Military Submissives

Halliburton received most of those contracts in the 1990s during the final years of the Clinton Administration.

 

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Well Romania always followed an independent path from the Soviet Union when it came to foreign policy in exchange for having an extreme dictatorial domestic policy. And of course Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union decades earlier.

 

Actually, he was the one that served the longest.

When he took office, it was Brezhnev. But he died a year later in 1982.

Then it was Andropov, who died a year later in 1984.

Then Chernenko, once again for a year, and died in 1985.

Gorby took over in 1985, and held the post until the Soviet Union dissolved.

So really, he is the only one that mattered. None of the others before him were ever in that position long enough to do anything. That was even something of a joke at the time, as it seemed the Soviets were having to select a new "ruler" every year.

 

Hell, I bet if you asked 100 people what Haliburton does, they could not even tell you.

I often find it amazing how ignorant so many people are.

Another company that got a hell of a lot of contracts was Hilton.

 

But they still claimed to be "Good Marxist-Socialists", and were part of or closely aligned with the Warsaw Pact. So having them break would be like the UK and France breaking from NATO over something similar. And something that in earlier decades would have seen tanks marched into their capitols in response.

And it is not like Ceaușescu was some "Westernized" believer. He simply enjoyed on occasion thumbing his nose at the Soviets, as they were pretty much the only WP nation that the Soviets never had to invade to bring back into line. And ironically, the only WP nation not to break ties with Israel after the Six Day War, and was key to bringing both sides to the conference table both in the Israel-Egypt and Israel-PLO talks later. As it was about the only nation that had good relations with all of those countries.

 

Halliburton did a great job in Iraq... not perfect... but were there quickly when we needed them and they delivered.

 

Fun Fact re Tito:

"When Russian leader Josef Stalin died, on March 5 in 1953, a letter was found in his office that had been written by Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito.

.....

A combination of pride, fear and jealousy had spurred Stalin to attempt to have Tito killed - and no less than 22 assassination attempts had been made in the years after the war.

Tito's letter in Stalin's office read: 'Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second.'"


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-target-22-Soviet-assassination-attempts.html

Yugoslavia fell apart after Tito died. Too many ethnic divisions at each other's throats.

 

But the biggest thing I laugh about is the surprising number of people that think that Haliburton is an "oil company".

They have never been an oil company. They are a construction company, that largely focuses on the oil industry. Mostly things like pipelines and refineries, as well as other such projects. And as they are a major service provider to the oil industry, it also does things like building housing at oil fields, and support like laundry, cooking, and anything else an oil company would need on the location. Which made them perfect in the early days because a single company could do all that was needed to support the new bases all over the area.

And the service was an afterthought to them. As they originally got into it to support their own workers, then found out there was money in it for contracting the services after the construction was done to the oil companies once they took possession of a facility.

I know that when I was out there, the construction was mostly done, and the majority of the services were done by Hyatt. They ran the laundry, the chow halls, and the other services on our base (from barbers and maids in the temporary quarters to making sure all the coolers on base were full of water).

My mom worked for many years at a similar company, Morrison-Knudsen. Just like Haliburton, they were a construction company that originally started doing dams and canals, but later branched into the oil industry for projects like the Alaska Pipeline and the early oil shale plants in Colorado.

But I generally shake my head and consider anybody that tries to repeat that old lie "Haliburton wanted us to invade Iraq for the oil". Anybody that says that has to be a complete and utter idiot, because the company has never been an oil company. And Haliburton won all of those early contracts because they were generally the only company bidding. But once the construction was all done, most of them went to many other companies that were only oriented in providing services.