Mr_Spinkles said:
What's the deal with Halliburton, anyway? I hear a lot of my liberal friends make accusations about Cheney and Bush being paid off by Halliburton....is there any evidence to back this up, or is this just wild speculation? Is the President currently under investigation for this? Have any newspapers uncovered a money trail?
A fair question, Spinkles. I'll take my best shot at it.
To my knowledge, Bush does not have any direct (or indirect) ties to Halliburton, although they may, in fact, exist. Whether he realizes any direct benefit from contracts awarded to Halliburton is beyond my knowledge at this time. That is not to say that Bush does NOT derive benefits from these contracts - those types of deals never see the light of day - but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
As for Dick Cheney - that is another matter. Prior to re-entering the federal government in his current capacity, Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, and owned a considerable amount of stock - how much stock, I don't know, but I'm sure you could look it up as a matter of public record if you chose to. Without doing the research, I would be willing to gamble that the stock owned by Cheney was not common stock, but probably preferred stock - as part of the "golden parachute" compensation package he received as CEO. At any rate, to preclude a potential conflict of interest, Cheney resigned as the CEO of Halliburton prior to taking his post in the Federal Government. This is fine, as far as it went. The problem is, he did not divest himself of his holdings in the company, but rather, he placed those (quite substantial) holdings in a blind trust - as if anyone would be naive enough to believe that within two weeks of completion of his duties for the government, he will not take the holdings back out of the blind trust and, VOILA!! they have now tripled or quadrupled in value!! Who could have seen that coming?
So, in direct answer to your direct question (is Cheney being paid off by Halliburton), the short answer is no, not at this time. The answer to the bigger question (will Cheney benefit monetarily from these huge Defense contracts that Halliburton is awarded) the answer is an
obscenely large YES. Yes, to the point of "profiteering" as some people have defined it over the course of history in our nation.
Back to Bush -
This is all speculation on my part, but I would be willing to guess that if someone dug into it, they would discover that Halliburton employs (or will employ) several people that are related to the Bush family (if they don't already sit on the Board of Directors at Halliburton). I would also be willing to guess that Halliburton does a fair amount of business with some companies owned by the extended Bush family - at some pretty extraordinary prices. Nothing wrong with any of that, mind you - just don't try to tell me that it is coincidental, as will be the timing of Cheney's retrieval of the holdings from the blind trust upon his leaving the federal government.
Thanks,
TVOR
