Investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh says that Cheney
was insistent on invading Iraq from the
beginning.
"Saddam is ousted.
You get a moderate Baathist regime and
a democracy flows out - like water out
of a fountain. And not only will democracy
flow in Iraq. It will flow into Syria.
The Iranians will also see the light.
They (Cheney and others) believed this. Utopian, idealist, crazy." |
2000
OCTOBER 24: Halliburton announces layoffs
and assets sales because of weakness in its construction
and engineering businesses. Analysts reduce Halliburton’s
earning forecast.
OCTOBER 25: Halliburton announces
it is under a grand jury investigation for over-billing
the government of California.
NOVEMBER: Cheney suffers his fourth
heart-attack.
NOVEMBER 13: It is reported that
Halliburton stock has lost between $3 and $4
billion of its total market value.
Dressers Industries asbestos problem and weak engineering portfolio is blamed.
Democrats question if Cheney had insider information when he sold his stock
two months earlier for $30 million.
During the election campaign Cheney
tells ABC News. “I
had a firm policy that we wouldn’t do anything
in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly
legal.”
However, during his time as CEO, Halliburton was selling millions of dollars
to Iraq in supplies for its oil industry. The deals were done through old subsidiaries
of Dresser Industries. It was done under the auspices of the corrupt UN Oil
for Food Program.
Halliburton worked with Iran and Libya as well, using its own subsidiaries.
2001
JANUARY 19: Dick Cheney is sworn in as Vice President of the United States.
JANUARY 29: President Bush announces
the formation of the National Energy Policy Development
Group in Cheney’s office. He announces
that Cheney will chair the group.
FEBRUARY 2: Wall Street Journal
publishes expose on Halliburton’s Tehran
office.
Abdulamir Mahdi writes a letter to Cheney complaining that he is in jail for
violating the Iranian embargo while the Vice President, who did the same thing,
is free.
MARCH 5: Cheney has balloon angioplasty
performed at George Washington University Hospital
after suffering chest pains.
APRIL 19: Representatives John
Dingell and Henry Waxman, Ranking Members of
the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, send
a letter to the General Accounting Office, seeking
to obtain information about National Energy Policy
Development Group. They wanted to find
out who had participated in the report.
MAY 16: Cheney presents to President
Bush a report entitled National Energy Policy,
which recommended the adoption of the national
energy policy that had been developed by the
NEPDG. (read the National
Energy Policy  )
Intelligence
specialist Greg Thielman says his State
Department Office was receiving information
that was different from what the White
House was saying.
"Their starting
point was not 'let's try to figure out
what is going on' but 'let's see what
kind of information we can come up with
to justify the policy line we want to
pursue'.
Cheney was the driving force behind an orchestrated presentation to the
American public of a different version of reality than the reality we saw." |
JUNE 21: Cheney’s office sends 77 pages of
miscellaneous documents supposedly as a responsive
reply to GAO’s request for documents. The
package of documents contain pages with dollar
amounts but no indication of the nature of purpose
of the expenditure. Also included was the executive
director’s credit card receipt for a pizza.
Requests by the GAO for additional information
was denied.
AUGUST 2: Cheney sends a letter to
the Senate and House of Representatives, stating “actions
undertaken by an agent of the Congress, the Comptroller
General, which exceeded his lawful authority and
which, if given effect, would unconstitutionally
interfere with the functioning of the executive
branch.”
Cheney says the GAO’s demand for documents compromise “the
confidentiality of communications among a President, a Vice-President, the
President’s other senior advisors and others.”
Cheney also states that he had provided "documents
responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated
with the (Energy task force's work.)" Cheney was apparently writing
about the 77 pages.
SEPTEMBER 11: Al Qaeda attacks in
New York and Washington. In the wake of the attacks,
Dick Cheney reportedly is taken to Raven Rock,
a top-secret military base. He orders U.S. military
fighters to shoot down any civilian planes that
may have been hijacked.
Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski
worked at the Pentagon along side the
'Office of Special Plans' a group that
worked with Cheney on intelligence matters.
"When I heard those
(President Bush's) speeches I recognized
many of the anecdotes. Having seen the
intelligence I knew this was a manipulation
of the information. It was cherry picked
information, out of context information.
It bothered me a great deal because I saw it to be conscious manipulation.
Not an oversight but consciously done.
If you don't tell Dick Cheney what he wants to hear, you're out of a job." |
2002
JANUARY: Sierra Club sues Cheney,
et al, to get documents related to the National Energy
Development Group. (read
a report from
the Sierra Club )
FEBRUARY: Ambassador Joe Wilson is
told by the CIA that Cheney is interested in an
allegation that Iraq had tried to purchase Yellow
Cake uranium from Niger. Wilson goes to Niger to
investigate and concludes the rumour is false.
FEBRUARY 22: David Walker, the Comptroller
of the General Accounting Office, files a lawsuit
in U.S. District Court to get access to records
relating to the activities of the National Energy
Development Group. (see the document .pdf
file)
JUNE 22: A memo written by INC (Iraqi
National Council) lobbyist Entifadh Qunbar to a
U.S. Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior
national-security aide on Cheney's staff, as one
of two "U.S. governmental recipients" for
reports generated by an intelligence program being
run by the INC and which was then being funded
by the State Department. The letter shows Cheney's
office was getting intelligence from a highly suspect
source.
AUGUST 26: Cheney tells an audience
of veterans "There’s
no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of
mass destruction [and that he will use them] against
our friends, against our allies and against us.”
Selling the nuclear threat became key to
convincing Americans to support the war.
DECEMBER 9: U.S. District Court Judge
John Bates dismisses the high profile lawsuit filed
by David Walker, the Comptroller of the General
Accounting Office, against Vice President Dick
Cheney. |
