacted that would benefit his already existing financial situation? Maybe.
Of course, it could be a coincidence that the tax law was written in that way and nobody was more surprised than Cheney when he discovered he just happened to be in the exact financial situation which made him eligible to collect all that money.
Something that starts with “Last week, Darth Cheney…” cannot be called “an article”. That’s as far as I got. I didn’t think it was necessary to ask for an objective cite in GD, but apparently it is. Got something that isn’t an opinion piece; that isn’t from an advocacy site? Please quote the part or parts that you think proves your case.
