HALLIBURTON/OIL B.S.

-Halliburton B.S.
Factcheck.org had this to say in regard to corporate corruption: “The Bush administration is doing a fair amount to fight corporate corruption, convicting or indicting executives of Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco International, Worldcom, Adelphia Communications Corporation, Credit Suisse First Boston, HealthSouth Corporation and others, including Martha Stewart. The Department of Justice says it has brought charges against 20 executives of Enron alone, and its Corporate Fraud Task Force says it has won convictions of more than 250 persons to date. Bush also signed the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in 2002, imposing stringent new accounting rules in the wake of the Arthur Andersen scandal."

As for Halliburton getting non-bid contracts: “It is false to imply that Bush personally awarded a contract to Halliburton. The ‘no-bid contract’ in question is actually an extension of an earlier contract to support U.S. troops overseas that Halliburton won under open bidding. In fact, the notion that Halliburton benefited from any cronyism has been poo-poohed by a Harvard University professor, Steven Kelman, who was administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Clinton administration. ‘One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded...who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd,’ Kelman wrote in the Washington Post last November.” [emphasis mine]

Translation: Halliburton became a long-time federal contractor, under the Clinton administration, where they won the contract in a bidding process! Translation of translation: President Clinton hired CEO Cheney of Halliburton to be the government’s contractor before George W. Bush became president. Before Cheney became their CEO. Cheney became Halliburton’s CEO in 1995. Halliburton began working with the government in 1992.

I really think that if the Democrats want to focus their energies on a financial scandal, they should focus on the United Nations’ Food for Oil mega-scandal. The only way for real attention to be given to that UN problem is, apparently, to have Saddam Hussein run for President of Iraq this January.

OIL?
Is the war all about OIL??? The U.S. is trying to end the crisis in Darfur, but they were blocked by the Chinese and the Pakistanis. They have major Sudanese oil deals, and they accuse bush of going into Iraq for oil. Bush liberated Afghanistan and Iraq, is working on Sudan, facing resistance most of the way. Is it all about oil? $200 billion spent to get less than that in oil? It simply defeats logic. 50,000 black Africans have been massacred by pro-government Janjaweed Arab militas. The U.S. is trying to prevent another Rwanda, where 800,000 were slaughtered, a million under Saddam… Those who unnecessarily died because of inaction at the hands of the UN effectively dips their own hands in the blood of those millions dead. Meanwhile, America is paying half a billion dollars to save the people of Darfur, 70% of the world’s contribution, to rebuild the south of Sudan. Already, tribal leaders are showering thanks to America in form of tribal sacrifices of cattle for the rebuilding of a crucial dam, a bridge, roads and so on.. At least Halliburton isn’t the contractor of those projects. (or are they?!)

[+/-] show/hide this post