Dick
Cheney's old company, Halliburton, keeps getting
stuck in its own Iraqi sand pit -- and Cheney
and his sidekick George W are stuck there, too.
Halliburton,
which continues to pay about $150,000 a year
to its old CEO Cheney, was first in line to
get multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contracts from
the Bush-Cheney regime for occupying and rebuilding
Iraq. But don't think that any political favoritism
was involved. No, no, Bush officials say, it's
just that Dick's old company was the only one
in the whole wide world qualified to do the
job. Imagine, the only one.
And
what a job it has done! Take it's contract for
providing gasoline to Iraqis. An audit shows
that the Houston-based giant has already gouged
us taxpayers by as much as $61 million on this
no-bidder. It's been charging the Pentagon $2.64
a gallon to haul gasoline from nearby Kuwait.
Well, yes, say the Bushites, that's expensive,
but, hey, it's costly to deliver gas in a combat
zone.
Before
you swallow that, though, note that the Pentagon's
own energy support center delivers gasoline
from Kuwait to Iraqi pumps in exactly the same
war conditions for under a buck-twenty a gallon
-- less than half of Halliburton's charge. And
Iraqi's own state oil company does the same
job for under a dollar a gallon.
Caught
in Halliburton's web of deceit, George W is
now trying to get on the high road, declaring
that "If there's an overcharge... we expect
that money to be repaid." Repaid? What about
charging his and Cheney's no-bid cronies with
fraud?
But
here comes the real stinker: Halliburton's contract
from the Bushites actually gives the company
an incentive to overcharge us taxpayers. It
guarantees a profit to Halliburton of between
two and seven percent of its costs -- meaning
that the more cost it can put into each gallon,
the more profit Halliburton gets.
It's
a built-in gouge, brought to us by Bush and
Cheney, who like to claim that they're running
our government like a business.
"Evidence
Is Cited Of Overcharging In Iraq Contract, New
York Times, December 12, 2003. "High Payments
To Halliburton For Fuel in Iraq," New York Times,
December 10, 2003. "Bush: Halliburton Must Pay
for Overcharge," Austin American-Statesman,
Decmeber 14, 2003.
