So Tell Me, Mr. Immelt, Why Are You Killing American Servicemen?
Bill O’Reilly doesn’t let facts get in the way of a good story line
By blackhedd Posted in Bill O'Reilly | Foreign Affairs | General Electric | Iran | nuclear weapons — Comments (30) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Years ago, a large young man from Flint, Michigan with nothing better to do started stalking Roger Smith, who was then the CEO of General Motors Corporation. The young man, with a small film crew in tow, would stick a microphone under Smith’s nose and ask him all kinds of strange questions. Later, he assembled the pieces into what looked like a documentary but in fact was tendentious propaganda.
General Motors learned then that truth is no barrier to being smeared effectively. And young Michael Moore learned that craftily-packaged lies can change the world.
I was reminded of that when I heard that Bill O’Reilly, of Fox News, showed up last week at the National Governor’s Association meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And he appears to have gotten in front of attendee Jeffrey Immelt, who is the CEO of the General Electric Company of Fairfield, Connecticut.
What O’Reilly wanted to know from Immelt more or less boiled down to: Why are you still killing Americans in Iraq?
It turns out that this has been a hobbyhorse for O’Reilly for quite some time now. He’s generated several flaps about General Electric this year.
So this is my way of trying to cut off another one.
Keep reading…
On what basis does Bill O’Reilly believe that GE, a company with more than 300,000 employees and over $170 billion in annual revenue, is killing American servicemen and women?
It’s because until recently, GE had business operations in Iran. I decided to find out what this was all about, and here’s what I learned.
GE is a global conglomerate that specializes in what former CEO Jack Welch called “large, muscle-using businesses.” They include power-generation systems, jet engines, medical imaging, railway power, various consumer products, some enormous finance businesses, and of course the NBC broadcast network.
They also have a very large oilfield-services unit. GE Oil & Gas has a subsidiary named Nuovo Pignone, based in Italy. Nuovo Pignone makes heavy equipment for oil drilling (it's the same basic business as Halliburton and Schlumberger).
And until this month, Nuovo Pignone did business in Iran. GE has a healthcare subsidiary based in France that, until this month, had some Iranian operations as well.
So it’s pretty serious for Bill O’Reilly (or anyone else) to say that GE has been propping up the Iranian regime and thereby making it easier for them to sponsor deadly operations against American troops in Iraq.
And if true, this matters to you personally, seeing that you probably own a piece of GE yourself, either directly or through your mutual funds or 401(k) plan.
The truth of the matter, however, is that GE senior management decided to walk away from their Iranian businesses, three years ago. It takes that long to exit a business because you have long-term contracts with your suppliers and customers, and you have to wind those down over time.
Back in 2004, there was a shareholder resolution introduced at the GE annual meeting to divest the Iranian operations. The shareholders voted it down emphatically, because after all, business is business, and Jeffrey Immelt doesn’t get paid to make the company smaller.
But as I said, a year later, the management decided that getting out of Iran was the right thing to do, and the move was reported widely at the time. For one thing, it really is questionable to do business with America’s sworn enemies (more on that shortly). For another, a lot of veterans work for GE, and even more own GE shares. Their sensitivities matter a great deal.
And we’re not talking about large numbers in any case. The total volume of GE’s Iranian operations was probably less than $50 million a year. (By the way, Iran’s economy is not a small one. It’s about two-thirds the size of Mexico’s, with a similar per-capita GDP.)
According to GE, they have fully completed their exit from all business operations in Iran as of July 1, 2008. And that’s the answer to Bill O’Reilly’s question.
This does get rather sticky from a policy point of view, however. Iran’s reckless drive to obtain nuclear weapons is the most difficult foreign policy challenge in the world. Many people oversimplify the issue in terms of whether a war against Iran (probably initiated by Israel) is inevitable.
But for a whole lot of reasons, Bush Administration policy toward Iran has involved both carrots and sticks. At different points in time, the State Department has sought to either encourage or to cool off commercial contacts by American and European businesses in Iran.
I’m emphatically not suggesting that any of GE’s decision-making was conditioned by our government. I have no information to say whether that is true or not. But although GE is now out of Iran, there are other large Western companies still there today. One of them is British Petroleum, which is helping to develop the northern half of a large new gas field in the sparsely-populated Fars region. Who’s developing the southern half? China, of course.
If you look at Iran’s largest trading partners (both for imports and exports), you’ll find Japan, China and South Korea among the biggies, but also Italy, France and Germany. Italy in particular (where the oilfield-services business that became part of GE is based) has had energy-producing operations in Iran since the late Fifties, long before the Islamic Revolution.
Part of the challenge in dealing with Iran is the tension between the American and the European ways of diplomacy. The Europeans fervently believe that if you talk to people long enough and offer them enough of an incentive (including business relationships), they’ll eventually see things your way.
In America, on the other hand, many of us believe that when the Iranians say they intend to blow Israel off the face of the earth, they mean it, and peace will only come through forcible regime change.
But for better or worse, war with Iran is not an option, so we have to find another answer. To their credit, the Europeans have recently started to recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran is a very bad idea. They have shown signs of willingness to align with our next President to meet the threat in a coordinated way.
But there still is the matter of Bill O’Reilly. He has little enough credibility as it is, but if he keeps up the Michael Moore act, just ask yourself this: might some of it be simply a matter of overwrought competitive animus against Keith Olbermann? After all, Olbermann (who’s just about as worth listening to as O’Reilly, which is to say, not much) works for MSNBC.
And who owns MSNBC? General Electric.
-Francis Cianfrocca
So Tell Me, Mr. Immelt, Why Are You Killing American Servicemen? 30 Comments (0 topical, 30 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
O'Reilly is repulsive, but fits in well with the other Fox personalities.
I think he's a better match for Olbermann and Lou Dobbs, in the sense that he is an arrogant, underinformed blowhard who spouts populist pablum in order to suck up to his audience. I'd like to lock Olbermann, O'Liely and Dobbs in the same walk-in closet and tell each one their in charge.
Hope is not a plan. Change is not always good.
Two weeks, five days, nine comments, and not a single substantive point in any of them. Why do you come here? You certainly aren't adding anything. Why don't we just speed this up a bit. Go ahead and call me the knuckle dragging racist sexist bigot homophobe that you just know I and everyone else here must be, you can get banned, and then go write your "They banned me, ME" diary at dkos, and we all can just get on with our lives...
Thanks for taking the time to do that, it clearly explains the extent that GE had dealings with Iran, as well as the complexity involved in winding the contracts down. Additionally, it exposes Bill O'Reilly for being a self-indulging fool when it comes to 'getting even' with the likes of MSNBC's Olbermann - the two of them have been going at each other for some time. Additionally, recent reporting indicateds that this feud has reached the highest levels of Fox and GE, including Jeff Immelt and Roger Ailes. How pathetic is this? What will be interesting to see now is if the ever humble Mr. O'Reilly backs off of his rantings on this subject. One more point. As a GE shareholder, Jeff Immelt should be ashamed of himself for not 'arranging' to confront O'Reilly head-on to explain the Company's dealings with Iran as you outlined. This was not a difficult thing for GE to get done, yet they allowed O'Reilly's blabbering to go on ad infinitum.
O'Reilly is a windbag, a populist demagogue, and a bully. He's a shameless self-promoter. I question my judgment when I find myself on the same side of an issue as Bill.
His opinions on energy are nothing short of ignorant.
"PsychObama, qu'est-ce que c'est?"
"Once within the maw of Leviathan, degree of digestion is irrelevant." - Michael Fisk
7.88, -1.97
O'Reilly is a windbag, a populist demagogue, and a bully. He's a shameless self-promoter. I question my judgment when I find myself on the same side of an issue as Bill.
Agreed, but he IS right around 70% of the time.
Keith Olbermann? He is a windbag, a populist demagogue, and a bully. He's a shameless self-promoter. But he is right approximately 10% of the time
sorry bout my shameless cutting & pasting
I've heard O'Reilly's rants on GE and they are not as you portray. You've applied a healthy spin on the issue. O'Reilly is smart enough to choose his words carefully...he's not saying GE kills Americans, he says GE does business with a country whose regime kills Americans. Quite different, and 100% true. Iran supplies and trains the insurgents who have killed, maimed, and disfigured our troops. The improved penetrator for roadside bombs is one little Iranian treat.
If GE had a moral compass they would have exited immediately, violated their contracts, and told Iran to sue them. But they didn't. That's immoral. (On the other hand the good will GE would have created based on financial goodwill could have exceeded their losses!)
O'Reilly hasn't asserted that the GE goods directly contributed to the loss of American life. If he could, he certainly would. But trade benefits all parties as you well know. So how much utility did Iran derive from trade with GE? Who knows. Maybe the GE MRI saved the life of someone in the Quds force. Maybe not. But who cares, and does it matter?
---------------------------------
Oil: Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.
on the war....I personally cannot stand those who were for the war, sent our military there and than...oh changed their minds and that goes for Bill O'Reilly and every damn Democrat Senator and Congressperson who has done the same....war is not an oopsie!
Freedom of Religion NOT Freedom from Religion
I've been upset with O'Reily ever since he trashed the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, suggesting that they were being mean and lying, all for the sake of trying to score an interview with Kerry in 04.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
Back in the '80s any U.S. corporation that had any ties at all to the South African government was villified in the press, in books and even in Hollywood movies. Colleges and unions divested entirely from South Africa, I assume they took a financial hit in doing so, but they saw it as a moral imperative.
GE is (or was) doing business (albeit indirectly) with a government that is killing U.S. servicemen and O'Reilly is the only person even mentioning it.
------------------------------------------
This signature left intentionally blank
Companies such as GE have consistently attempted to skirt sanctions in search of a profit. That is not only disingenuous but despicable. Immelt knows full well about using subsidiaries and finishing out contracts as a means of proliferating bottom line contribution. As noted, GE has used their Italian subsidiary on one deal and the Canadian subsidiary on another. Ask yourself; why was that done? Surely, you can’t believe it was for tax reasons? I have been operating in the global financial markets for over 20 years (some of that time directly interacting with GE) and I am not buying it.
Any self respecting company would cease and desist interaction and cash flows immediately when they are gained from a relationship with deplorable despotic countries such as Iran. The least of their misdeeds is sending EFP’s to Iraq and actively seeking to kill our troops. I could not in good conscience accept one dollar from such despicable people; nor would I want to suffer the bad publicity. There is no downside in terms of the legalities since any reasonable court would not rule against GE.
Bottom line, being a fairly well informed person, I divested from GE when this came to light. I have no issues whatsoever with them making a profit, but not under these circumstances. I also see this as part of the endemic lack of leadership within GE which has financially suffered under Immelt’s reign.
As to Bill O’Reilly I will not rush to provide specific apologia. I often find him full of mellifluous tarradiddle; nonetheless the man does a significant amount of work for charity and children in particular. That, I believe, is laudable and should be balanced against his alleged misdeeds. Comparatively, at his worst, O'Reilly is absolutely not a Michael Moore or Olberman. They promote a special hatred for this country, our Constitution, our institutions and soldiers. That behavior stands, as it should, apart from reasonable, supportable speech.
"Nec Aspera Terrent"
bene ambula et redambula
Contributor to The Minority Report
" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised
The reciprocal beauty of using the words "mellifluous taradiddle" to refer to the speech of someone else reminds me why MT is my favorite RS poster to read.
------------------------------------------
This signature left intentionally blank
against GE. But then there is a case against many companies that have not attracted O'Reilly's ire.
I wouldn't lose too much sleep over Immelt feeling the heat in the kitchen. He is being very well paid to tend that kitchen.
On the whole, O'Reilly is a positive for us, despite his negatives - his rudeness and intemperate rhetoric. I especially don't like his coverage of trials, which he considers an inconvenient interlude between the alleged crime and the conviction. But he was right on the big picture re Iraq, as he frequently is on a lot of things. As Marcus notes above, he puts his money where his mouth is in a whole array of charitable enterprises.
So I'll keep watching, but keep my own counsel. BTW, do you know that non-GE light bulbs work well and are cheaper, too? :>)
...I really don't have a problem with that. (Hopefully, he'll take down NBC with it!)
If GE doesn't want the heat, they should stick to making microwaves, and exit ownership of NBC/Universal.
(Note: I say this as someone who is no fan of O'Reilly.)
I don't think what you mentioned was what Bill has been attacking them over. He's talked about how GE has sold parts to Iran that are used for Jet Fighters, which they said they would stop when the contract is up at the end of this year.
I really don't get the O'Reilly hate I see around alot. Sure he gets off topic and can suck up to some, but he still does more for the right then almost anyone else, sans Rush. He has the largest audience and uses that to expose both politicians and Executives who turn their company over to make sure one person is in the headlines. Bill is a big reason Fox made it, without his big mouth we might be stuck with MSNBC and CNN only.
Voting for the Sexy(Pres) - Sexy(VP) Dream Ticket
Jindal/Palin 2012
Well, I think placing O'Reilly up in 2nd place overlooks people like Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and a few others who are on the right, solidly, with no pandering to the left for the sake of an interview.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
Guys like Hannity and Levin are up at the top with Conservatives, but if you want to push a message you need to speak to those who aren't already for the message. O'Reilly has the biggest grouping of Libs and Independents besides Rush, so he can get the message we need out there, to more people then the others.
Voting for the Sexy(Pres) - Sexy(VP) Dream Ticket
Jindal/Palin 2012
Eh, in 2004, his message was "Shut up Swift Boat Vets for Truth!"
In my book, you don't recover from that. He threw them under the buss, then put it in reverse to run over them again, just to score an interview with Kerry.
He was good in the younger years of the Factor, back when he actually did stop spin and even ended interviews with liberals when they tried to pass along their lies.
but the Swift Boat Vets were, for me anyway, the sign of him jumping the shark.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
and one reason only. MSNBC (or specifically, Olby).
___________________________________
Just like PayPal, except it's free and a $25 bonus to sign up!
But Bill O'Reilly the television personality is a self-absorbed lunatic. The man said a while back that he personally moved gas prices with his show, driving them down after they had surged for crying out loud.
But hey, he brings in the eyeballs of all those lefties who love to hate him (which is I'm sure why he gets better ratings than the other on Fox).
I saw a video from earlier in his career at some local news station. He was doing a taping of a teaser clip about something that the news was going to cover.
He had to do the take half a dozen times, he couldn't say one word. He was furious and blaming everyone else for his problem.
Even went on a cursing tirade over it.
I do not think that the television personality is too far from the actual personality.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
It's a classic. Language Warning
Long day, I'm out.
I can't view video at work, but I think he ends up saying that in the end, yeah.
----------------------
Dependence is Slavery.
Political Compass
Economic Left/Right: 7.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.85
crystal. Both deranged, neither worthy of more than 10 seconds of viewing.
====
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison