Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, has been charged with widespread accounting fraud during at least two of the years Cheney was at the helm- here is the article from today's Times:

Ken Lay for Veep in '08!

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Meatwad get the honeys, see.

I have trouble believing he was appointed to that position because of any business savvy.

Best of my knowledge, he had never been in business before.

Secretary of Defense goes to a major defense contractor. Whee. What revolving door.

But the Dems are just as bad.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

The beat goes on:

- Bechtel, the privately owned contractor with the big Iraq contracts (no-bid) and whose owners are prime supporters of President Bush, was paid to repair the backup water system in Baghdad. It never did it. Now, the Army Corps of Engineers has had to repair the facility. So, U.S. taxpayers have paid twice and the faciility is still not up and running.


and:

- WASHINGTON - At least $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority there cannot be accounted for, according to a draft U.S. audit set for release soon.

The audit by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s own inspector general blasts the CPA for “not providing adequate stewardship” of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq that was given to Iraqi ministries.

The audit was first reported on a Web site earlier this month by David Hackworth, a journalist and retired colonel. A U.S. official confirmed that the contents of the leaked audit cited by Hackworth were accurate.

The development fund is made up of proceeds from Iraqi oil sales, frozen assets from foreign governments and surplus from the U.N. oil for food program. Its handling has already come under fire in a U.N.-mandated audit released last month.

Ghost workers
Among the draft audit’s findings were that payrolls in Iraqi ministries under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority were padded with thousands of ghost employees.

In one example, the audit said the CPA paid for 74,000 guards even though the actual number could not be validated. In another, 8,206 guards were listed on a payroll but only 603 people doing the work could be counted.

Three Democratic senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota — demanded an explanation from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the use of the funds by the CPA, which handed over authority to the Iraqis in June.

“The CPA apparently transferred this staggering sum of money with no written rules or guidelines for ensuring adequate managerial, financial or contractual controls over the funds,” said the letter sent by the senators on Thursday.

‘Serious questions’
“Such enormous discrepancies raise very serious questions about potential fraud, waste and abuse,” said the senators.

A spokesman for the CPA inspector general’s office confirmed “field work” had been completed on the audit but declined to give specifics. He said auditors were awaiting comment from the Pentagon before releasing the final report, probably later this month.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions.

An international audit report released last month that was requested by a U.N.-mandated monitoring body chided the CPA for oversight of spending of Iraq’s oil revenue.

- While the International Advisory and Monitoring Board said the audit found no evidence of fraud in spending by the CPA after the U.S. invasion in March 2003, it said oversight was insufficient to ensure money was used for its intended purposes.

One of the main benefactors of the Iraq funds was the Texas-based firm Halliburton, which was paid more than $1 billion out of those funds to bring in fuel for Iraqi civilians.

The monitoring board said despite repeated requests it had not been given access to U.S. audits of contracts held by Halliburton, which was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, and other firms that used the development funds.

Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

What gets me is that all this evidence of widespread corporate corruption under Cheney, and W himself is emerging, yet our nation is fixated now on the whole SWIFT BOAT thing.

AND George W. Bush didn't even show up for his National Guard physical, much the less serve in active combat duty in Vietnam!

Shame on you Mr. Bush!

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Peace,

John

My Librarything

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. . . .

$8 billion misplaced. Oops.

Think how many schools, clinics, etc. that would build.

Hell, with that money, you could even get rid of the city wage tax.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

The swift boat thing is annoying me too, we are criticizing a guy that volunteered to be there when his opponent never went. There is no comparison.

As for the halliburton thing, it is just weird...after learning about the ties of the carlyle group and Bush sr's involvement, Bakers involbvement and the rest of the gang, doesn't it seem like Sr. Just may have some influence over JR?

It stinks that Kerry is the candidate, because I (along with a lot of others) don't like him much either, but he's better than what we've got. A half decent candidate could destroy bush, but we don't really have that.

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It was Kerry, not Bush, who made his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign. (One wonders what else he's running on, in fact.) This despite the fact that his four months in Vietnam have always been controversial in the extreme. As such, it's perfectly fair to look at it, and at the Winter Soldier hearings afterwards (where the real damage is).

This is entirely a self-inflicted problem of Kerry's. A smart man would've let all this get out earlier in the year, during that time when he was the presumptive nominee (but before the convention). That would have defused the issue. The fumbling and bumbling of the Kerry campaign in response to this now has been shocking to me, truthfully, suggesting that they were relying completely on a sympathetic media to keep this out of the headlines.

Dumb.

tmcgee

It was Kerry, not Bush, who made his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign. (One wonders what else he's running on, in fact.) This despite the fact that his four months in Vietnam have always been controversial in the extreme. As such, it's perfectly fair to look at it, and at the Winter Soldier hearings afterwards (where the real damage is).

This is entirely a self-inflicted problem of Kerry's. A smart man would've let all this get out earlier in the year, during that time when he was the presumptive nominee (but before the convention). That would have defused the issue. The fumbling and bumbling of the Kerry campaign in response to this now has been shocking to me, truthfully, suggesting that they were relying completely on a sympathetic media to keep this out of the headlines.

Dumb.

tmcgee