Indulge me for a moment, wouldya?
Let’s mull over a few related facts and see where it takes us.
Fact #1: With the possible exception of George W. Bush, no one in the world is more responsible for launching the war in Iraq than is Dick Cheney.
Fact #2: Mr. Cheney still retains a substantial financial interest in Halliburton, the corporation he used to head as CEO.
Fact #3: Mr. Cheney knows that he still possesses that financial interest (this is not a blind trust arrangement).
Fact #4: Halliburton has received multi-tens-of-billion dollar contracts to provide services in the post-Iraq war occupation.
Fact #5: Halliburton received these contracts without having to competitively bid for them.
Fact #6: The Department of Defense received instructions from the Vice President’s office to arrange these highly lucrative contracts, and to do so on these highly unusual terms.
Fact #7: Halliburton subsidiary KBR charged the government a record-breaking 55 percent overhead on its contracts.
Fact #8: KBR hid its schemes by marking the entirety of all information it gave to the government as "proprietary", taking advantage of a contract provision meant to protect companies from unfair competitor advantage, and instead used it to block oversight and investigation.
Fact #9: A (Republican) auditor who uncovered Halliburton fraud in Iraq had his position and office terminated by a clause slipped overnight into war funding legislation passed by the GOP Congress and signed by George Bush.
Fact #10: A Halliburton employee was fired for informing her managers that the company was fraudulently overcharging the American government in billing against its contracts.
Fact #11: Abundant evidence exists suggesting that Halliburton is guilty of myriad contracting crimes in Iraq.
Fact #12: In 2005 the GOP controlled Senate blocked the establishment of a special committee to investigate Iraq war contracting irregularities. Every single Republican senator except Lincoln Chafee and one other who missed the vote – 53 in all – voted against investigating these crimes, despite the party’s endless claims of impassioned concern for both the taxpayers and the troops.
Fact #13: Halliburton, now headquartered in Dubai, continues to make tens of billions of dollars from the Iraq war.
Fact #14: Therefore, so does Dick Cheney, chief driving force behind the Iraq war.
