Indicted Saudi gets $80 million US contract
ABC News reports on the humorous story of Gaith Pharaon, a Saudi financier who is wanted by the FBI for alleged bank fraud that cost US taxpayer $1.7 billion. The funny part is that the US military just awarded him an $80 million contract to supply jet fuel to US military bases in Afghanistan.
As a purely coincidental aside: "Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy."The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.
Link (via Reason Hit & Run )
the latest
latest episodes
Revolting.
another saudi crook with ties to g.w. bush? wait a sec. let me go get my 'surprised' look. there...whoa!
That's it. My brain is now officially on strike.
Please wake me up when this is over.
On the other hand, if the Justice Department wants to move past indictment to an actual trial...they might me able to find him a little easier if he's on the payroll. But...then again...
Gee, why didn't Norm Coleman catch this guy? He's supposed to be providing oversite for war contracts:
http://www.dfl.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=%7BBB64F6EA-94CE-43DA-93B9-B26FF9EFFE0B%7D
Is it just the beard and the peaky eyebrow or is this dude a little diabolical looking?
Are we finally allowed to stop referring to this sort of thing as a coincidence or are we going to be shouted down by the "Right" again.
Apparently Bush misspelled the name of his first company. To properly set the standard for his later activities, it should have been Absurdo Energy.
INCONCEIVABLE.
"Purely coincidental aside". Is that some new term for "probably completely related to"?
hee hee!
"The funny part is..." yeah Mark i'm splittin' my fuckin' sides here. Hilarious.
Typical...Dubya of Arabia scores another epic win for his Saudi puppetmasters...
Incestuous does not even begin to describe the relationship between this scumbag and that inbred hick in the White House.
Again, apologies to all the other inbred hicks out there.
HA HA HA!!
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
By Patrick Cockburn
Thursday, 5 June 2008
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country. "
"I don't think that word means what you think it means."
- A Spanish swordsman who is not left handed.
Yay! Forever War!
U.S. plan threatens Canadian command
Proposal would see American general taking Canada's place in NATO's regional rotation in 2010
PAUL KORING
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
June 5, 2008 at 4:56 AM EDT
WASHINGTON — Canada may lose its next and perhaps last chance to command NATO forces battling the Taliban in southern Afghanistan under a new plan that will insert an American general into the rotation, according to defence officials in Ottawa and Washington.
and why is Pharaon smiling? Years of Sales!
Years needed to topple Taliban
Article from: Herald Sun
By Ian McPhedran
June 05, 2008 07:05am
* Defence chief says years neeeded to topple Taliaban
* 10,000 more foreign troops needed
* But Australia is not going to increase numbers
DEFENCE boss Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston has predicted foreign forces will be in Afghanistan for more than 10 years and thousands more troops are needed there.
I'm not getting you down, am I?
http://www.quizilla.com/user_images/F/FalknerIsFalkner/1066942207_Jpgsmarvin.jpg
Bush may be many (evil)things, but he's no inbred hick, but a blue-blooded, Skull-And-Bones Yale legacy, descended from a top spook and a Nazi-collaborating Yankee aristocrat. To state otherwise is terribly offensive to inbred hicks!
Is it just the beard and the peaky eyebrow or is this dude a little diabolical looking?
The diabolical part is that that is a ~ 40 year old photo. He's 68. Here's his FBI Wanted poster.
Also, he's small potatoes. BBC article on the BAE Saudi bribe scandal and the UK government cover-up
And does anybody still wonder why petro fuel prices continue to sky-rocket?
Thankfully, ever since the so-called "golden list" of Al-Queda financers turned up with a bunch of Osama's relatives on it (you know, the ones that were co-invested in the Carlyle Group with the Bush family, and flown out of the country when every other plane was grounded after September 11th), I've become a full-blown coincidence theorist. A BCCI/Savings and Loan scandal crook reaping obscene windfalls from our great leader's ongoing war on terror (while he's on the FBI's most wanted list, no less)? Obviously it's all a giant coincidence! Nothing could be more unlikely than absolute power corrupting absolutely. History doesn't have one example of people behaving so despicably! Go back to sleep, taxpayers... sheesh!
Ah, the tired old chestnut about Bush flying the Bin Laden family out of the country on 9/11. Mostly not true. Here's the Snopes link:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp
BTW, the person who authorized the Saudi's flights (after airspace was opened to all normal air traffic)? Richard Clarke.
#23: Hey, quit knocking "mostly not true."
Just about every goddamn thing the Bush administration has done is based on Mostly Not True, and look where it got them.
Takuan, you beat me to the August/September/October Surprise. Also from the Patrick Cockburn article: (Was it from the Independent?)
If that goes through, and soldiers and contractors get immunity, it will be OK because there will be immunity. Right? Well... The solution is apparently to outsource the oversight, too. Original article: http://www.truthout.org/article/dod-contracts-out-contractor-oversight by Maya Schenwar.
...
Even if the Gaith Pharaon's contract was taken away, it would probably be only a few short steps to another contractor to sub-contract the deal.
Privatize everything! Contract out the whole thing! Why not just let the corporations themselves invade countries and be honest about it? Maybe I'm too cynical. Perhaps watching the movie "War, Incorporated" will improve my outlook.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html
And BCCI was shut down after John Kerry's staff discovered that it was laundering money for drug dealers, dictators, and terrorists like Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The investigation of Noriega had also led to the discovery of the Iran-Contra connection which ought, in a just world, to have led to the impeachments of Reagan and the elder Bush.
I'm really, really hoping this is a brilliant ploy to snatch the guy when he shows up to collect his paycheck.
Takuan, that's no secret.
It's basically the platform John "Hundred Years War" McCain is running on.
yes, but McBush isn't president yet
"YET" that is the operative word,Tak.
Anyone else think he resembles Derren Brown? That must be how he could so easily defraud people.
"Some wealthy oil sheik bought New Jersey last week, and you suckers ain't gettin' nothin'." -- Frank Zappa
Well shit, I think I just awarded that guy with my leaky water pipe contract recently...
US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.
J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.
Harder and harder to be a conspiracy skeptic these days...
so, were the heads of the Air Force fired for foiling nukes aimed at Iran? Or being in on it?