Ultimate Insiders
Max Betivul
was secretary of state. Lebanon was in turmoil. And Iraq and Iran were
locked in a vicious war that had sharply curtailed the flow of oil out
of Iraq.
In December 1983 Donald Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East as a
special envoy in an effort to jump-start the peace process in Lebanon
and advance a presidential initiative for peace between Arabs and
Israelis.
One of his stops was Baghdad, where he met with Saddam Hussein. That was
unusual. Mr. Rumsfeld was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit
Iraq since 1967, when Iraq and other Arab nations severed relations with
the U.S., which they blamed for Israel's victory in the Six-Day War.
The primary goal of Mr. Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad was to improve
relations with Iraq. But another matter was also quietly discussed. The
powerful Bechtel Group in San Francisco, of which Secretary Shultz had
been president before joining the Reagan administration, wanted to build
an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, near the Red
Sea. It was a billion-dollar project and the U.S. government wanted
Saddam to sign off on it.
This remains, two decades later, a touchy subject. When I brought the
matter up last week with James Placke, who in 1983 was a deputy
assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, he said, "My
memory on that is kind of foggy."
But at the mention of Bechtel, he said: "Ahh, now you've said the magic
word. Now I remember. Bechtel was promoting it."
Bechtel was promoting it and the Middle East peace envoy, Donald
Rumsfeld, was pushing it with top Iraqi officials. A previously
classified State Department memo that is contained in a report on the
pipeline by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington described how
Mr. Rumsfeld broached the subject during a private meeting with Iraq's
foreign minister, Tariq Aziz.
The memo, from Mr. Rumsfeld, said: "I raised the question of a pipeline
through Jordan. He said he was familiar with the proposal. It apparently
was a U.S. company's proposal. However, he was concerned about the
proximity to Israel as the pipeline would enter the Gulf of Aqaba."
The Iraqis were afraid the Israelis might destroy the pipeline. "I said
I could understand that there would need to be some sort of arrangement
that would give those involved confidence that it would not be easily
vulnerable," Mr. Rumsfeld wrote in the memo. He added, parenthetically:
"This may be an issue to raise with Israel at the appropriate time."
It was known by the fall of 1983 that Iraq had used chemical weapons
against Iran. That did not prevent the U.S. from pursuing improved
relations with Saddam, or curb the enthusiasm for the Aqaba pipeline — a
project promoted by a company that had given the Reagan administration
not just its secretary of state, but also its secretary of defense,
Caspar Weinberger, who had been Bechtel's general counsel.
No one seemed concerned about weaving these obvious conflicts of
interest into the peace process in the most volatile region of the
world.
Mr. Shultz said he recused himself from anything having to do with the
pipeline. But it was his State Department that had joined with Bechtel
to push the project, and everyone knew that Mr. Shultz had run Bechtel.
Saddam ultimately gave a thumbs down to the pipeline proposal. "It
didn't seem to make very good commercial sense," said Mr. Placke, "and
ultimately I think it failed on those grounds."
The efforts to promote peace in the Middle East also failed. Now, 20
years later, Mr. Shultz (who is currently on the board of Bechtel) and
Mr. Rumsfeld are among the fiercest of the war hawks. They wanted war
with Iraq and they got it.
Their philosophical flights in favor of the war would seem more
graceful, and much less unsavory, if they weren't flying with the
baggage of Bechtel and other large commercial interests that have so
much to gain from the war.
This unilateral war and the ouster of Saddam have given the hawks and
their commercial allies carte blanche in Iraq. And the company with
perhaps the sleekest and most effective of all the inside tracks, a
company that is fairly panting with anticipation over oil and
reconstruction contracts worth scores of billions of dollars, is of
course the Bechtel Group of San Francisco.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/14/opinion/14HERB.html
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Pitigoi
>In December 1983 Donald Rumsfeld was sent to
>But another matter was also quietly discussed. The
>powerful Bechtel Group in San Francisco,
>It was known by the fall of 1983 that Iraq had used chemical weapons
>against Iran.
Ce vrei sa zici banditule? Ca exista coruptie si in afara Romaniei? Pai vezi ca
puteti dormii linistiti, nu se intimpla nimic la Bucuresti ce nu se intimpla si
la case mai mari?
Bai containere paduchios, nu te mai multumesti sa calomniezi guvernul roman,
vezi tu ca-ti infunda astia gura nespalata.
Multmaimulta Muie
> Bai containere paduchios, nu te mai multumesti sa calomniezi guvernul roman,
> vezi tu ca-ti infunda astia gura nespalata.
Sugi pula pitzi ! Prost mai ieshti baa treci pe post da papagal ! MMMM