posted May 08, 2003 at 4:37 p.m. MDTI guess American business are going to show mid-east crooks how to do it right!
Cheney's old firm handed lucrative oilfield contract [Times Online] - "Halliburton, which was headed by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, for five years until 2000, was handed a much larger role in post-war Iraq than previously believed. Its emergency contract, which it won from the US Government without having to bid against any rivals, was initially described as for fighting fires at Iraq’s oil wells. But it emerged yesterday that the firm has also been charged with operating pumps and distributing oil, a much more direct, lucrative and politically sensitive role.
Henry Waxman, a Democrat congressman from California, raised the details of Halliburton’s contract after receiving a letter from the US Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded the contract. The Corps wrote to Mr Waxman saying the contract included extinguishing fires and the “operation of facilities and distribution of products”. [emph added]
Mr Waxman stopped short of accusing the Corps of deliberately misleading anyone when the original contract was announced, but he said: “I am concerned that the Administration’s reluctance to provide complete information about this and other Iraqi contracts has denied Congress and the public important information.”
He said that the revelations were at odds with Mr Bush’s assertion that Iraq’s oil belonged to the Iraqi people. “Only now, over five weeks after the contract was first disclosed, are members of Congress and the public learning that Halliburton may be asked to pump and distribute Iraqi oil under the contract.”
[...]
Mr Waxman also disclosed that Halliburton had done business in Iran, Iraq and Libya for years, despite US embargoes. The dealings “appear to have continued during the period 1995 and 2000, when Vice-President Cheney headed the company”, Mr Waxman wrote in a letter to Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary."
