[quote]ZEB wrote:
Hey, guys he’s either the evil genius, or a buffoon. You can’t have it both ways. Wait…maybe you can, after all John Kerry takes every side of an issue so why not?
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To clarify: Bush is the bufoon, his Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld are evil!
I don’t care what any of y’all say. BostonBarrister is in the muthafuckin house! Thank you for clarifying the Halliburton thing for me, BB. I think the facts speak for themselves quite well. Halliburton is not getting paid by illegal or unethical means.
Bloods: It looks like it’s easier for you to call the administration stupid and evil than to just accept the fact that you were wrong about Halliburton. Hey, maybe they ARE stupid and evil, but at least the Halliburton-Cheney thing is on the up and up. Oh well. It’s not like there’s not a million other things y’all can criticize “Team Bush” for. Change clips! 
[quote]Lumpy wrote:
A Kerry ad implies Cheney has a financial interest in Halliburton and is profiting from the company’s contracts in Iraq. The fact is, Cheney doesn’t gain a penny from Halliburton’s contracts, and almost certainly won’t lose even if Halliburton goes bankrupt.
Oh, okay. Cheney probably feels no loyalty whatsoever to the company he ran for 5 years before becoming Vice President. Sure, I believe that!
On another note, while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, they illegally did business with Iran, Iraq and a third country (Syria I believe) that were all on the Watch List for being state sponsors of terrorism. These were Halliburton “subsidiary” companies who used a mailbox in the Caribbean as a way to skirt the law (as well as avoid paying taxes). The contracts with Iraq were worth 73 million dollars, for example.
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Sorry Lumpy,
But if they didn’t break the law, it wasn’t illegal. You can put quotes around “subsidiary” if you like, but the standard of the law was fully independent subsidiary, which means 1) Cheney wouldn’t have any control as CEO of the parent of whatever the subsidiary did and 2) most likely wouldn’t have had any knowledge of what the subsidiary did. Following the law isn’t abusing a loophole – it’s following the law.
Not really something one would want to argue in a debate, especially in a 30 second rebuttal, but that’s the reality of the situation.
RSU stated: “To clarify: Bush is the bufoon, his Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld are evil!”
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I know this time it’s regarding world leaders however, how many posts in a row now have you called someone a hateful name?
[quote]tme wrote:
Looks to me like the shareholders have done pretty ok over the last couple of years. Nothing whatsoever to do with Cheney or no-bid contracts, of course. Just good bidnes mens. Like dubya.
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So tme, the stock fell down almost 10 points from when Cheney was elected, and now has climbed almost back to where it was before he was elected, and the shareholders have done “pretty OK” - I don’t know, but negative returns on investment don’t generally make the investors I know too happy…
Good point BB, and it’s very likely that without the no-bid contract in Iraq HAL would still be in the toilet. Dick’s got them back almost to where him and his buddies can unload those options for a tidy profit.
[quote]tme wrote:
Good point BB, and it’s very likely that without the no-bid contract in Iraq HAL would still be in the toilet. Dick’s got them back almost to where him and his buddies can unload those options for a tidy profit.
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A) They wouldn’t have granted him “in the money” options – they would have been set at some value that would aquire appreciation for them to be worth anything. The stock is still trading below where it was when Cheney took office, so I’m going to hazard a guess that the options are underwater;
B) Read the above from Factcheck.org – Cheney doesn’t own the options, and won’t benefit from any rise in value, or be hurt by any loss. The options were assigned to an irrevocable trust, which means Cheney retains no ownership interest whatsoever. By tax rules, he doesn’t even get a bigger tax deduction if the value goes up, as the value of the completed gift is calculated as of the time the gift was completed, which, in this case, is the day they were put in the irrevocable trust.
double post
Good point Lumpster! It’s a huge inconsistency to say the very least…
Yeah, that is kinda hypocritical… But I was under the impression that Halliburton is one of the biggest “infrastructure” companies, you know, the guys who build/repair oil rigs, roads, etc. Am I wrong? If this is the case, then you have to admit that those kinds of business contracts are a different variety than the ones France, Russia, and Germany had for oil. If I remember correctly, those nations were helping Saddam circumvent a few UN resolutions by providing trade at above the “food for oil” levels that were agreed upon. I seriously doubt that Halliburton was aiding and abetting the Iraqi dictator in the way that France, Russia, and Germany was. Correct me if I’m mistaken.
Does anybody here realize how badly Halliburton reams the taxpayers?
The government contracts Halliburton to do troop support. Halliburton then turns around and subcontracts smaller companies and individuals to do the actual work, with a hefty markup for themselves.
Also the contracts are “cost-plus” meaning that the more Halliburton SPENDS, the more money they MAKE. There is no incentive to keep costs to taxpayers down, in fact the incentive is to make things as expensive as possible.
[quote]Lumpy wrote:
rainjack wrote:
I made an absurd point to counter an equal absurdity. If Halliburton was guilty of any illegalities, they would have been prosecuted. Does Enron ring a bell? If they are found to have broken the laws, then they should pay the price. [/quote]
Halliburton is currently under multiple investigations by the US Department of Justice.
Correction: the three country that Dick Cheney did business with while CEO of Halliburton, even though they are on the Watch List of countries that sponsor terrorism, are Iraq, Iran and Libya (I said the 3rd one was Syria… my bad)
BostonBarrister says that since technically Halliburton broke no laws, it’s okay that they used a mailbox in the Cayman Islands as a way to do business with rogue regimes that sponsor terrorism, even if these countries were under sanction and declared off-limits by the US government. Halliburton even had an office in Iran while Cheney was CEO. And Cheney spent his time as CEO calling for sanctions against Iran to be lifted.
After all, the main thing is making money, not prosecuting terrorism, right DICK?
LOL at Rainjack’s comment that Halliburtton’s contract with Iraq for 73 million dollars is peanuts. Okay, when are we talking about real money?
I gotta laugh at the folks who excuse Halliburton for doing deals with Iraq and Iran, but turn around and criticize France, Russia and Germany for having contracts with Saddam. Hypocrites?
edited for typos
Halliburton investigated by Congress over UN oil-for-food scandal
5 Oct. 2004
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - A national security subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives voted today to expand its investigation of the United Nations’ oil-for-food scandal to include the Bush administration and Halliburton.
The subcommittee, chaired by Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays, will subpoena documents on the management of oil revenues by the now-disbanded U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq from May 2003 through June 2004.
Rep. Shays’ subcommittee will also subpoena Pentagon audits on Iraqi reconstruction contracts, including the audits on Halliburton’s no-bid oil contracts that were financed through revenues obtained by the UN’s oil-for-food program during the period when Saddam Hussein governed Iraq.
Some of the funds obtained by Saddam Hussein via the UN’s oil-for-food program were used to finance Halliburton’s no-bid contracts after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Iraqi government in March 2003.
Former Halliburton employees have described multiple abuses of U.S. taxpayers’ money in Iraq, but a congressional investigation of Iraqi oil funds paid to U.S. contractors had not been proposed until today.
The subcommittee intends to subpoena the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for information on the management of Iraq’s oil revenues and to request that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provide audits on noncompetitive contracts.
So far, the Bush administration has admitted that U.S. companies bribed Saddam Hussein’s government in order to win business from the dictator. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, told Congress last April that U.S. companies had bribed Saddam Hussein’s government in exchange for government contracts during the 1990s. Sens. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Joseph Biden (D-DE) urged Negroponte to disclose the names of U.S. companies involved in the bribes, but he refused.
The congressional General Accounting Office estimated that Saddam’s regime acquired $10.1 billion illegally through the sale of $5.7 billion in oil smuggled to Syria, Turkey and Jordan, and $4.4 billion through kickbacks paid by firms selling food, medicine and other goods to Iraq. The illegal sales occurred between 1997 and 2002. Ironically, some of that money ultimately was paid to Halliburton to finance Iraq’s reconstruction after Saddam’s downfall.
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/oilforfood_halliburton.html
So maybe Cheney was involved in illegal stuff after all? Hmmm… Anyway, just because you’re being investigated for something doesn’t mean that you did it. Still kinda fishy, though.
I’m not trying to excuse Halliburton’s actions. If they are breaking the law, then they should pay. However, there is a difference between legal and ethical.
My problem with you Bush Haters out there is that you are not separating Cheney from Halliburton.
Prove Cheney is the criminal that you want him to be, and I’ll start a thread dedicated to apologizing to you.
Rainjack brings up an excellent point: Cheney does not equal Halliburton.
I think a lot of this stuff leads from ignorance as to how large corporations actually work. The CEO does not, and could not, know most details about operations. CEOs of big companies are big-picture agenda setters, overall strategy types – especially ones such as Dick Cheney who are brought in from the outside, generally for name-recognition value in the stock market, and in this case likely for contacts and name-recognition in government, as Halliburton does a lot of government contract work.
BTW, the above comment about ignorance isn’t meant to be condescending – I am ignorant when it comes to how the engine in my car works, but I would expect a mechanic to know; I wouldn’t expect a mechanic to know about the functions of executives at Fortune 1000 corporations. As you’ll see below, the folks at factcheck.org don’t quite understand either, but they’re academics (journalism students I believe), not corporate VPs or corporate lawyers.
Now, I know I linked to this on another thread, but I didn’t paste the text – sometimes I get the feeling no one reads anything if only the link is provided – so anyway, here’s what factcheck.org said about Edwards Halliburton crap – I will insert my own comments in [brackets] where appropriate:
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=272
Begin Halliburton excerpt:
Edwards was also slightly off when he said Halliburton paid millions in fines “while he (Cheney) was CEO.” What he meant was that it paid fines for matters that took place while Cheney was in charge. And in fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Aug. 3 that Halliburton will pay $7.5 million to settle a matter that dates back to 1998, when Cheney was CEO.
Halliburton failed to disclose a change in its accounting procedures that resulted in making its earnings look better. Cheney himself was not charged with any wrongdoing, however. The SEC said Cheney “provided sworn testimony and cooperated willingly and fully in the investigation.”
[Comment: Cheney was not an accountant. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to wade through corporate accounting docs, but I have – and then I gave up and asked a few questions of the accountants and trusted their judgment. If you want to try, just go to http://www.sec.gov and pick your favorite big company. Then go to the EDGAR system and pull up the most recent 10-K for that company, and read through the numbers in the back and the footnotes – this is where the accountants have distilled down the reams of accounting documents to what is supposed to be an understandable form. Tell me how understandable these summaries, written for investors to digest, are. Then tell me whether you think someone without an accounting background, whose job wasn’t to deal with the accounting issues, would have been wading through the background docs and applying his own judgment to second guess what the accountants told him. To the extent a corporate officer is responsible for accounting practices and whatnot, it is generally the CIO or a particular VP in charge of accounting.]
On other matters, Edwards said Halliburton “did business with Libya and Iran, two sworn enemies of the United States” and is now “under investigation for having bribed foreign officials” while Cheney was CEO.
*
Iran: Indeed, Halliburton has said it does about $30 million to $40 million in oilfield service business in Iran annually through a subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. The company says that the subsidiary fully complies with US sanctions laws, but the matter currently is under investigation by a federal grand jury in Houston.
[Point 1) As I stated above, the important part of the equation is that it is an independent subsidiary. It’s a legal point that I would not expect the folks at factcheck to pick up on. That means that Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, would have no decision-making power w/r/t the sub, and likely (there would be no reason for him to have any) not have any information on the details of their operations. If the subs contributed a huge amount to the company bottom line, he may have interested himself, but they were very small relatively speaking.
Point 2) Again related to what I said above, Cheney was not an operations guy. He didn’t have anything to contribute to operations – no experience in the industries. He, like many CEOs, was a big name and was a big picture guy.
Point 3) “Under investigation” means precisely that - come back to me if they find anything.]
* Bribery Investigation: U.S. and French authorities currently are investigating whether a joint venture whose partners included a Halliburton subsidiary paid bribes or kickbacks to win a $12 billion construction project in Nigeria.
[See Points 1-3 above, which apply equally here]
*
Libya: Edwards was wrong to include Libya, however. In 1995, before Cheney joined the company, Halliburton pled guilty to criminal charges that it violated the U.S. ban on exports to Libya and said it would pay $3.81 million in fines. Those violations dated back to 1987 and 1990.
As for the no-bid contracts, the practice of awarding no-bid contracts to Halliburton for reconstruction efforts in foreign war zones was begun under whom?
Clinton. The reason was that Halliburton was the only company capable of doing the work, according to the government office in charge of assessing such things.
Begin excerpt:
As journalist Byron York has reported, it’s not really true that the company got its work without competitive bidding. In the 1990s, the military looked for ways to get outside help handling the logistics associated with foreign interventions. It came up with the U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP. The program is a multiyear contract for a corporation to be on call to provide whatever services might be needed quickly.
Halliburton won a competitive bidding process for LOGCAP in 2001. So it was natural to turn to it (actually, to its wholly owned subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root) for prewar planning about handling oil fires in Iraq. “To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement that Kellogg Brown & Root was already under a competitively awarded contract to perform would have been a wasteful duplication of effort,” the Army Corps of Engineers commander has written.
Then, in February 2003, the Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton a temporary no-bid contract to implement its classified oil-fire plan. The thinking was it would be absurd to undertake the drawn-out contracting process on the verge of war. If the administration had done that and there had been catastrophic fires, it would now be considered evidence of insufficient postwar planning. And Halliburton was an obvious choice, since it put out 350 oil-well fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War.
The Clinton administration made the same calculation in its own dealings with Halliburton. The company had won the LOGCAP in 1992, then lost it in 1997. The Clinton administration nonetheless awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton to continue its work in the Balkans supporting the U.S. peacekeeping mission there because it made little sense to change midstream. According to Byron York, Al Gore’s reinventing-government panel even singled out Halliburton for praise for its military logistics work.
So, did Clinton and Gore involve the United States in the Balkans to benefit Halliburton? That charge makes as much sense as the one that Democrats are hurling at Bush now. Would that they directed more of their outrage at the people in Iraq who want to sabotage the country’s oil infrastructure, rather than at the U.S. corporation charged with helping repair it.
As to “costs-plus” contracts, I’ll return to my ignorance point above. Lumpy, you may know movies as you claim, but you don’t know contracts.
These types of contracts are exceedingly common. For instance, if a client comes to my firm and agrees that we will represent them for a transaction, they enter a costs-plus contract with us. They reimburse us for costs of supplies and services we need to do our job, such as copying, and pay our hourly fee on top of that. When you get your car fixed, you pay for parts and labor – this is “costs-plus” – it’s the cost of the parts, plus the fee for the labor services.
These are so exceedingly common, so utterly ubiquitous, that I cannot believe some ignorant journalist on some anti-Bush site actually tried to make an issue out of them.