Who's Bucky Bush? He's the younger brother of 41 and the uncle of 43--um, and I guess I was wrong when I thought it was yet another SNL character (turns out that was Uncle ROY, PLAYED by Buck Henry). Anyway, Bucky sure knows a good deal when he sees one:
The Iraq war has produced many winners and many losers. And one small but significant winner is a certain William "Bucky" Bush, brother of one president and uncle to the current occupant of the White House.
The good fortune of Uncle Bucky, as he is known within America's ruling family, has been to hold a seat on the board of Engineered Support Systems Incorporated (ESSI), a St Louis-based company that has flourished mightily as a military contractor to the Pentagon.
Last month, ESSI shares hit a record $60.39 (£31.64) apiece more or less exactly the moment the presidential uncle chose to sell 8,438 options worth around $450,000, according to obligatory reports filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and disclosed by the Los Angeles Times yesterday. William Bush denies that his presence on the board has had anything to do with the company's success in boosting expected revenues to an estimated $1bn in 2005, in good part reflecting no-bid contracts relating to the war.
Let's see...$450,000 divided by 1500--that works out to about $300 dollars for each official KIA.
The company has supplied a variety of equipment to the US military effort in Iraq, including a $49m contract to refurbish military trailers and an $18m deal to provide communications services to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran post-Saddam Iraq until June last year. In 2003, ESSI was awarded contracts for equipment to help search for, and protect US soldiers from, Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, which turned out to have been a figment of the imagination of the Bush administration.
At least the Brit press gets it right--the weapons were a "figment of the imagination,"--and still are, in the
"America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd," he crowed. Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." (Chris Cox, R-CA)
But, back to Bucky:
The episode is another illustration of how the Iraq conflict, costing the US $5bn a month, is proving a bonanza for some. A prime example is Halliburton, the oil services group once chaired by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, whose Iraq operations have been plagued by alleged contract overcharging and other issues.
Some Democrats complain that the Bushes and their associates have been given a virtual free pass on business affairs unlike President Bill Clinton, who was hounded for years over his involvement in Whitewater, a modest Arkansas real estate venture, in which he and his wife Hillary actually lost money.
Don't spend all that money in one place, Mr. Bush.
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