jep
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response 206 of 218:
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Feb 24 16:35 UTC 2006 |
I didn't expect that much discussion from my comment. In brief, I do
think Saddam Hussein, as president of Iraq, was a bigger threat than
Osama bin Laden.
I don't see how anyone can say with any certainty, other than by pure
blind faith, that there were no WMD in Iraq or being produced in Iraq.
Are you saying the government couldn't make another mistake as big as
missing a weapons facility or having things taken out of the country
without being seen?
I'll try to come back to this item later. Gotta run now.
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tod
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response 211 of 218:
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Feb 24 17:46 UTC 2006 |
In the West Texas energy business, George W. Bush started out researching who
owned mineral rights. He later traded mineral and royalty interests and
invested in drilling prospects. He had started his own oil and gas company
by 1978, taking $17,000 from his education trust fund to set up Arbusto Energy
(arbusto means Bush in Spanish). The company fell on hard times when oil
prices fell. He made several attempts to revive the business, first by
changing the company's name and later by merging with other companies. In
1983, Bush.s company was rescued from failure when Spectrum 7 Energy
Corporation, a small oil firm owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds,
bought it. Bush became chief executive officer. Harken Energy Corporation
acquired Spectrum 7 in 1986, after Spectrum had lost $400,000. In the buyout
deal, Bush and his partners were given more than $2 million worth of Harken
stock for the 180-well operation. Bush became a director and was hired as a
"consultant" to Harken. He received another $600,000 of Harken stock, and has
been paid between $42,000 and $120,000 a year. By the spring of 1987, Harken
was in need of cash. So Bush and his fellow Harken officials met with Jackson
Stephens, head of Stephens, Inc., an investment bank in Little Rock, Arkansas
(Stephens contributed $100,000 to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 and gave
another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee in 1990.) Stephens arranged for
Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Bush.s company in
return for a stock interest in Harken. As part of the deal, Sheikh Abdullah
Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate tycoon and financier, joined Harken's board as
a major investor. Stephens, UBS, and Bakhsh each had ties to the infamous,
scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In 1990, Bush
sold his remaining stock options and left the oil business....
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