In article <br6g4o$pjc$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, Starman says...

Baker takes the loaf
Greg Palast -

12.09.03 - Well, ho ho ho! It's an early Christmas for James Baker
III.

All year the elves at his law firm, Baker Botts of Texas, have been
working day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the
September 11 attack from seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the
Kingdom's funding of Al Qaeda fronts.

It's tough work, but this week came the payoff, when President Bush
appointed Baker Botts' senior partner to "restructure" the debts of
the nation of Iraq.

And who will net the big bucks under Jim Baker's plan? Answer: his
client, Saudi Arabia, which claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq (plus
$12 billion in "reparations" from the First Gulf war).

PUPPET STRINGS

Let's ponder what's going on here.

We are talking about something called 'sovereign debt.' And unless
George Bush has finally named himself Pasha of Iraq, he is not their
sovereign. Mr. Bush has no authority to seize control of that nation's
assets nor its debts.

But our President isn't going to let something as meaningless as
international law stand in the way of a quick buck for Mr. Baker. To
get around the wee issue that Bush has no legal authority to mess with
Iraq's debt, the White House has crafted a neat little subterfuge. The
President, says the official press release, has not appointed Baker,
rather Mr. Bush is, "responding to a request from the Iraqi Governing
Council." That is, Bush is acting on the authority of the puppet
government he imposed on Iraqis at gunpoint.

(I will grant the Iraqi 'government' has some knowledge of
international finance. It's key member, Ahmed Chalabi, is a convicted
bank swindler.) 

The Bush team must see the other advantage in having the rump
government of Iraq make the choice of Mr. Baker. The US Senate will
not have to review or confirm the appointment.

If you remember, Henry Kissinger ran away from the September 11
commission, with his consulting firm tucked between his legs, after
the Senate demanded he reveal his client list. In the case of Jim
Baker, who will be acting as a de facto Treasury secretary for
international affairs, our elected Congress will have no chance to ask
him who is paying his firm -- nor even require him to get off
conflicting payrolls.

For the Bush administration, this marks a new low in their
Conflicts-R-Us appointments process.

Or maybe there's no conflict at all. If you see Jim Baker's new job as
working not to protect a new Iraqi democracy but to protect the old
theocracy of Saudi Arabia, the conflict disappears. 

Iraq owes something on the order of $120 billion to $150 billion,
depending on who's counting. And who's counting is very important.

Much of the so-called debt to Saudi Arabia was given to Saddam Hussein
to fight a proxy war for the Saudis against their hated foe, the
Shi'ia of Iran. And as disclosed by a former Saudi diplomat, the
kingdom's sheiks handed about $7 billion to Saddam under the table in
the 1980's to build an "Islamic bomb."

Should Iraqis today and those not yet born have to be put in a
debtor's prison to pay off the secret payouts to Saddam?

James Wolfensohn says no. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, has
never been on my Christmas card list, but in this case, he's got it
right: Iraq should simply cancel $120 billion in debt.

Normally, the World Bank is in charge of post-war debt restructuring.
That's why the official name of the World Bank is, "International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development." This is the Bank's expertise.
Bush has rushed Baker in to pre-empt the debt write-off the World Bank
would have certainly promoted.

"I FIXED FLORIDA"

Why is our President so concerned with the wishes of Mr. Baker's
clientele? What does Bush owe Baker? Let me count the ways, beginning
with the 2000 election.

Just last week Baker said, "I fixed the election in Florida for George
Bush." That was the gravamen of his remarks to an audience of Russian
big wigs as reported to me by my somewhat astonished colleagues with
BBC television.

It was Baker, as consiglieri to the Bush family, who came up with the
strategy of maneuvering the 2000 Florida vote count into a Supreme
Court packed with politicos.

Baker's claim to have fixed the election was not a confession. It was
a boast. He meant to dazzle current and potential clients in the
former Soviet states about his Big In with the Big Boy in the White
House. Baker's firm is already a top player in the Great Game of
seizing Caspian Sea oil. (An executive of Exxon-Mobil, one of Baker
Botts's clients, has been charged with evading taxes on bribes paid in
Kazakhstan.) 

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Over the years, Jim Baker has taken responsibility for putting bread
on the Bush family table. As Senior Counsel to Carlyle, the
arms-dealing investment group, Baker arranged for the firm to hire
both President Bush 41 after he was booted from the White House and
President Bush 43 while his daddy was still in office.

Come to think of it, maybe I'm being a bit too dismissive of the Iraqi
make-believe government. After all, it's not as if George Bush were
elected by the voters either. It would be more accurate to say that
two puppet governments have agreed on letting the man who has always
pulled the strings come out from behind the curtain, take a bow, take
charge, take the money and run.

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=16117
______________________
fwd//Starman

What's the connection here with the White House's insistence that the
latest 87 billion dollar Congressional appropriation be in the form of
grants instead of loans? This whole deal stinks of musical numbered
bank-accounts and paybacks and back-room deals with key negotiations
taking place out of the public eye and without official oversight or
accountability. Meanwhile Halliburton and Brown and Root are being
given multi-million dollar contracts they are then subcontracting out
for as little as five and ten percent, netting enormous profits for
little more than shuffling paper, while domestic spending faces
enormous, hard-hitting cutbacks.
Nutz.
*****

http://www.thewaronfreedom.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WarOnFreedom.
http://www.globalresearch.org.
"One doesn't have to wait 20 or 30 years to deduce that the ISI
assisted al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.  The question is, why is the US
government (a) choosing to ignore the evidence and (b) actively
discouraging the media from pursuing these ideas?"
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html   

Federal Government gets bigger with every Republican President.
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=895
'Republicans think smaller Govt. is better' may not be the biggest
lie, but it's hard to find a better example of GOP hypocrisy.