The revelations about Iraqi oil smuggling and Iraq's embezzlement from the "Oil-for-Food" program show us who's responsible for the deaths of American GI's in Iraq. The "Oil-for-Food" program is the latest rage for the right wing fair and balanced press because it allows them to savage their favorite whipping boy, the UN. However, let's not forget that Saddam's largest income was from oil smuggling, not the sales under UN auspices. While there has been an almost complete absence of business ethics [Is that an oxymoron? - Ed.] in this scandal unbridled exercise in capitalism, the connections to our current administration are almost too clear. Let's connect the dots.

• In order to pump oil to smuggle or sell, Saddam needed parts for the Iraqi oil infrastructure. Despite US laws forbidding trade with Iraq, Halliburton, under the leadership of war profiteer extraordinaire Dick Cheney, smelled good money. So, Halliburton created an offshore subsidiary to trade with Iraq. Halliburton then sold parts to the subsidiary which sold them to Saddam.

But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn't identified in Duelfer's report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by skirting U.S. laws and selling Iraq spare parts so it could repair its oil fields and pump more oil.

Halliburton used one of foreign subsidiaries to sell Iraq the equipment it needed so the country could pump more oil, according to a report in the Washington Post in June 2001. The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- according to the Post, to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War years earlier.

• Meanwhile, in typical hypocritical fashion, Bush talks tough on defeating terrorism and tracking down the financiers of terrorist groups, but actually reduces the penalties for those companies trading with the "Axis of Evil". What else could he do when he is elected along with Tricky Dick Cheney, the man who put the vice into the vice-president. It bears repeating that, like Kofi Annan's son, Cheney continues to receive deferred payments from Halliburton, spoils of his blood trade, even as he cashes checks made out by the American people. In the spirit of forgiveness, the administration has alllowed thes same companies to receive contracts in Iraq and to sell "post-liberation" oil. I guess they were born again.

• Smuggled oil and oil sold under the UN "Oil-for-Food" program is transferred to buyers who will agree to pay bribes and kickbacks. 40% of the oil sold by Iraq was bought by American oil companies. Those who paid "surcharges" and bribes included such Bush-connected companies as Chevron-Texaco, Taurus Oil, and Houston-based Coastal. It is estimated that Saddam skimmed off some $10 - $21 billion in this way, meaning that US companies paid Saddam up to $11 billion in bribes and kickbacks.

• Of course, this money has to be funnelled through compliant banks, including some of Wall Street's finest like BNP Paribas and JP Morgan Chase & Company, and Britain's HSBC Bank.

• Saddam then used the money to bribe UN and other foreign officials, buy arms, and pay money to families of Palestinians "suicide bombers." It has also been alleged that this money is funding the current Iraqi "insurgency."

So, when the news reports that over a thousand American boys are dead in Iraq, just calculate that more than 400 of these were killed by Chevron, Coastal, and Mr. Cheney. The connection couldn't be more clear if he pulled the trigger himself.