Weekend
Edition
April 23 / 24, 2005
Guns,
Oil and Bank
Gut Check
in the Labyrinth
By
CHRIS FLOYD
With
fresh indictments last week, the UN oil-for-food scandal took
an unexpected turn into the Labyrinth -- the tangled skein of
war profiteering and state terrorism that has seen the Bush Family's
lust for blood money emerge in three of the darkest criminal episodes
in modern American history: Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and the BCCI
affair.
Texas
oil baron David Chalmers of Bayoil and his partners were hit with
criminal charges for allegedly cutting deals with Saddam Hussein
in the notorious skim operation that outflanked UN sanctions and
diverted funds intended for humanitarian relief. Prosecutors were
shocked -- shocked! -- to find such collusion and corruption in
the oil business.
Of
course, the fact that three U.S. presidents -- the two George
Bushes and their new best pal, Bill Clinton -- actually brokered
massive backroom oil deals for Saddam that dwarfed Bayoil's petty
chiseling, plus the fact that Saddam's nation-strangling thievery
has since been eclipsed by the epic rapine of Bush II's Babylonian
Conquest, in no way mitigates the seriousness of the Chalmers
indictment. But somehow we doubt you'll be seeing those august
statesmen sharing leg irons with old Davy anytime soon.
Chalmers
is a longtime denizen of the Labyrinth. In the mid-1980s, he joined
up with Chilean gun-runner Carlos Cardoen, the Financial Times
reported. Cardoen was a CIA frontman used by Presidents Ronald
Reagan and Bush I to funnel cluster bombs and other weapons secretly
to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. At Reagan's direct
order, Saddam received U.S. military intelligence, billions of
dollars in credits and a steady supply of covert "third-country"
arms to sustain his war effort, even though the White House was
fully aware of Saddam's "almost daily use" of illegal
chemical weapons, The Washington Post reported. Later, Bush I,
as president, would also mandate the sale of WMD material to Saddam,
including anthrax -- long after Saddam notoriously "gassed
his own people" at Halabja.
As
in the present UN scandal, Saddam paid for his covert cluster
bombs with oil. Chalmers would move the actual black stuff and
broker its sale for the CIA and Cardoen, taking a cut in the process.
Since 1999, Chalmers has been doing the same thing on behalf of
Italtech, owned by another crony in the old Cardoen gun-running
scheme. The Texas baron must be aghast to find himself in hot
water for an activity that was once blessed at the highest levels.
Perhaps he neglected to cross the requisite Bushist palms with
sufficient silver -- or else, as with many a Bush minion, he's
just been tossed overboard as chum for the sharks when he's no
longer of any use.
But
let's be fair. Helping Saddam kill people with chemical gas was
not the only reason why Reagan and Bush I aided their favorite
dictator. They had bigger fish to fry -- using the Constitution
as kindling for the feast.
In
1986, George Bush I visited the Middle East with a secret message
to be passed to Saddam via Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: "Drop
more bombs on Iran's cities." How do we know this? From the
sworn testimony of Howard Teicher, the National Security Council
official who accompanied Bush and wrote the official "talking
points" for the trip. Ostensibly, Bush urged this mass killing
of civilians as a strategy to halt Iran's gains at the front.
But as The New Yorker reported -- 13 years ago -- there was another
layer to this covert plot.
A
fierce aerial offensive by Saddam would force Iran to seek more
spare parts for its U.S.-made planes and anti-aircraft weapons,
inherited from the ousted Shah. Bush was already waist-deep in
the Iran-Contra scam, which involved selling Tehran U.S. military
goods through back channels, then funneling the secret profits
to the Contras, the gang of right-wing insurgents and CIA-trained
terrorists in Nicaragua. Congress had forbidden U.S. aid to the
Contras, so Reagan and Bush used the mullahs (and Central American
drug lords) to run their illegal terrorist war. More innocent
deaths in Iran meant more backdoor cash for the Contras. A win-win
situation!
When
Bush I became president, he clasped Saddam even closer, sending
him billions in U.S.-backed "agricultural credits" through
BNL, an Italian bank tied up with BCCI -- the international "financial
consortium" that was actually "one of the largest criminal
enterprises in history," according to the U.S. Senate. BCCI
laundered money and financed arms dealing, terrorism, smuggling
and prostitution, while corrupting government officials worldwide
with bribes and extortion.
As
Bush well knew, Saddam was using the BNL cash for arms, not food;
indeed, that was the point of the exercise. When some honest U.S.
officials threatened to unravel the BNL gun-running scam, Bush
appointed Cardoen's own lawyer to a top Justice Department post
-- overseeing the investigation of his former boss. Under heavy
White House pressure, the case was quickly whittled down to the
usual "bad apple" underlings carrying out some minor
fraud.
But
perhaps Papa Bush was just being fatherly. Earlier, another BCCI
offshoot bank had bailed out one of Bush Junior's many business
failures with $25 million in cash. That deal had been brokered
by mysterious Arkansas tycoon Jackson Stephens, one of the Bush
family's biggest campaign contributors. Curiously enough, Stephens
was also a top moneyman for another leading politician: Bill Clinton.
When Clinton took office, he obligingly deep-sixed the continuing
probes into BCCI, Iraqgate and Iran-Contra.
That's
how the system really works. All the guff about law, democracy
and morality is just cornball for the yokels back home -- and
for the cannon fodder sent off to die in the elite's commercial
and dynastic wars. The Labyrinth -- that knotted gut of blood
and bile -- has poisoned us all.
Chris
Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times and a regular
contributor to CounterPunch. His book, Empire Burlesque: The
Secret History of the Bush Regime, is available at www.globaleyefloyd.com.
He can be contacted at cfloyd72@hotmail.com.