Cronies

There’s a torrid book about Cronies by Robert Bryce which I just finished reading. Very interesting. Nope. It wasn’t about Erap’s cronies, nor about the late Ferdinand E. Marcos’s cronies. Nor even about our current La Presidenta’s cronies.

The Bryce book (Public Affairs, New York, 2004) was about Dubya’s "Cronies" and its subtitle gives the gambit away: "Oil, The Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America’s Superstate."

Since it happens to be the 12th book I’ve perused either exposing Bush and the Bush Dynasty, or doing a hatchet job, possibly, on Bush & Company, I was inclined to take it with the proverbial grain of salt. However, Bryce trots out convincing facts and figures (a caveat: you can lie effectively with statistics) in his savagely written brilliant opus.

As reviewer Molly Ivins put it: "Sometimes even I forget how pervasive crony capitalism is in this state, how corrupt and complicit government is in creating the famous ‘healthy business climate,’ and how tirelessly our politicians have worked to export the whole system to the rest of the nation."

Adds Lou Dubose, co-author of another Bush-bashing book, Bushwhacked: "From Brown & Root’s war profiteering in LBJ’s Vietnam to Halliburton’s insider deals in G.W. Bush’s Iraq, Robert Bryce has researched and written a terrifying tale of incestuous relationships between the plundering class in Houston and Dallas and the governing class in Washington."

Susmariosep! Those Yankee Doodles put some of our scruffy and outright prevaricating local columnists to shame.

The author, Bryce, was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "a town briefly known as the Oil Capital of the World" (who remembers that today?) And first came to notice with his first book, published in 2002 Pipe Dreams, Greed, Ego, and the Death of Ehron. Indeed, he could have been writing about the Philippines.

Now, he’s zeroed in on "The United States of Texas," and he points out that two of the last three American presidents – and three of the last eight – have been Texans. These are Lyndon Johnson, George Herbert Walker Bush (i.e., Bush the Elder0, and George W. Bush (Dubya).

Bryce endeavors to establish "how Texas turned its vast energy resources into political power, and how a small group of Texas corporations, lawyers, and politicians have used that power to protect and defend their political interests."

Wow. He even asserts that Dubya Bush’s victory during the Florida Recount of 2000 "was the quintessential example of the Lone Star State’s enormous things: lawyers, airplanes, and money. He got all of them from Texas." (What did Bryce expect, though? Could Bush have gotten all that stuff and those pricey attorneys from Al Gore’s home State of Tennessee? But he builds a good case).

Dubya, of course, surely got a bit of help from his brother Jeb Bush, who happened – by, well, coincidence – to be Governor of the crucial State of Florida.

Then, Bryce zeroes in on the Bush family lawyer, James A. Baker III, "the man who led the Bush forces during the Florida recount". The book "shows how Baker and his law firm, Baker Botts, have made millions of dollars by tapping the Texas crony network." Sanamagan. Don’t we have such "powerful" law firms here – and I mean plural, not just a singular The Firm?

Bryce, in his role of Bob the Giant Killer, finally applies his axe to "Texas’ most controversial company, Halliburton, and explains how it gained enormous political power and why it and other Texas energy companies are likely to continue to have a major role in America’s foreign policy, especially when it comes to colonizing energy-rich locales like the Persian Gulf".

Bryce’s theme is that "Texas dominates the United States. And because of that, Texans are now running the world". Gee whiz.

Remember the Alamo? Perhaps they should give Texas back to Mexico – then we might have Texicanos running the world, not Los Gringos.

* * *

To illustrate just how cynical and cold-blooded businessmen can be, Bryce says in a sizzling Chapter 12 that "in 1979, with the Shah (of Iran) gone and American hostages being held in Tehran by allies of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Brown & Root (Halliburton’s agency today) simply moved across the Shatt al-Arab and began working with Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party. And the glue that bonded Brown & Root to Saddam – as it had been with the Shah – was crude". (Crude oil, he means).

"Halliburton’s work for the Iraqis is perhaps one of the best examples of why the United States has such tortured relationships with the nations of the Persian Gulf. When one oil-rich ally falters, the US abandons the country and embraces the nearest repressive government, no matter how unsavory their practices. And Halliburton’s three-decades-long relationship with the hypercorrupt Baath Party is a prime example of this practice." (Brown & Root initially got a $117 million contract ($475.6 million in 2002 dollars) to build two oil terminals, Mina al-Bakr and Khor al-Amaya, on the Iraqi side of the Persian Gulf."

In truth, there was a time when Saddam was one of the "good guys" because he was fighting the repressive, Islamic fundamentalist regime of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, who had pronounced a fatwah on America as "The Great Satan". Saddam received US support.

In fact, even France’s Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister, sold that controversial nuclear reactor to Saddam Hussein – which the Israelis later had to knock out with the ruthless, pinpoint accuracy of their IDF air force.

A "peace process" in the Middle East? That’s an oxymoron.

The lawyers, Bryce insists, are the key to all that screwing about: "The work that Baker does for the White House, the Carlyle Group, the Saudis, and his other corporate clients is all for him to know and us mortals NOT know. Baker’s law firm, Baker Botts, doesn’t discuss how much it was paid for its work in the Florida recount, why it got key appointments from the Bush administration, or what lies behind the contracts it gets from companies like Exxon Mobil and the hyper-corrupt rulers of oil-rich countries such as Azerbaijan. Baker Botts is a law firm. All of its information is privileged. And when it puts its lawyers into positions of power in Washington and elsewhere – well, that’s just because they’re good lawyers". (This is on page 268).

As for the Persian Gulf, according to the Energy Information Administration, some 318 American energy companies were doing significant business in the Gulf in 2003.

"Texas companies," Bryce declares, "are particularly active in Saudi Arabia. In 2000, Texas companies exported more goods and services to Saudi Arabia – about $1 billion worth – than any other state. That trade accounted for 15 percent of all American exports to the kingdom. In return, the port of Houston takes in about 10 million tons of Saudi crude oil per year, worth about $1.5 billion.

"While Saudi crude flows into Houston, Texas companies – led by Halliburton – are going to be working in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region for years to come."

Bryce notes that "whether it is Halliburton, its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, or another company doesn’t really matter. Texas energy companies are going to be in the Persian Gulf because they cannot stay away. Over 60 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves are in just five Persian Gulf countries: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. And that oil is essential to world markets and the American economy. Between 2000 and 2020, the amount of Persian Gulf oil imported into the US will double to more than four million barrels per day".

Salamabit. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda propagandists don’t have to suicide-bomb the US any further – although Homeland Security yesterday put up another "suicide-attack alert". Bryce and other exposé writers are doing a better job of demolishing Bush and trashing the US-led war in Iraq.

Bryce bitterly grouses that "while American soldiers promote democracy with M-16s in Baghdad and Bahrain, much of the LNG and crude from the Persian Gulf will likely go through LNG terminals and gas pipelines owned by Texas companies".

This fella must really dislike Texas. He even goes back to novelist John Steinbec (Of Mice & Men, Cannery Row, The Grapes of Wrath) who said in his Travels with Charley in 1962: "Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word."

Yeah. And John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.

Poor Bush. If books like this keep coming out, not to mention Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, then it could be the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on November 2, 2004 – with Texas’ "Lone Ranger" Dubya being gunned down.

Yet who knows? He might turn out to be Pat Garett, not Billy the Kid.