Younger Brother of Bush Sr. Profits From The Blood Of Our Soldiers In Iraq

March 2, 2005
It's a Family Affair
Uncle Bucky Makes a Killing

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03022005.html

snips:

Back in 1991, shortly after the depleted uranium-flaked dust had settled some from the first Gulf War, there was a minor tempest in the press over influence peddling by members of the Presiden George H. W. Bush's family, including his son Neil and his brother Prescott, Jr. Both Neil and Prescott, neither of whom had proven to be exceptionally talented businessmen, had made millions by flagrantly trading on their relationship to the president.

>>>>A few months before his selection as president, Bush's Uncle Bucky quietly joined the board of a small and struggling St. Louis defense company called Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI). Since Bush joined the team, ESSI's fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This once obscure outfit is now one of the top Pentagon contractors. Next year its revenues will top $1 billion, nearly all of it derived from defense contracts with the Pentagon or with foreign militaries financed by US aid and loan guarantees. Even sweeter, most of these contracts have been awarded in no bid, soul source deals.

>>>>Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, ESSI positioned itself to win a series of lucrative Pentagon contracts that would catapult the diminutive firm into the top ranks of defense contractors. Within a few short months, the company's shareholders were given the financial ride of their lives.

Breakdown of the article's highlights

*ESSI owns a military communications company called TAMSCO which developed military satellite terminals in the Gulf region and in US bases in Germany before the US invasion of Iraq.

*The Pentagon awarded ESSI a $49 million contract to remodel military trailers for use in Iraq.

*In 2003, the Defense Department gave ESSI a contract for the bogus search for chemical and bio weapons.

*Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal for a communications system for the CPA offices the Green Zone.

*In 2004 ESSI won a $200 million deal to upgrade the body armor of vehicles heading to Iraq.

*Bucky sold 8,438 shares of ESSI stock. for at least $450,000. a few days after ESSI announced that the Pentagon had awarded it $77 million in new contracts for the war. Bucky kept 45,000 shares valued at more than $2.5 million.

*ESSI is under investigation for its handling of older Pentagon contracts, many of which were no-bid or sole source. They want to know what influence their Pentagon contacts had in the steering.

*Bucky makes about $45,000 a year in director's fees and $125,000 for advising ESSI about other military contract buyouts.

*Now ESSI has acquired Spacelink, Inc a Virginia defense company, for $150 million a part supplier for military satellites.

*Bucky is also a trustee for the global investment firm Lord Abbott, an underwriter of Halliburton.


Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature. The article is excerpted from his forthcoming book Grand Theft Pentagon, to be published in July by Common Courage Press.

Here we have a war in Iraq, manufactured by BushII, inherited from the aggression of Poppy, and the family is cleaning up with blood money derived from supplying and feeding the war machine there. Imagine if this was a relation of Bill Clinton and Clinton had engineered this war.

We would be talking major scandal here. This is utterly disgusting and should be shouted out from the rooftops. C'mon folks!

Who is ESSI and who else in the Pentagon is profiting from this relationship?

I'll start. . .

Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal for a communications system for the CPA offices the Green Zone.

- Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Director of Iraq Reconstruction is president and managing partner of former law firm, Feith & Zell; clients include Northrop-Grumman and Loral Space Communications 71. Feith created International Advisors Incorporated, a lobbying firm whose main client was the government of Turkey. The firm retained Richard Perle as an adviser between 1989 and 1994. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content?030317fa_fact (LUNCH WITH THE CHAIRMAN, SEYMOUR M. HERSH)

Feith owns shares of AT&T stock worth $500,00 to $1 million, (AT&T is the DOD's 43d largest contractor), Ford Motor Co. stock worth $250,001 to $500,000 (Ford is lobbying the DOD over appropriations), Verizon Communications stock worth $500,001 to $1 million, and Lucent Technologies stock worth $250,001 to $500,000.

Bechtel awarded a $25 million subcontract in October to shareholder Feith's Lucent Technologies to carry out ‘emergency' repair and rehabilitation of the communications network in Iraq.

This was the first major communications infrastructure subcontract Bechtel awarded in Iraq. http://www.lucent.com/press/0803/030825.nsa.html

Bush's Uncle Reaps Stock Options for Iraq Work
http://www.political-news.org/breaking/6843/bushs-uncle-reaps-stock-options-for-iraq-work.html

Reuters - Wed Feb 23rd 2005 at 11:53 pm ET
Since 2000, the president's uncle has been on the board of ESSI, whose work for the U.S. Military in Iraq ranges from providing special armor for vehicles to providing telecommunications satellite equipment.

Pentagon Acting Undersecretary Michael Wynne said the Defense Department's inspector general was looking into contracts issued in 2002 to Systems and Electronics Inc., an ESSI company.

These contracts, with a cumulative value of $158 million, were supervised by a former Air Force acquisition manager sentenced for improperly aiding another contractor, Boeing Co . Wynne said ESSI's contract and seven others appeared to have "anomalies" that needed further investigation.

Work to put new armor on Army vehicles in Iraq could be worth up to $70 million. Other projects, including telecommunications work in Iraq, are worth in excess of $25 million, he said.

William Bush (Uncle Bucky) Paid $450K in ESSI Scam by THINKPROGRESS.ORG
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=39&contentid=1947

Company's Work in Iraq Profited Bush's Uncle
Wed Feb 23, 7:55 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20050223/ts_latimes/companysworkiniraqprofitedbushsuncle

Wouldn't you rather read an article about "Billy Beer"? You know it would be far less troubling. I'll bet if you search you can find ou what ace prostitute "Jeff 'Bulldog' Gannon" would have to say about Billy Beer?

Otherwise, wealthy Republican experts agree: Everything is just fine. Move along.

for the military industry vultures to drink from.

Former Bush and Reagan guys along with Neil Bush woking to rebuild Iraq!!! They link up to some other companies also like IGNITE! which is also Neil Bush, Silvermat, and Crest Investments

Sounds fair doesn't it?

B-)
www.newbridgestrategies.com

In September it was reported that yet another group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President George Bush, his family, and his administration had set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq. There hasn't been one complaint about profiteering from the White House.

But why should we expect one, though? "You're either with them or against them."

One of the groups who hope to benefit from the blood and sacrifice of our soldiers and from our nation's garnished wages is named, New Bridge Strategies. The lobbying is headed by Joe Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000. Among the other members of this vulture's club are Edward Rogers and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to president George Bush I and now hope to exploit their close ties to the White House. http://www.newbridgestrategies.com/

The company's website states that, "The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C., and on the ground in Iraq. (None? No Iraqi firms?)

"(New Bridge) will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration."

"Consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration." That's clear enough. New Bridge boasts of its, "25 years of experience in Iraq and throughout the Middle East and the political experience of some of the most successful government and political professionals in Washington, D.C., and London."

They openly hawk their public policy experience, their "positions in the Reagan Administration and both Bush Administrations", and their relationships with "international agencies in the Executive Branch; DOD and the USAID (reconstruction's bank), and links to Congress.

Joe M. Allbaugh, the director of New Bridge, is the CEO of the Allbaugh Company, LLC. Allbaugh is one of many opportunists who have set up shop to take advantage of his old boss' confederation's global power agenda. Allbaugh was gifted with the prime position of director of FEMA after he ran Bush-Cheney's national campaign in 2000.

The money dispersed by FEMA has, in the past, been regarded as a slush-fund by Republican administrations to pimp for votes in communities which declare emergencies. Portraits of presidents peering out of rain-slicked helicopter windows as they survey the damage of devastated communities grace the local headlines and evening news and make for good propaganda in an election year or draw attention from scandals.

Allbaugh's appointment to FEMA- a traditional reward from the president for a campaign job well done- was second in political patronage to the secretary of commerce position, which went to the president's old friend and oil roughneck, Don Evans. The glow of government appropriation power lasted until March 2003, when Allbaugh decided to abandon the scrutiny of his public office and leech onto the new defense money pie from outside of government, behind a slick web page; as a faceless opportunist in the short line for the new appropriated largess.

To support his scheme to hijack the next-generation of defense dollars, which our soldiers desperately need, and our country can scarcely afford, he conspired with Ed Rogers, vice chairman of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc., the firm he founded with Haley Barbour in 1991. Rogers had been deputy assistant to the president and assistant to the White House chief of staff. He also was the senior deputy to the master of wedge politics, Lee Atwater.

Lanny Griffith is another Barbour bandit who is trolling for the new defense dollars. He hopes to trade on his Bush I appointment in '91 as assistant secretary of education for intergovernmental and interagency affairs from November 1991 until January 1993. He also served in the White House as special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and was the political director for the 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign. Intergovernmental affairs is just another name for the White House fixer; a vote counter in Congress, and an arm twister in and out of government for favored legislation. New Bridge promises, "When Iraq is ready to rebuild, we will be there."


Now, back to the president's family profiting from a war that he manufactured. . .

“I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.” -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during World War II

The Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010205X.shtml

1. AEGIS:

2. BEARING POINT:

3. BECHTEL:

4. BKSH & ASSOCIATES:

5. CACI AND TITAN:

6. CUSTER BATTLES:

7. HALLIBURTON:

8. LOCKHEED MARTIN:

9. LORAL SATELLITE:

10. QUALCOMM:


2005:

1.Bush Crime Family

2.Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI)