Funny how I was reading about some of this stuff yesterday while writing a response to the “Who’s Smarter?” e-mail that’s been going around, and then I encounter new stuff today. Connect the dots…

An article titled “The Cheney Connection” says:

… there are serious questions emerging over the process by which US companies are hired to put out oil fires, … and do whatever is necessary to ”reconstruct” Iraq after allied forces deconstruct it. Some answers need to come from Vice President Dick Cheney, a major architect of the war with Iraq, … who was, until 2 1/2 years ago, chief executive officer of Halliburton Co., a Houston-based oil field services firm…

It is a Halliburton subsidiary — Kellogg, Brown & Root — that landed on a short list of companies invited by the US Agency for International Development to bid on what could grow to be a $900 million contract to rebuild Iraq. That’s the same Kellogg, Brown & Root that was recently awarded, by the Defense Department, the contract to put out fires at oil fields in Iraq.

In the first Gulf War, Iraqis torched more than 700 oil wells in Kuwait. About half the fires were extinguished by Halliburton.

Of course this isn’t really new news. And then I saw another press release about an upcoming movie by Michael Moore, of “Bowling for Columbine”, “Stupid White Men” and Oscar speech fame. It’s titled “Fahrenheit 911” and is a documentary about “the murky relationship” between former President George Bush and the family of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

According to Moore, the former president had a business relationship with Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammed bin Laden, a Saudi construction magnate who left $300 million to Osama bin Laden. It has been widely reported that bin Laden used the inheritance to finance global terrorism.

Moore said the bin Laden family was heavily invested in the Carlyle Group, a private global investment firm that the filmmaker said frequently buys failing defense companies and then sells them at a profit. Former President Bush has reportedly served as a senior adviser with the firm.

“The senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11, “said Moore.

And I was reading about that yesterday at The First 80 Years Behind the Bushes. Again, it’s not really new news. There have been stories about this stuff for a long time.

So many dots, so little time.