Cheney And Halliburton Senator Frank

Cheney and Halliburton

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) “said public records show that Cheney, former chief executive officer of Halliburton, collected $367,000 in deferred salary from the company in 2001 and 2002, and is scheduled to receive sizable payments this year and in 2004 and 2005. In addition, the New Jersey Democrat said Cheney’s financial disclosure statement shows he continued to hold 433,000 unexercised Halliburton stock options at the end of 2002, which are potentially worth millions of dollars. A spokeswoman for Cheney said he had placed those options in a charitable trust.” (- New Jersey Star-Ledger)

The way it has worked in Iraq is apparently that Halliburton was given lots of contracts last spring without there being a competitive bidding process. Once it came in and began doing the work, it had “experience” in Iraq. Subsequent contracts are required to go to firms with greater “experience”, which only Halliburton has. So, most other large contractors have given up even trying for those contracts. I had earlier questioned as to whether all those contracting decisions were made in Washington or some were influenced by the CPA in Baghdad. I am now reliably informed that in fact the Army Corps of Engineers and US AID are the decision-making bodies for contract awards, and Mssrs. Garner and Bremer have no role there. [9/17/03, 8:00 pm]

The Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute) has launched an Iraq Revenue Watch. See

http://www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/. Should be juicy.

For corruption (i.e. letting MCI Worldcom into the Iraqi telecom market at a time when it is under indictment while excluding the excellent local telecom company BATELCO because it is 40% government owned) see:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/

news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e

=13&u=/030821/7/51gg9.html

I cannot be sure of the truth of the below, from an Iraqi Blog, but it is worth knowing more about:

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

2003_08_01_riverbendblog_archive.html

#106208201838841818

“One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad –

we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and

building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a

bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel

structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the

CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New

Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together,

they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive,

but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses

(mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and

girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000.

This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq),

labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working

with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing

at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s

pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times

the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000.

Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American

company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the

bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000!!”