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> Auditors: Halliburton Overcharged Taxpayers $1 Billion

28 June 2005, 07:33

The Model for Bush Globalization
The Roots of the Bush-Cheney’s Oil Government
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Dick Cheney is evil. There is a bit of evil in most human beings, but in Cheney it is easy to spot, although most people don’t have the guts to say it.
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Bush Questioned Over Papers Leaked In UK
http://www.karlschwarz.com/articles.html

The evil Dick Cheney
by repost/Jackson Thoreau 8:31am Fri Jun 21 ’02 (Modified on 6:34pm Sun Jun 23 ’02)

Dick Cheney is evil. There is a bit of evil in most human beings, but in Cheney it is easy to spot, although most people don’t have the guts to say it.

I have mixed feelings about attempts to impeach Dubya Bush. Sure, I want to see this liar/thief/hypocrite exposed as the traitor he is and driven from office as Nixon was, never again to utter a simplistic "dead or alive" comment in public again.

But then, we’d be officially stuck with Dick Cheney as the main man in the White House, although many believe he already is. And that would be worse than having Bush in that position. My dream scenario would be a re-enactment of Watergate, where the vice president is forced to resign before the president follows suit. Add to that the resignation of Scalia, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, and I’d start believing that God does have more than a superficial effect on our political process. Thank you, Jesus, thank you, Lord.

Cheney’s list of sins is as long as any Republican’s transgressions. As CEO of Dallas-based Halliburton Co. from 1995 until 2000, Cheney did little about cleaning up asbestos in his buildings, leading to multimillion-dollar legal judgments against Halliburton. He presided over several rounds of job cuts, including about 11,000 workers in 1999, a year that Halliburton showed a $438 million profit. Since those layoffs, Halliburton’s profits rose to $501 million in 2000 and $809 million in 2001.

Halliburton also raked in big bucks from dubious deals with Iraq under Cheney’s tenure, according to the Washington Post and other sources. From 1997 through 2000, Cheney’s Halliburton sold $73 million worth of oil equipment and services to Iraq through subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. to help rebuild Iraq’s Gulf War-damaged infrastructure. That was more business than any other U.S. company, and Cheney later lied about his Iraqi connection to media types like Sam Donaldson. Talk about corporate hypocrisy. Companies like Halliburton could make big profits on such oil deals, but human rights groups could not ship life-saving medicine to Iraqi children because of UN sanctions. And now, Cheney the Major League Hypocrite is standing in line to nuke Hussein after he profited - big time - from Iraq. Halliburton also did business with dictatorships that have committed human rights abuses, such as in Burma, Libya and Iran. In fact, Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8 million for exporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions. Cheney did nothing to stop such fraud.

Brown & Root also had to pay a hefty fine after being accused of defrauding the U.S. military by submitting false claims for delivery orders between 1994 and 1998. Again, Cheney did nothing to stop such fraud. Halliburton was a corporate welfare hog under Cheney, obtaining at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans, according to the Center for Public Integrity. All the while, Cheney blasted welfare mothers.

Then there is Halliburton’s Enron-like accounting scheme under Cheney’s watch. The dishonest accounting policies, adopted in 1998, were obviously designed to make it appear that Halliburton had more revenues than the firm actually did. Specifically, Halliburton labeled unresolved claims against some clients as revenue, even though the money was still disputed, including $234 million in 2001 and $89 million in 1998. And who was Halliburton’s accountant? Andersen, of course- the same firm embroiled with Enron. Cheney was even featured in an Andersen video, saying "I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we’re doing business and how we’re operating - over and above just the sort of normal by-the-books auditing arrangement." Sounds like a confession to me. Even with such phony accounting, Halliburton’s stock nose-dived below $10 in early 2002 after being as high as $49 last year. The stock has since gone up slightly. The SEC is investigating, but do you really expect anything to come of that?

There is a wide trail of lies told by Cheney. There is the Iraqi connection, the Enron ties, the India deal, the so on and so on. Cheney also lied about not living in Texas as late as November 2000 in apparent violation of the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He didn’t sell his Dallas-area mansion to a major Republican donor until Nov. 30, 2000, according to deed records. I have been by that $2.7 million home several times since Cheney sold it and have never seen any evidence anyone occupying it. The owner, Dianne T. Cash, owns another million-dollar home in Highland Park, one of the wealthiest suburbs in the country. So, she needs two mansions in the same tiny suburb, huh? From Sept. 2000 until June 2001, Cash - an appropriate name for a Republican, right? - gave a whopping $229,433 to national Republican organizations, in addition to buying Cheney’s house, according to federal records. Interestingly, she also gave $1,000 to Democrat Bill Bradley in 1999 - her only contribution to a Democrat since then. Was that a ploy to foil Gore? Surely, this staunch Republican did not embrace Bradley’s proposals, which were more liberal than Gore’s.

Another lie concerns another basic piece of public information with a paper trail: Cheney’s Texas driver’s license. Dick’s license is still active but lists his address as 500 N. Akard Street in Dallas, which is where he worked at Halliburton, not his home on Euclid Avenue in Highland Park. Lynne Cheney’s driver’s license lists the same Akard address. Texas law requires residency addresses to be placed on licenses. Even someone as paranoid as billionaire H. Ross Perot - remember his weird reason for getting out of the 1992 presidential election because the Bush campaign supposedly planned to disrupt his daughter’s wedding? - has his home address, not work address, on his Texas driver’s license. Even Bush listed the Texas governor’s mansion - which was where he lived and goofed off, er, worked - on his license. Other high profile politicians - such as former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who is running as a Democrat for U.S. Senate, and his Republican challenger, Attorney General John Cornyn - list their home addresses, not work. Why were both Cheneys allowed to be above the law, once again?
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