20 Years After Illegal US Invasion of Iraq, Its Architects Are Still Cashing In

It had been 15 years for the reason that U.S. invaded Iraq when, on March 19, 2018, the celebrated Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon printed a blistering op-ed in The New York Occasions. He took readers by means of his observations of the regular deterioration of Iraqi society for the reason that struggle started, however essentially the most scathing phrases got here towards the top.

“Nobody is aware of for sure what number of Iraqis have died because of the invasion 15 years in the past,” Antoon wrote. “Some credible estimates put the quantity at a couple of million. You possibly can learn that sentence once more. The invasion of Iraq is usually spoken of in the USA as a ‘blunder,’ or perhaps a ‘colossal mistake.’ It was against the law. Those that perpetrated it are nonetheless at giant.”

That the invasion was not only a ethical disaster however an egregious war crime has been echoed by everybody from United Nations heads to human rights leaders. In keeping with Brown College’s Prices of Warfare challenge, over 300,000 individuals died within the struggle, the overwhelming bulk of them Iraqi civilians. These are solely the counted: civilian deaths are definitely a lot higher. Lots of of hundreds of Iraqis proceed to endure from a decades-long public and mental health calamity. Round 9.2 million Iraqis have been displaced.

The struggle fractured any cohesion throughout Iraq and set the stage for enormous ranges of sectarian violence fueled by the U.S. Accounts of massacres like these in Mukaradeeb and Haditha and torture chambers like Abu Ghraib solely contact the floor of the crimes dedicated towards Iraqis.

With the twentieth anniversary of the invasion now approaching, the sanitizing of the struggle’s main culprits — or, on the very least, the comfortable forgetting of their crimes — continues.

George W. Bush, the struggle’s final “Decider,” now smacks of the pre-Trump “good outdated days” for some liberals. (“A yr in the past, I watched Mr. Bush on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Present,’ dancing and speaking about his work,” Antoon wrote). Dick Cheney has aged quietly at his Wyoming ranch, having fun with the tens of millions of dollars he raked in as Halliburton CEO earlier than he was elected vice chairman in 2000 and went on — by all accounts — to coax an invasion and occupation the place the navy and oilfield providers large took in in nearly $40 billion in federal contracts.

Because the very high decision-makers light into retirement, the subsequent layer of struggle pushers, enablers and overseers — the highest protection and nationwide safety officers and the movie star generals — went on to revenue immensely following their management of an unlawful struggle, darting by means of the revolving door to snag coveted company board seats and prestigious college appointments.

A lot of them stay in these positions with protection business giants, tech corporations and Wall Avenue buyers at the moment, having fun with the great life, raking in consulting and speaker charges, their photographs washed as they revenue handsomely from the insider entry they supply.

Flip Warfare Crimes Into Company Board Seats

Take Paul Wolfowitz, broadly seen as one of many struggle’s key architects, who in 2013 was appointed to the board of tech firm LaserLock — now VerifyMe — and raked in 2 million shares of firm inventory in 2013. A yr earlier than, he was appointed to the Strategic Advisory Council of NGP Power Capital Administration, an energy-focused personal fairness agency that oversees billions in oil and gasoline investments and is partnered with personal fairness behemoth and war profiteer, the Carlyle Group.

Then there’s George Tenet, who directed the CIA through the invasion of Iraq, skewing intelligence to push for struggle. After leaving the CIA in 2004, Tenet wasted little time leaping onto protection tech company boards like L-1 Identity Solutions, Guidance Software and QinetiQ Group that money in from authorities contracts. Tenet presently serves on the board of protection tech firm In-Q-Tel — initially chartered as a enterprise capital arm of the CIA — and is chairman of the secretive personal funding agency Allen & Firm.

William Hartung, a senior research fellow with the Quincy Institute and creator of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, instructed Truthout that the revolving door between the Pentagon and company America creates main conflicts of curiosity.

“When authorities officers are wanting forward in direction of entering into the business and cashing in, I feel they go lighter on companies,” he mentioned. “They’re wanting forward in direction of their future employer, as a substitute of what ought to be their present obligations.” As soon as they land these company positions, “they’ve received a particular line to their former colleagues” and “get simpler audiences.”

“They know the way the method works and manipulate it,” mentioned Hartung.

Secretary of State Colin Powell performed a pivotal function within the destruction of Iraq. Maybe personally skeptical of the case for the invasion, Powell however lent his appreciable status and credibility to paving the best way for struggle, most notoriously in his February 2003 briefing to the United Nations.

However Powell, who died in 2021, suffered little monetary fallout from his essential function in enabling an unlawful struggle. As an alternative, he went on to rake in thousands and thousands as a director of Bloom Power and Salesforce. For instance, Bloom Power’s 2018 proxy statement exhibits that Powell took in $1.9 million in compensation whereas additionally having fun with a $125,000 consulting gig with the corporate, all along with the $5 million in firm inventory he bought. Powell took in $571,915 in 2020 alone as a Salesforce director. On high of all this, he served as companion and adviser to a spread of personal fairness and enterprise capital corporations.

Then there’s Stephen Hadley, who helped propel the invasion ahead as deputy nationwide safety adviser. After he left workplace, Hadley raked in thousands and thousands over a decade as a director of arms large Raytheon, publishing hawkish, pro-war op-eds with out disclosing his monetary ties to the protection business.

Company Consulting, Speaker Charges and Celeb Picture-Ops

After the struggle, Hadley additionally went into enterprise with the primary in command on the Nationwide Safety Council, Condoleezza Rice. Collectively they shaped the personal consulting service, Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel. The agency leverages its companions’ authorities connections and world networks to learn company and authorities purchasers, largely unseen by the general public eye.

This can be a widespread transfer amongst high protection and safety officers who go away workplace: type opaque, for-profit corporations that rake in undisclosed thousands and thousands. It’s not simply Hadley and Rice: everybody from Henry Kissinger to Madeleine Albright has achieved it (Hadley and Rice’s co-partner is Robert Gates, who served as protection secretary below each Bush and Obama).

Hartung says these consulting corporations might supply a canopy for lobbying. “They’ve a sure benefit due to the shortage of transparency,” he mentioned. “In the event that they’re labeled as lobbyists, they’d at the very least need to make some disclosures. But when they outline themselves as giving ‘strategic recommendation,’ then they’ll skirt that complete system.”

Earlier than turning into Bush’s nationwide safety adviser after which secretary of state through the lead-up to the invasion and the primary half-decade of struggle and occupation, Rice held a slew of company board seats, together with at Chevron, which even named an oil tanker after her. Since she left workplace in 2009, Rice has maintained her capacity to revenue huge from the personal sector. Along with her consulting gig, she’s nabbed board seats at Dropbox, Makena Capital, KiOR and C3 AI (the latter of which netted her $340,000 in 2022 alone), to not point out a seat on JPMorgan’s International Council.

If the thousands and thousands Rice has produced from consulting and company board seats hasn’t been sufficient, she’s additionally raked in a small fortune on the speaker circuit, reportedly incomes $150,000 for a speech on the College of Minnesota, certainly one of many lectures she’s given from Pepperdine to Purdue to corporate gatherings.

Twenty years after loyally serving Bush and Cheney’s march to struggle, Rice’s picture has been absolutely rehabilitated: modeling for the NFL, talking at liberal campuses, having fun with accolades as a brand new part-owner of the Denver Broncos, serving as American Academy of Arts & Sciences Fellow, and now operating the distinguished conservative Hoover Institute.

The Generals’ Revenue

If the highest Bush administration civilian officers steered the U.S. into the struggle, the highest generals who willingly executed the invasion and subsequent occupation have additionally gone on to personally profit, as have the companies that pay huge to entry the generals’ affect and connections.

Take Tommy Franks, the commanding basic of the 2003 invasion, who starting in 2005 snagged profitable board seats with Financial institution of America (proprietor of the Outback Steakhouse and different chains) and CEC Leisure (extra generally often called Chuck E. Cheese).

However most high generals didn’t transfer on to supervise children’ eating places: they joined top weapons companies that paid them a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} a yr in money and inventory to faucet into their unmatched entry to the Pentagon and navy.

Gen. Raymond Odierno led the 4th Infantry Division into Iraq after the invasion, the place it was identified for its “rough methods” that included “breaking down the doorways of personal properties and grabbing younger Iraqi males off the road and delivering them to the infamous Abu Ghraib jail,” in response to the Washington Publish. He later turned the chief commander in Iraq and the Military’s high basic. Odierno joined the board of weapons producer Honeywell shortly earlier than he died in 2021.

James “Mad Canine” Mattis, who commanded the first Marine Division through the invasion and oversaw massacres in Fallujah and the marriage bombing in Mukaradeeb, joined the board of Basic Dynamics not as soon as however twice, with a stint as Donald Trump’s protection secretary in between.

After serving as commanding basic of U.S. forces in Iraq after which commander of all U.S. navy operations within the Center East and Afghanistan, Lloyd Austin retired in 2016 and shortly joined the board of protection firm powerhouse United Applied sciences, after which the board of Raytheon after it acquired United Applied sciences (he additionally joined the boards of metal powerhouse Nucor and well being care large Tenet). Austin was additionally a part of the Pine Island Capital Companions team, a defense industry funding agency.

Austin then shortly scurried again the opposite approach by means of the revolving door to change into President Biden’s protection secretary in 2021. Austin estimated he’d money out his Raytheon inventory for wherever between $750,000 and $1.7 million when he joined the administration.

“They’re there to make use of their affect on behalf of the corporate — to knock on the doorways of members of Congress, to make use of telephones, electronic mail, or different communications to place the arm on individuals that may assist the agency,” mentioned Hartung.

“I feel for the corporate, it’s about shopping for that reputational worth in addition to their contacts.” For the generals, he added, it’s a “doubtful moral scenario.”

“They’re going to the businesses that profited from these wars, after which themselves making the most of working for this firm,” mentioned Hartung. “I’m positive they’ve all types of rationales about nationwide safety and defending the nation, however that doesn’t change the truth that they’re making the most of the system.”

David Petraeus commanded the a hundred and first Airborne Division through the invasion and later turned the highest commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. He rose up even additional to guide the CIA, solely to resign amid scandal after he leaked labeled info to his biographer with whom he was having an affair.

However none of this stopped Petraeus from becoming a member of the board of KKR, one of many world’s high personal fairness corporations, and serving as chairman of the KKR Global Institute, utilizing his world community and know-how to advance the pursuits of Wall Avenue billionaires like Henry Kravis.

Petraeus has additionally loved a slew of postwar cozy college appointments at CUNY, Harvard, USC and Yale, although not at all times with out protest (CUNY college students, as an example, suffered arrests to oppose their faculty’s sanitizing of a “war criminal”).

However in terms of universities, Petraeus just isn’t alone. Architects and overseers of the Iraq Warfare — from neocon Douglas Feith at Georgetown to Condoleezza Rice at Stanford to Stanley McChrystal at Yale — have all benefited from reputational burnishing by the Ivory Tower, whose provosts and deans are at all times longing for higher entry to the corridors of affect.

Past universities, nonprofits starting from the Aspen Institute to the Boys & Girls Club of America, as a lot areas for elite networking and company image-washing as they’re mission-driven, have welcomed the struggle’s architects with open arms.

To make certain, it’s a slippery slope in making an attempt to call accountability for the struggle. We haven’t even broached the Democratic institution right here, nor the various influential liberal pundits who greased public opinion with their fantasies of “liberating” Iraq.

Once more, the phrases of Sinan Antoon: “It was against the law. Those that perpetrated it are nonetheless at giant.”

At giant, and we should always add, dwelling lavishly, because of the companies who splurge to learn from their blood-soaked connections and the schools that shuffle them into their storied lecture halls and swanky cocktail events.