One echo, at least...

That's no way to run a left-wing echo chamber

Joshua Holland The Gadflyer

Let me repeat something I wrote over at Alternet on Friday, but more succinctly.

Two of the defense elite's leading revolving-door corporations, the Carlyle Group and Halliburton, paid bribes to Saddam Hussein's government to do business with Iraq, according to the final report of the Volcker Committee investigating the Oil-for-Food program. That means that many of the leading policy-makers who guided both the first and second Gulf Wars -- and the sanctions regime that came in between the two -- have profited - directly or indirectly - from bribing the "Butcher of Baghdad," Saddam Hussein, to do business in violation of the sanctions we imposed.

The first Gulf War - another war launched using false pretenses --was lead by George HW Bush. His Secretary of Defense was Dick Cheney, his Secretary of State was James Baker and his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was Colin Powell. Our leading ally in the war - and our partner in the subsequent sanctions -- was Great Britain under John Major.

Bush 41, Baker and Colin Powell all are currently on the Board of the Carlyle Group or sat on it during the sanctions. John Major is on the Board, as was George Bush 43 --architect, along with Cheney and Powell, of the second Gulf War -- prior to running for Governor of Texas. Cheney ran Halliburton, which was represented by James Bakers' firm, Baker Botts.

When the Clinton administration came to power, they continued Bush's Iraq policy. Madeleine Albright was Clinton's Ambassador to the UN and later his Secretary of State, and William Perry was Clinton's Secretary of Defense between 1994-1997, when the Oil-for-food program was set up. Albright famously said of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children under the sanctions regime, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." Perry joined Carlyle's board after leaving the Pentagon. Albright's daughter, Alice Albright, sits on its board as well.

And all that just scratches the surface. It's what I dug up in an hour of research looking only for big, household names. I haven't seen this reported by any mainstream media outlets. Various Google searches didn't turn up any stories on it either.

I sent e-mails to all the big lefty blogs, but none of them picked it up. I even sent an e-mail to ThinkProgress's Judd Legum saying, "Why not help out a brother with the Left-wing echo chamber?" No luck.

Now, I want you to imagine for a second that I was Matt Drudge, and I reported the same thing during Clinton's presidency, during a war Clinton had started. It'd be everywhere.

Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm not sophisticated enough to get why this isn't an interesting peek at our foreign policy. Perhaps it wasn't picked up because I'm not a 'brand-name' writer, or perhaps it's because I'm not alleging that any of these people actually dropped a bag of cash into Saddam's hands.

But from where I'm sitting, this is no way to run an echo-chamber.