Bill Clinton and Halliburton

How Clinton Gore Employed Halliburton



-An excerpt from Byron York's July 9, 2003 Column"
"Halliburton: The Bush/Iraq Scandal That Wasn't"

(Democrat California Congressman Henry) Waxman objects to what he calls Halliburton's "troubling" performance record, suggesting that Halliburton would not have gotten the contract had Vice President Cheney not once headed the company. But Waxman's charges — and their echoes in outraged editorials — overlook Halliburton's extensive history of defense work for earlier administrations. Indeed, far from having a "troubling" past, one could argue that Halliburton was a favorite contractor of the Clinton Pentagon.

The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992, as the first Bush administration (including then-Secretary of Defense Cheney) was leaving office. Four companies competed, and the winner was Brown & Root, as it was known at the time (Halliburton changed the name to Kellogg Brown & Root after an acquisition in 1998). The multi-year contract was in effect during much of the Clinton administration. During those years, Brown & Root did extensive work for the Army under the LOGCAP contract in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia; contract workers built base camps and provided troops with electrical power, food, and other necessities.

In 1997, when LOGCAP was again put up for bid, Halliburton/Brown & Root lost the competition to another contractor, Dyncorp. But the Clinton Defense Department, rather than switch from Halliburton to Dyncorp, elected to award a separate, sole-source contract to Halliburton/Brown & Root to continue its work in the Balkans. According to a later GAO study, the Army made the choice because 1) Brown & Root had already acquired extensive knowledge of how to work in the area; 2) the company "had demonstrated the ability to support the operation"; and 3) changing contractors would have been costly. The Army's sole-source Bosnia contract with Brown & Root lasted until 1999. At that time, the Clinton Defense Department conducted full-scale competitive bidding for a new contract. The winner was . . . Halliburton/Brown & Root. The company continued its work in Bosnia uninterrupted.

That work received favorable notices throughout the Clinton administration. For example, Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review mentioned Halliburton's performance in its Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense, issued in September 1996. In a section titled "Outsourcing of Logistics Allows Combat Troops to Stick to Basics," Gore's reinventing-government team favorably mentioned LOGCAP, the cost-plus-award system, and Brown & Root, which the report said provided "basic life support services — food, water, sanitation, shelter, and laundry; and the full realm of logistics services — transportation, electrical, hazardous materials collection and disposal, fuel delivery, airfield and seaport operations, and road maintenance."

In 2001, after the Bush administration came into office, the giant LOGCAP contract expired again and another competition was held. Once again, Halliburton won the contract, and it was under that arrangement that the Iraqi-oilfield analysis was done. As the record shows, Halliburton won big government contracts under the Clinton administration, and it won big government contracts under the Bush administration. The only difference between the two is that Henry Waxman is making allegations of favoritism in the Bush administration, while he appeared untroubled by the issue during the Clinton years.

 

Yes! OK! We know Clinton & Gore were crooked. Of course they were!...but look who's rectally penetrating us RIGHT NOW, and erasing the fourth amendment. Clinton/Gore are not threatening you anymore- Bush's Neo-GOP are the ones now raping us. Focus.

 

Why don't we just admit this. That those with money and power will always be raping us. They have for the last two thousand years and they will for the next two thousand years. Can we just end this fairy tale now that things will suddenly be different?

 

Because the DEGREE of how much they rape us is vastly adjustable.

 

Ok, well in that case if you want to measure rape on a relative basis, if you compare the power the rich have over us today vs the power the rich had over us two thousand years ago it's not even close. We are treated like kings today compared to the rich of yesterday. You should be so lucky to be alive today.

 

Reardon's one of those rich guy's.

 

And so is MR. MARKET
And don't you forget it!

 

Yes, that's exactly my point. We DO have the potential to make government alot better than it has been in the past. There is also the potential for the U.S.A. to regress into a fascist hellhole. This is what I'm trying to prevent.

As to my wealth...I only have enough for power over my own life, not enough money to give me power over the masses. I believe the latter is the type of rich people to which Mav was referring.

 

Patriots and Profits

By PAUL KRUGMAN - NY Times

Published: December 16, 2003


Last week there were major news stories about possible profiteering by Halliburton and other American contractors in Iraq. These stories have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture. But the questions remain. In fact, the more you look into this issue, the more you worry that we have entered a new era of excess for the military-industrial complex.

The story about Halliburton's strangely expensive gasoline imports into Iraq gets curiouser and curiouser. High-priced gasoline was purchased from a supplier whose name is unfamiliar to industry experts, but that appears to be run by a prominent Kuwaiti family (no doubt still grateful for the 1991 liberation). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents seen by The Wall Street Journal refer to "political pressures" from Kuwait's government and the U.S. embassy in Kuwait to deal only with that firm. I wonder where that trail leads.

Meanwhile, NBC News has obtained Pentagon inspection reports of unsanitary conditions at mess halls run by Halliburton in Iraq: "Blood all over the floors of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meat and vegetables." An October report complains that Halliburton had promised to fix the problem but didn't.

And more detail has been emerging about Bechtel's much-touted school repairs. Again, a Pentagon report found "horrible" work: dangerous debris left in playground areas, sloppy paint jobs and broken toilets.

Are these isolated bad examples, or part of a pattern? It's impossible to be sure without a broad, scrupulously independent investigation. Yet such an inquiry is hard to imagine in the current political environment — which is precisely why one can't help suspecting the worst.

Let's be clear: worries about profiteering aren't a left-right issue. Conservatives have long warned that regulatory agencies tend to be "captured" by the industries they regulate; the same must be true of agencies that hand out contracts. Halliburton, Bechtel and other major contractors in Iraq have invested heavily in political influence, not just through campaign contributions, but by enriching people they believe might be helpful. Dick Cheney is part of a long if not exactly proud tradition: Brown & Root, which later became the Halliburton subsidiary doing those dubious deals in Iraq, profited handsomely from its early support of a young politician named Lyndon Johnson.

So is there any reason to think that things are worse now? Yes.

The biggest curb on profiteering in government contracts is the threat of exposure: sunshine is the best disinfectant. Yet it's hard to think of a time when U.S. government dealings have been less subject to scrutiny.

First of all, we have one-party rule — and it's a highly disciplined, follow-your-orders party. There are members of Congress eager and willing to take on the profiteers, but they don't have the power to issue subpoenas.

And getting information without subpoena power has become much harder because, as a new report in U.S. News & World Report puts it, the Bush administration has "dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government." Since 9/11, the administration has invoked national security to justify this secrecy, but it actually began the day President Bush took office.

To top it all off, after 9/11 the U.S. media — which eagerly played up the merest hint of scandal during the Clinton years — became highly protective of the majesty of the office. As the stories I've cited indicate, they have become more searching lately. But even now, compare British and U.S. coverage of the Neil Bush saga.

The point is that we've had an environment in which officials inclined to do favors for their business friends, and contractors inclined to pad their bills or do shoddy work, didn't have to worry much about being exposed. Human nature being what it is, then, the odds are that the troubling stories that have come to light aren't isolated examples.

Some Americans still seem to feel that even suggesting the possibility of profiteering is somehow unpatriotic. They should learn the story of Harry Truman, a congressman who rose to prominence during World War II by leading a campaign against profiteering. Truman believed, correctly, that he was serving his country.

On the strength of that record, Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman as his vice president. George Bush, of course, chose Dick Cheney.

 

why dont we outsource the rebuilding to India - apparently they have highly educated people that will work at dirt cheap prices