If you’ve ever wondered who the unluckiest person in the world is, I think I’ve found him. His name is Abdul Rahim. In January 2000, he was arrested in Afghanistan by the Taliban. They tortured him. They burned him with cigarettes, smashed his hand, deprived him of sleep, submitted him to water torture, and hanged him from the ceiling. Eventually he “confessed” to being a spy for the United States.
Thank you, Bush administration. I’ve just been required to spend the most mind-numbing couple of hours carefully reading page after page of ethical guidelines. Rules that should be blatantly obvious to anyone with any ethical sense whatsoever. It’s all about ensuring that I don’t do things like take Dick Cheney out to the Country Club in order to get juicy government contracts on a no-bid basis, or organize a price-fixing system to defraud California.
You may remember from the November elections that Alan Keyes criticized Dick Cheney’s daughter, saying: “If we embrace homosexuality as a proper basis for marriage, we are saying that it’s possible to have a marriage state that in principal excludes procreation and is based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism.” Keyes later said that if he had a lesbian daughter, he would love her, but would have to tell her she was sinning.
A few days ago I was being all cynical and saying that we’d fail to build Iraq, just like we’ve failed to rebuild Afghanistan. I was wrong, though. They’ve already sorted out the contract to rebuild any destroyed Iraqi oil fields. The winning company is Kellogg Brown Root. By an amazing coincidence, they’re owned by Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s old company.
Wow, they arrested WorldCom’s executives. I guess $4m doesn’t buy you much protection these days. If only they’d thought to make Dick Cheney a board member.
Time for another boring little news summary, culled from diverse mainstream media outlets, with links to sources… Dick Cheney is being sued for possible involvement in accounting fraud while running Halliburton. The company is also being investigated by the SEC. Meanwhile, Halliburton has just won the contract to provide the support services for the US military in Afghanistan. Halliburton took part in Energy Task Force discussions about building an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Dabhol in India, to allow the tapping of the Central Asian oil reserves.