Kerry says Vice President Cheney profited from Iraq war

[Donger]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - John Kerry (news - web sites)'s Democratic election campaign accused Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) of making money from the Iraq (news - web sites) war through his links to the Halliburton company, in a new television advertisement.

The spot, which will be shown in states where Kerry is in the tightest race with President George W. Bush (news - web sites), shows Cheney saying in 2003: "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years."

Cheney gave up his job running the Texas-based oil services and general contracting giant to join the Bush campaign in 2000. But since saying he had no links to Halliburton, Cheney has admitted he was still receiving pension payments.

Kerry's advert goes on: "The truth: As vice president, Dick Cheney, received two million dollars from Halliburton. Halliburton got billions in no bid contracts in Iraq.

"Dick Cheney got two million dollars. What did we get? A 200 billion dollar bill for Iraq."

The Kerry campaign has launched a series of aggressive new television adverts since Bush pulled ahead in opinion poll ratings during September.

[Mr. Kotter]

And his "proof" of this would be???

[KCTitus]

I've a question...this may be a wee bit basic, but, was Cheney going to receive the pension payments regardless of whether or no Halliburton got the govt contracts?

[Cochise]

I didn't think it was possible for a candidate to ever look this desperate.

[FringeNC]

wow. Hard-left turn. Time to shore up the base.

[Mr. Kotter]

Originally Posted by KCTitus

I've a question...this may be a wee bit basic, but, was Cheney going to receive the pension payments regardless of whether or no Halliburton got the govt contracts?

Don't confuse the issue with FACTS!

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by KCTitus

I've a question...this may be a wee bit basic, but, was Cheney going to receive the pension payments regardless of whether or no Halliburton got the govt contracts?

Yeah. This is a stupid spin by Kerry and easily dismissed. He'd be much better off just trying to say that Halliburton got a sweetheart, no-bid from the US because of their insider ties. Of course, people have been saying that for a while and no one really seems to care. It's like he's trying to shine a flashlight on the stage from a different angle, hoping that this time people will want to look. Unfortunately, the public ain't even watching this particular puppet show.

[Donger]

Unless I'm mistaken, Cheney is receiving deferred compensation that has no linkage whatsoever to how profitable Halliburton is.

In other words, this is BS.

Cheney's response should interesting.

[alpha_omega]

Pension...you gotta be f**king kidding me!

[Donger]

Originally Posted by NewChief

Yeah. This is a stupid spin by Kerry and easily dismissed. He'd be much better off just trying to say that Halliburton got a sweetheart, no-bid from the US because of their insider ties. Of course, people have been saying that for a while and no one really seems to care. It's like he's trying to shine a flashlight on the stage from a different angle, hoping that this time people will want to look. Unfortunately, the public ain't even watching this particular puppet show.

As journalist Byron York has reported, it's not really true that the company got its work without competitive bidding. In the 1990s, the military looked for ways to get outside help handling the logistics associated with foreign interventions. It came up with the U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP. The program is a multiyear contract for a corporation to be on call to provide whatever services might be needed quickly.

Halliburton won a competitive bidding process for LOGCAP in 2001. So it was natural to turn to it (actually, to its wholly owned subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root) for prewar planning about handling oil fires in Iraq. "To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement that Kellogg Brown & Root was already under a competitively awarded contract to perform would have been a wasteful duplication of effort," the Army Corps of Engineers commander has written.

Then, in February 2003, the Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton a temporary no-bid contract to implement its classified oil-fire plan. The thinking was it would be absurd to undertake the drawn-out contracting process on the verge of war. If the administration had done that and there had been catastrophic fires, it would now be considered evidence of insufficient postwar planning. And Halliburton was an obvious choice, since it put out 350 oil-well fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.

The Clinton administration made the same calculation in its own dealings with Halliburton. The company had won the LOGCAP in 1992, then lost it in 1997. The Clinton administration nonetheless awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton to continue its work in the Balkans supporting the U.S. peacekeeping mission there because it made little sense to change midstream. According to Byron York, Al Gore's reinventing-government panel even singled out Halliburton for praise for its military logistics work.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by NewChief

Yeah. This is a stupid spin by Kerry and easily dismissed. He'd be much better off just trying to say that Halliburton got a sweetheart, no-bid from the US because of their insider ties. Of course, people have been saying that for a while and no one really seems to care. It's like he's trying to shine a flashlight on the stage from a different angle, hoping that this time people will want to look. Unfortunately, the public ain't even watching this particular puppet show.

A little additional education appears in order...

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=201

[KCTitus]

Originally Posted by Donger

...Al Gore's reinventing-government panel even singled out Halliburton for praise for its military logistics work.

As if this story didnt have enough traction, this is just a square off straight kick in the nuts...

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by Donger

A little additional education appears in order...

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=201

Hrrrm, yeah. But hasn't Halliburton now been "suspended"?

If so, this is what it says about that from factcheck:

In the technical language of federal contracting, cutting off a contractor is known as "debarment" or "suspension." Both require due process, and are not supposed to be undertaken lightly.Under federal regulations, a contractor may be debarred from bidding for federal contracts for up to three years if convicted of such serious offenses as violating antitrust statutes, embezzlement, theft, forgery, bribery, falsification or destruction of records, making false statements, tax evasion, or receiving stolen property, or "commission of any other offense indicating a lack of business integrity or business honesty." Even suspending a contractor temporarily is deemed a serious matter "to be imposed on the basis of adequate evidence."

[Donger]

Originally Posted by NewChief

Hrrrm, yeah. But hasn't Halliburton now been "suspended"?

If so, this is what it says about that from factcheck:

Not that I'm aware of.

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by Donger

Not that I'm aware of.

Okay. I thought I'd heard something about that recently on the news. I'll have to check into it and see if I can find a link. Gotta get some work done now, though. Lunch break is over.