The Rich Have a Special ‘Profile’

Jul 19, 2004

The Detroit Free Press reports that Asaad Kalasho, an Iraqi-American businessman in West Bloomfield, Michigan, had negotiated a 16-million-dollar deal in 2000 with Saddam Hussein for satellite broadcasts to the U.S. when sanctions against Iraq made such deals illegal. Far from being investigated and charged, he was recently given a Republican Party leadership position, rewarded for raising over $100,000 for the Bush campaign! Why not? He wasn’t doing anything Cheney and Bush hadn’t done.

Of course, the day after the story broke, the Republicans returned that part of the $100,000 given under Mr. Kalasho’s personal signature–but not the rest!

As fish go, Mr. Asaad Kalasho is actually very small fry.

What about the business ties of the Bush family to personalities and corporations that promote and profit from the war in Iraq? The first President Bush, with notables like ex-British Prime Minister John Major, used the Carlyle Group to invest in military contractors which got–and continue to get–huge contracts to supply the Iraq war.

Or why doesn’t Vice President Cheney receive a visit from investigators about his ties to Halliburton and its services to Saddam Hussein’s regime both before and during the sanctions? Not to mention Halliburton’s mountains of profits from contracts to supply the current U.S. war.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, investigators harass and intimidate hundreds of ordinary Arab people in this country, interrogating them at work, questioning their neighbors, creating uproar and suspicion on no grounds except that a person is Arab, or looks Arab.

It’s government as usual: making false targets of everyday people, in order to hide the back-room profiteering of the wealthy and powerful.