On Bush Nepotism And American War-Profiteering

"For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his

own soul?"

-Jesus the Christ, The Bible at Mark 8:36 (NJKV)

"The sinews of war are endless profits."

-Cicero, Orationes PhilippicÃ¦, v (c. 60 B.C.)

How have the upper classes in every ostensibly Christian society managed to

sustain the blatantly immoral practice of war-profiteering? In the American

context, this question can be reduced to a twenty-first century version of

Cicero's maxim: "How does our military-industrial complex make predatory killing so

lucrative for its war profiteers?" Toward answering that question, it will

be useful to examine the Bush Family Dynasty's most recent war-profiteering

activities. [1] [2]

A Glimpse Into The Bush Family Dynasty's War-Profiteering Modus Operandi.

George W. "Dubya" Bush's paternal uncle, William H.T. "Bucky" Bush of St.

Louis, recently managed to profit from his nephew's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

in the amount of $450,000.00. How? Through his seat on the board of a St.

Louis-based defense contractor, Engineered Support Systems Incorporated ("ESSI

").

"Bucky" Bush was appointed to ESSI's Board of Directors in 2000, for which

ESSI promptly remunerated him with 8,438 stock options. [3] Over the next five

years the price of ESSI's stock soared 1,000%. Why? Largely because the Bush

administration, beginning in 2002, had awarded several hundred million

dollars worth of no-bid, sole-source, gold-plated military contracts to ESSI.

Hence, his stock options were worth nearly a half billion dollars when Bucky

decided to cash them in on January 18, 2005.

Bush Nepotism 101.

Dan Kreher, ESSI's Vice President for Industrial Relations, acknowledged

that: (1) his company routinely lobbies for government defense contracts in

Washington, DC; and (2) "Having a Bush doesn't hurt. ... It certainly doesn't hurt

to have people who know who to talk to." When translated from Corporatespeak

to colloquial English, this means: "Uncle Bucky sure created a gold mine for

ESSI when he got his nephew, Dubya, to punch our ticket on the war-profiteers'

gravy train!"

Unsurprisingly, Bucky has denied that he telephoned anyone in Washington to

win those government contracts for ESSI. Quoth the uncle: "I don't make calls

to the 202 area code!" Sure. As if we didn't know that

plausible-denial-through-linguistic-trickery is an indispensable component of the Bush Family

Dynasty's oeuvre! Perhaps Bucky is floating this sophomoric Whopper of Mass

Deception: (1) while he himself called neither the White House nor the Pentagon

directly; (2) he hasn't disclosed that he did call Houston and persuaded his older

brother, George H.W. "Poppy" Bush, to telephonically lobby at least one key

Washingtonian -- like, say, Dubya or Rummie -- concerning ESSI's pressing

contractual needs.

Of course, not everyone is a full-fledged aristocrat who can depend on

nepotism to become a war-profiteer. However, the lesser silver-spoons can always

rise through the military-industrial complex ranks via the usual method:

revolving-door cronyism. And when they've achieved the war-profiteer's moneyed

status, they can always employ elite K-Street lobbyists to persuade the Washington

bribeocracy's most powerful influence-peddlers -- certain "superpatriots" on

the House & Senate Armed Services Committees to whom their "campaign

contributions" and extravagant perks invariably flow.

American War-Profiteering 101.

It's true that ESSI has been blessed by the neoconservatives' bloodsoaked

demi-god, Mars. "Company officials acknowledge that the war [in Iraq] is an

economic boon to the firm." [4] Uncle Bucky's ESSI has done so well since 2002

that it recently purchased a Virginia-based military contractor, Spacelink

International LLP, for $150.5 million. Moreover, ESSI's projected annual revenue

for 2004 is somewhere between $990 million and $1 billion. And ESSI shows

further evidence of having been blessed by the God Of War insofar as it has

lucrative military contracts with those shining exemplars of democratic governance,

China and Saudi Arabia.

That's right, folks! ESSI's patriots are selling state-of-the-art military

hardware to both the totalitarian PRC and the authoritarian House of Saud so

they can vanquish external opponents and suppress internal usurpers! [5] These

war-profiteers must have been meditating too long on cheap-labor

conservatism's regressive mantras: "Democracy's just a liberal fraud that shall not reach

good old Riyadh; it will never rise again from the square at Tianenmen; free

trade requires outsourcing your jobs to China's slave gulags!"

But wait! The Pentagon's inspector general is currently investigating

undisclosed "anomalies" in ESSI contracts from 2002 that are worth $158 million.

Not to worry! We all know it's inevitable that Uncle Bucky and his corporate

cronies will be found innocent of any wrongdoing because "the past is prologue."

Flash back to 1990, when George W. Bush reaped a hefty profit of $317,430.00

from his sale of $828,560.00 in Harken Energy stock, just before it plummeted

in value. The SEC launched an investigation into Dubya's dump-off transaction

because it met the criteria for the crime of insider-trading: a

seemingly-fortuitous stock sale that was actually a based on an inside tip from someone at

Harken Energy. Nevertheless, the SEC unexplicably dropped its insider-trading

investigation and Dubya was suddenly exonerated in 1991. [6] Note that

Dubya's father, George H.W. "Poppy" Bush, was the USA's president in 1991.

Overarching Conclusions.

One of the West's core principles -- equal justice under the law -- is

ceasing to exist inside Mr. Bush's increasingly crypto-fascist banana republic

version of "democratic" governance. Sadly, the Bushites are swiftly replacing it

with arbitrarily-dispensed exemptions from the rule of law, granted to the

"elite people" who possess either direct personal connections to the Bush Family

mandarins or enough wealth to buy special favors from corrupt-to-the-core high

officials!

The Bottom Line On Bush Nepotism & American War-Profiteering.

Based on the Bush Dynasty's vice-riddled familial habit patterns, one can

easily imagine a certain dysfunctional rancher using his

ludicrously-overdeveloped monarchistic sense of entitlement to impose gratuitous advice on his

privileged clientele during their second-term visits to Crawford, Texas: "Folks, it

pays big dividends to remember this little tip, culled from the lives of great

Americans like Poppy, Bucky, and myself! Whenever you're in a terrible jam,

it always helps to consult a powerful relative who can: (A) start an

international war during those recessionary doldrums that will rescue your company from

a sea of red ink; or (B) make a telephone call that will force an

investigatory agency to back down before they can indict you. Finally, we're the "haves"

and "have mores" whereas they're the "have nots," so we must avoid any

handwringing over the fate of petit bourgeois. Their laws simply do NOT apply to us;

they exists ONLY to constrain the little people! Ya'll keep that in mind

now, ya hear?" [7] [8]

ENDNOTES

1. The Bush Family Dynasty is illustrative because they have a

multi-generational history of war-profiteering in America. For instance, documents recently

discovered in the National Archive have confirmed that GWB's ancestors

engaged in significant war-profiteering activities with the Nazis. They implicate

his paternal grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his maternal great-grandfather,

George Herbert Walker, as noted in:

A. Ben Aris & Duncan Campbell's 9-23-04 GU article, "How Bush's Grandfather

Helped Hitler's Rise To Power":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html

B. John Buchanan's 10-10-03 Rense.com article, "Bush-Nazi Link Confirmed":

http://www.rense.com/general42/bshnazi.htm

C. Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman's 10-6-03 CD/TFP essay, "Sieg Heil: The

Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus & the Destabilization Of California":

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1006-08.htm

D. Dave Neiwart cogently argues that the Bushites are intentionally leading

the USA into crypto-fascism in his Fall 2004 essay series, "The Rise Of

Pseudo-Fascism: Parts 1-7":

http://dneiwart.blogspot.com/2004_09_19_dneiwart_archive.html#109028353137888956

2. "Bucky" Bush's starting salary as an ESSI director was $40,000.00 per

annum plus the generous stock options. Learn more about his recent

war-profiteering by reading:

A. Walter Roche's 2-23-05 CD/LAT article, "Company's Work In Iraq Profited

Bush's Uncle": http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0223-05.htm

B. Rupert Cornwall's 2-24-05 CD/Independent article, "President Bush's

Uncle Bucky Emerges As A Big Winner From Iraq War":

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0224-01.htm

3. Roche, ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Read the facts about GWB's nepotistic avoidance of a criminal indictment

for his insider-trading violations -- unlike Martha Stewart -- in Buzzflash.com

's article, "The Bush-Harken Insider Trading Collection":

http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/bush_harken.html

6. Read about the dysfunctional Bush brothers' history of quasi-criminal

business dealings in Robert Trigeaux's 10-29-00 SPT article, "Influence And

Bailouts A Business Tradition In Bush Family," at:

http://www.sptimes.com/News/102900/Business/Influence_and_bailout.shtml

7. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's unnecessary Iraq War is currently costing American

taxpayers $5 billion per month. Additionally, the Pentagon's budget allocation

for FY 2006 is a whopping $417 billion, but really is $499 billion after one

includes Mr. Bush's $82 billion request for supplemental appropriation to fund

his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that half-trillion dollar figure

doesn't include the military's budget for intelligence!

8. Finally, read these to learn how the experts in international law regard

Messrs. Blair and Bush's non-defensive war of aggression, and the implications

for Anglo-American policy in Iraq and the so-called "Bush Doctrine of

Preemptive War":

A. Nicholas Davies' outstanding 12-31-04 OJ essay, "The Crime Of War: From

NÃ¼remberg To Fallujah":

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/123104Davies/123104davies.html

B. Richard Norton-Taylor's 2-23-05 GU article, "Revealed: The Rush To War":

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1423304,00.html

Author:

Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.,

is the Executive Director of the

American Center for International Law ("ACIL").

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