Commentary ~ March 6, 2004:
Before Bush took the White House, the private sector had to conform
to a competitive, transparent process to secure contracts from the
White House. Now, all it takes is pre-arranged favors and a prefabricated
war. However, large contracts worth billions of dollars, secured
through connections to the Bush White House, apparently is not enough
for Vice President *Dick* Cheney's company, Halliburton. Once it
cashed in through the corrupt process, it proceeded to rape the
American taxpayer even further.
Is it any coincidence that Cheney is receiving $1 million a year
from Halliburton? The payments, which appear on Cheney's 2001 financial
disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation."
The long trail of corruption leading to Halliburton includes a
bribery scandal in Kuwait, and the inflated price of petrol imported
into Iraq that locals could purchase at half the price from any
corner gas station. That scandal has also engulfed the Kuwaiti oil
minister.
Then Halliburton charged American taxpayers for millions of meals
that were never actually served to soldiers. The company was recently
forced to announce it would temporarily halt all billing for all
meals fed to the troops in Iraq and Kuwait after admitting that
it had over-charged the Pentagon $34.5 million for catering.
Last month, two ex-Halliburton employees told Democratic congressmen
that Halliburton "routinely overcharged" for work it did
for the U.S. military. According to their testimony, examples of
wasteful spending ranged from leasing ordinary vehicles for $7,500
a month to seeking embroidered towels at a cost of $7.50 each when
ordinary ones would have cost about a third of the price.
American and French officials are also investigating whether a
consortium including Halliburton made questionable payments of $180
million in Nigeria, relating to a natural-gas project. These illegal
payments were made during a period in the late 1990s when Cheney
was chairman of the company. Elsewhere, the United States Treasury
Department is investigating the firm's involvement in Iran to see
if it has violated sanctions imposed by the United States.
Cheney was the original architect of the relationship between Halliburton
and the Pentagon. A report by the
Center for Public Integrity in Washington points out that when
Cheney was Defence Secretary under George Bush Sr. in 1992, he moved
aggressively to outsource military logistics in conflict zones to
that company. When Bush Sr. was kicked out of office, Cheney went
to work for Halliburton as its CEO.
Sources:
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