Dick Cheney, Halliburton and unbelievable stuff

My wife and I were discussing some of the shady goings-on in the Bush Administration the other day and she enunciated clearly one of the biggest misgivings that most people in this country have about these stories:

"This all just sounds too fantastic. It sounds like some made-up bull from a movie."

And, so it does sometimes. That fact is one of the biggest hurdles that truth-seekers have to over come, first in themselves, then in others they try to spread the truth to. Sometimes the things that are uncovered just seem too crazy to possibly be true! After all, surely the kinds of misconduct we hear about could never happen in a world where the President of the United States can't even get a little oral on the side without the whole world finding out about it. Oh sure, maybe Kennedy had dozens of bimbos and maybe Eisenhower had a mistress living in the White House, but this is the 21st Century and there are snoops, cameras and microphones everywhere now. Every financial transaction and plane trip any politician might ever be near will be scrutinized and muck-raked by a bloodthirsty media. We can rest assured that our freedoms, rights and best interest are closely guarded by an intertangled web of ACLU lawyers, reporters, oversight committees and deep-cover media sources. Everybody is watching everybody else and any false moves will be reported with startling speed and vehemence. You just can't lie in government and get away with it anymore. By the way, you also can't print untruths in any form, mislead in advertising and cheat on your taxes. You will always be found out. I mean, look at Enron! We can all relax and trust that this self-sustaining mutual over-the-shoulder-looking will keep us safe.

Of course, things do not work that way at all. Sure, scams are being uncovered everyday. We do have tons of watchdog agencies looking over many aspects of American life. But, there are still plenty of ways to skirt the laws and dodge the cameras. We'd like to think that the just are rewarded and that the criminal are penalized. But the fact is that the meek can't inherit the earth if the assholes are keeping the will tied up in probate court.

But, on to Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Rather than spew out tons of argument on this matter, I would like to simply list a few facts (and the source material for them). Let's see what you think about all this.

• As Secretary of Defense under Bush I, Cheney paid Brown and Root services (now Kellogg Brown and Root) $3.9 million to report on how private companies could help the U.S. Army as Cheney cut hundreds of thousands of Army jobs. Then Brown and Root won a five-year contract to provide logistics for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers all over the globe. In 1995, Cheney became CEO and Halliburton jumped from 73rd to 18th on the Pentagon's list of top contractors, benefiting from at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans, according to the Center for Public Integrity. (source)
• Cheney repeatedly said, during the 2000 election campaign that he had a "standing policy" against doing business in Iraq while at Halliburton. But, according to the Washington Post, "Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to [Saddam Hussein-controlled] Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer." (source) (source2)
• In fact, the much maligned "oil-for-food" program put in place during Saddam's regime is reported to have been corrupted using "a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion in illicit revenue" for Saddam. One of the companies involved in that corruption was Halliburton, under the leadership of Dick Cheney. (source)
  
• Under Cheney's tenure, the number of Halliburton subsidiaries in offshore tax havens increased from 9 to 44. Meanwhile, Halliburton went from paying $302 million in company taxes in 1998 to getting an $85 million tax refund in 1999.
• Cheney resigned as CEO of Halliburton on July 25, 2000 and put all of his corporate shares into a blind trust. These "blind trusts" are commonly used by politicians to supposedly eliminate conflicts of interest when they direct government funds to the private sector. However, lawyer Kenneth Gross, an expert on congressional ethics who has helped establish trusts for elected officials, opines that such trusts are "merely cosmetic" and states: "I don't know that you can realistically blind" trusts when "you know what's in there" at the start. This same topic is now haunting Sen. Bill Frist. (source)
• After testimony from observers and KBR employees of misconduct and overbilling, Halliburton lost its exclusive contracts in Iraq. (source) However, questions about Dick Cheney's conflicts of interest with Hallibuton and his decisions and duties as Vice-President remain.

In the end, the question remains: Do you want your government officials to be making decisions on national security and welfare, especially when those decisions involve getting American soldiers killed, when their friends and former companies profit from those decisions?