You will find this interesting, I think:
cooperativeresearch.org
Dick Cheney lobbied to lift sanctions against aid to Azerbaijan that were mandated under section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act. The sanctions were imposed because of concerns about the ethnic cleansing of the Abkhazis. Cheney claimed the sanctions were the result only of groundless campaigning by the Armenian-American lobby. Then in 1997, Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root bid on a major Caspian project from the Azerbaijan International Operating Company. (Halliburton 8-11-1997; Bruno and Vallette 2000; Flanders 10-06-2001; Cohn 8-10-2001)
It successfully lobbied, through the front organization U.S. Engage, against a 1997 bill intended to impose sanctions against foreign governments that persecute religious groups. (Bruno and Vallette 9-2000)
It supported the overturning of the Massachusetts Burma law that discouraged the state government from awarding contracts to companies doing business in Burma, a country notorious for its repressive government. Halliburton’s business interests in Burma and their complicity in major human rights violations - including the murder, torture, rape, forced labor and forced relocation of some of Burma’s indigenous populations - was documented in a 2000 report by EarthRights International. (Bruno and Vallette 9-2000)
Dick Cheney has lobbied heavily to prevent or eliminate federal laws that restrict Halliburton's ability to do business in Nigeria. (Bruno and Vallette 2000; Flanders 10-06-2001)
As the CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney lobbied relentlessly against the Iran-Libya Sanction Act of 1995 and tried to secure Halliburton an exemption. The oil company was very upset that it was being prevented from participating in the development of Iran's offshore oil fields and it wanted to take an active part in the construction of proposed pipelines that would carry Caspian Sea oil to the Persian Gulf. He argued that the “the unintended result of our policy toward Iran is to give Russia more leverage over the independent states of central Asia and the Caucusus by blocking export routes toward the south." (Bruno and Vallette 2000; Flanders 10-06-2001)
And then there is this:
Halliburton approved of the sanctions imposed on Iraq because as Dick Cheney explained, “One major uncertainty is the potential negative impact on oil prices should Iraq reenter the market.” But at the same time, the morally amorphous company managed to work on both sides of the curtain. Detailed investigative reports by the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune revealed that Halliburton, through two if its subsidiaries, skirted the sanctions on Iraq and did some $23.8 million in business with the ‘evil’ regime. The oil services company was paid to rebuild the very same Iraqi infrastructure that its CEO was complicit in destroying as defense secretary under Bush I. Interestingly, one month prior to the publication of these reports, Mr. Cheney had claimed: “I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.” Cheney's company did its business in Iraq through European subsidiaries “to avoid straining relations with Washington and jeopardizing their ties with President Saddam Hussein's government,” (Risen 7-28-2002; Lee 11-13-2000; Bruno and Vallette 9-2000; Flanders 10-06-2001; Cavelli 11-19-2001) |
