Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(November 2004)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
Conclusions
and Comments :
 Not having met or talked to any one of the four contestants
I can only give you a mental picture that I formed
from their numerous TV appearances.
I would suggest
that Mr. Cheney came over as a calculating, scheming, powerful political individual
who I would have great difficulty in trusting.
I consider him to be the definite power behind the throne in the White House
and would think that it is he who makes most of the important political decisions.
On the other hand, President Bush appears to spend as little time as possible
in the White House and must have more frequent flier miles on Air Force One than
the most experienced long serving senior captain of any commercial airline.
Perhaps
I should characterise the situation as I see it, with Dick Cheney being the
behind the scenes Chief Executive Officer of the current
Administration who really runs the outfit, and President
Bush being the travelling salesperson who spends most
of his time out on the road spreading the gospel according to Dick Cheney,
Don Rumsfeld, and his other Republican supporters, while
at the same time soliciting funds from his well connected
big business associates who will obviously benefit from
the large contracts being handed out for the reconstruction
of the Iraqi infrastructure.
 Whilst
on the subject of Big Business Associates, I am utterly amazed that neither
Senator Kerry nor his running mate John Edwards questioned at length Dick
Cheney’s
close association, (as the ex-CEO of the Halliburton Company), with subsidiaries
of the Halliburton Company who have been doing business with the coalition forces
in Iraq.
These subsidiaries have been accused of alleged fraudulent accounting practices
associated with overcharging for transportation of gasoline products from
Kuwait to Iraq, and over-billing for other services provided to coalition
troops.
The Halliburton Company and its subsidiaries received several multi-billion
dollar, no-bid contracts from the United States Government for troop support
in Iraq, and it has been reported that perhaps some of these contracts were
negotiated prior to the commencement of the war!!!
I don’t recall the subject being brought up in the debates in any great
detail but I certainly would expect that a subject of so much importance deserves
more than a fleeting mention.
 As early as July 2001 Congressional investigators,
in a letter to Dick Cheney from the General Accounting
Office, (GAO), requested that the Vice President make
public the records of closed-door White House energy
task force meetings.
Vice President Cheney, as the head of the White House task force on Energy,
met with senior officials from the oil, natural gas, electric, and nuclear
industries and chaired meetings involved in developing a Bush Administration’s
National Energy plan.
To the best of my knowledge those records were never divulged or published
to this very day and the White House has continuously refused to provide the
names of the members attending those meetings. Surely the purveyors of liquid
gold and the Bush Administration were not in the act of planning the protection
of the Middle East oil reserves at those meetings in preparation for a second
gulf war in Iraq - if so, history has shown what a dismal failure the protection
of those oil reserves turned out to be - but then of course the American oil
companies, who are major owners in most of those oil reserves, are still making
vast profits with the price of a barrel of low sweet crude currently fetching
over $54 per barrel, (approximately double the price per barrel prior to the
Iraqi war), which is seriously affecting the price of practically every petroleum
associated consumer product that is in use throughout the country.
 With respect to the personal attributes of Senator Kerry
and John Edwards, I found them both to be excellent debaters
and both had an excellent knowledge and command of the
subjects discussed - and of course both being lawyers
they certainly should have a good command of the subject
at hand.
With respect to the performance by President Bush, I found it to be a disappointing
and somewhat dismal effort with no admittance that mistakes had been made
during his four-year tenure as President. If one makes mistakes and denies
that mistakes have been made how does one go about correcting those mistakes.
In a complete state of denial, when asked that knowing that mistakes had
been made would he still pursue the same course of action---His answer
was yes.
And the debate winner is :
Well, let me put it this way, Senator Kerry sizzled and won all three debates
hands down, whilst
his opponent President Bush fizzled like a damp squib. I would suggest that the
Vice President debate was a draw.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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