Fairview, Dublin - our own Guantanamo Bay...

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday March 27, 2003 15:23 by J Edgar Vacuum Cleaner - The Surprise Party fiannafailte at yahoo dot co dot uk

After reading about the good work of FEIC in Derry, I thought I'd put down some of the corporate links between the US War Machine and US VP Dick Cheney's company Halliburton Brown & Root - including those in Ireland...ignore if this is not "news" to you, but i think some of it will come as a surprise to many

Some Irish links to the Cheney & Bush military industrial complex...

The Dublin Port Tunnel has regrettably run 400 million Euro over budget.
From €400million to €800million in just a few months is however very plausible when, like Fianna Fail & the PDs, you demand the very best. To ensure the "very best" Bertie Ahern & Mary Harney appointed 3 companies to build the biggest civil engineering project Ireland has seen – and Europe's most significant since the Chunnel.
These were Nishimatsu [Japanese Tunnelling & Machining experts] - Mowlems [Ancient British engineering/construction co.] and lastly but definitely not leastly, "Brown & Root"...[Responsible for 'budgetary compliance' and 'supervision']

Brown & Root is a wholly owned subsidiary of the all-powerful Halliburton Corporation, and together they form the world’s largest Oil, Gas, Civil Engineering and Military Logistics Company. Using a vast array of names [incl. Brown & Root Energy Services/ Kellogg Brown & Root/ Brown and Root Condor etc.] the company has been built during the 90’s into a hugely influential and profitable corporation by just one man - leveraged by the power and influence of his White House Rolodex.

Although the American public and media have often commented on his mysteriously low profile, this man, US Vice President Dick Cheney, has been busy balancing the War against Terrorism with the more profitable business of economic development. Although Dick did chair the company for 6 years until the day prior to his Inauguration, he very graciously accepted his $50million handshake asking only for a mere $1million consultant’s salary whilst he was busy [ish] steering the Bush Adminstration. Cheney had previously been in the Oval Office before of course, under Daddy Bush as Defense Secretary between 1989 and 1993. In fact if you go back to the 70’s Cheney & Rumsfeld were advising President Ford on the Vietnamese fallout.

Of course some people don't know Dick, but his profile has been growing over the last 10 years, particularly in developing [energy] territories, and those countries in which US foreign policy, foreign "aid" or proxy warfare is or has been in evidence.

Dick has always been passionate about Building Bridges. This Christian selflessness has led him to personally assist the crumbling infrastructures of desperately poor regimes throughout the world. Re-Construction [& De-Construction] is close to his heart as his record clearly shows:

Building Bridges
[After Vietnam, advising Pres. Ford [with Rumsfeld] in the Oval Office 1975-1977]

Blowing Them Up
[Defense Secretary in Panama & Desert Storm Oval Office 1989-1993]

Building Bridges Again
[As Halliburton/Brown & Root CEO 1993-2000 he "won" the sole €6.8 Billion contract to supply the US Dept. of Defense with Logistical Support/Ships/Trucks/Food/Heating/Aircraft/Airstrips [e.g. Shannon] - and Bridges]
Cheney also won the Dublin Port Tunnel Gig in between managing his very significant Central Asian/Caspian Gas and Oil interests, and supplying tank fuel and military hardware in Kosovo.

Blowing them up again
[Back in Iraq again with old college wrestling buddy Rumsfeld again]

NB: 13.03.03 The Wallstreetjournal reports the RFPs for the rebuilding Iraq's bridges/roads/tunnels/pipelines/houses/canals/sewerage have been issued to a number of US companies, including.....Halliburton/Brown&Root – no doubt Dick is earning his consultancy fee as he gives Donald advice on how many Iraqi cities to blow up today.

Of course its no secret that Dick is in it up to his neck in very profitable Brown & Root/Halliburton Mining/Military operations in Africa and beyond [e.g. Niger [coincidentally source of the falsified document Colin Powell claimed proved a Uranium link with Saddam]; 'rogue states' Angola/Sudan/Guinea [huge B&R on/offshore Oil&Gas Operations]; ditto [Plan] Colombia; Venezuela [strikes anyone?]; Turkmenistan; Tajikistan; Azerbaijan [where Gas Man Dick served as President of the Azer Chamber of Commerce until Jan 2000]; Pakistan; Armenia; Rwanda; Somalia; Georgia; Turkey [where Incirlik Brown & Root boss was assassinated by Marxist youths in 1991]; the list goes on…

But back in Dublin, Ireland Brown & Root are an exemplary operation, ensuring the best of treatment for its “Specialist Engineering” consultants who essentially act as auditors for the €800m contract [better make that €900m at this stage] that Bertie kicked back. Whilst Mowlems build this thing, and the Japanese drill below Fairview, the Brown&Root PR chaps ensure the forms are filled, the cash is haemorrhaged and that anything nasty, like the [mercurial] toxic Hospital waste occasionally encountered, is safely dumped by East Wall labourers - in the water, buried inside the Tunnel, or trucked down to Wicklow that evening.

Yes, Ireland Inc. is indeed lucky to have a company of the calibre of Brown & Root changing our landscape in their own inimitable subterranean way, as can be witnessed by their exalted position on the website of our own Irish energy superpower [the ESB], between other ESB clients British Waterways and the Bulgarian Energy Committee. Underground and overbudget activities such as the Port Tunnel have always been central to the way Fianna Fail and the PD’s ran Irish people into the ground. The Port Tunnel is certainly a profitable gig, but other projects are more suited to Brown & Root’s uniquely military precision in engineering, honed and encouraged by everyone’s favourite Secretary of Defense, Vice President and CEO, Dick “I’m out of the office but get me on the mobile” Cheney…

Lets have a look at some of the Vice President’s Irish & International, industrial and military triumphs to date:

Colombia – massive US DEA/Army & other ambiguous installations [$500m ++]
Post-Saddam, Iraqi Oil Well Maintenance & Rebuilding Contract [$1bn +]
Irish Sea – Millom West Gas platform – prototype for a B&R project in Bohai Bay, China [$4m]
Post-Saddam, “management” of the Gulf’s most strategic port, Umm Qasr [$5m] – won last week by B&R partner company ‘Stevedoring Services of America’ who have previously ‘selected’ Brown & Root to rebuild huge ports such as Chittagong, Bangladesh & Charleston, South Carolina
Post-Saddam rebuilding of the Iraqi National Grid [$2bn]
US Air Bases in Bagram & Kandahar, Afghanistan – Tents/Cabins/Electricity/Food x 1 year [$40million]
Shannon Airport – Brown & Root chartered World Airways to get the Troops and their Burgers & Freedom Fries to Bagram, Baghdad & beyond [$small change]
US Troops in Incirlik Base, Turkey – Houses/Food/Transport/Golfcourse [$40m per year]
Irish Department of Public Enterprise – advising Mary Harney on the “fairness of the Bord Gais pricing structure” [undisclosed, naturally]
Guantanamo Bay – Contract for the Construction of a concentration camp for the torture of 408 Taliban/random Afghan & Muslim prisoners [$16m]

As is typical of Brown & Root operations, they will in Dublin's Fair City encounter their fair share of Opium, Gunrunning; Commies; Foreign Types; and Un-American sentiment. But unlike Incirlik Air Base Turkey or Bagram in Afghanistan, this time Brown & Root have decided to play it safe and base their operation in Surrey, England with small advance groups flown in weekly to private rented accommodation in Dalkey and upmarket Southside hotels. All B&R personnel on the Dublin Port Tunnel are paid £STG into offshore accounts, as is traditional in these situations.

A model of military precision, the Dublin Port Tunnel will be fondly remembered by the South African, Belgian and British ex-Special Forces currently employed there by the Vice President’s cronies, as one Tunnel that had some light at the End – albeit coming down from the kitchen of some poor bastard in East Wall.

"Think not what your country can do for you,
But what other peoples’ countries can do for you"
-jevc