[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
. He backed Colin Powell as a running mate for Bob Dole.He defended the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power inIraq, saying again that Saddam was not worth the lives of Ameri-can soldiers.He pushed to lift the sanctions on Iran The goodLord didn t see fit to put oil and gas resources only in democraticcountries friendly to the U.S. and warned that a failure to doso might upset the United States allies in Europe.30Despite his repeated insistence that he would not accept aspot on the Republican ticket How direct do I have to be? heasked in Casper Cheney s name stayed in the mix.He was neverapproached by Dole s campaign and says he would have turnedthe offer down if he had been.Cheney did meet with ElizabethDole, who wanted to involve him in the campaign.Cheney likedDole, but declined any active role in the campaign in order tofocus on his work at Halliburton.Even the selection of his longtime friend Jack Kemp as Dole srunning mate was not enough to entice him to participate in theRepublican National Convention in San Diego in 1996.LynneCheney spoke, but her husband did not even make the trip.It wasthe first Republican convention he had missed in two decades.Asked what he was doing, Cheney says he doesn t remember,but offers the most likely answer. Probably fishing. Among the few political issues Cheney did follow closely Cheney269were the debates over unilateral sanctions in places where Hal-liburton did business, something he called my favorite hobby-horse. As his comments in Casper suggest, Cheney opposedunilateral sanctions even against countries with abysmal human-rights records or a history of involvement with terrorism.His argument was practical: unilateral sanctions don t work.In most cases, he argued, they hurt American companies andhave little effect on the government they are intended to punish.Cheney thought unilateral sanctions were an easy way formembers of Congress and the Clinton administration to get po-litical cover by signaling their opposition to bad regimes.Although Cheney had occasionally voted in favor of unilat-eral economic sanctions as a member of Congress, his view thatthey are ineffective predates his tenure at Halliburton.The sanc-tions imposed on Haiti by the Bush administration when Cheneywas secretary of defense were stupid and a mistake, he saidshortly after leaving office.31 And later, after he became vice pres-ident, Cheney said that the unilateral sanctions against Pakistan,favored by Congress, were one reason the United States rela-tions with Pakistan soured in the 1990s.32In May 1997, Cheney called on the oil and gas industry tofight Congress over unilateral sanctions, suggesting that furtherrestrictions lay ahead unless businesses took a proactive ap-proach to ending sanctions.33 He followed his own advice.On June 23, 1998, Cheney delivered a speech at the libertarianCato Institute decrying the deleterious effects of sanctions.Hecited two examples, both having to do with Iran.Cheney com-plained that U.S.companies operated at a significant disadvan-tage in the Caspian Sea region because of its proximity to Iran,which was under American sanctions at the time. As a result, he said, American firms are prohibited fromdealing with Iran and find themselves cut out of the action, both interms of opportunities that develop with respect to Iran itself, andalso with respect to our ability to gain access to Caspian resources.Iran is not punished by this decision.There are numerous oil andgas development companies from other countries that are now ag-gressively pursuing opportunities to develop those resources.That Stephen F.Hayes270development will proceed, but it will happen without Americanparticipation. 34Cheney further pointed out that the Clinton administrationwas attempting to rally Arab states in the region to align with theUnited States against Iran.Doing so, he claimed, raised questionsabout the wisdom of U.S.leadership. Cheney later explained how, exactly, the sanctions affectedHalliburton:There was a limit, a dollar limit on how much you coulddo there, and our best customer at the time, most years ei-ther Exxon or Shell, was either number one or number twocustomer worldwide.But Shell was often up there.Shell, ofcourse, was a British and Netherlands, Hague, based com-pany.They d go in to operate in Iran and we couldn t gowith them as a service company.Our competition could,because that was Schlumberger.And they were domiciledin the Netherlands Antilles.Although they were listed onthe New York exchange, they weren t subject to sanctions.So they d go into Iran, service Shell, charge an arm and aleg because there was no competition.We weren t there,kept out by our own government
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]