Halliburton and the Dick

During the 8 years that George W. Bush was US President, he took the full brunt of anti-American criticism – Bush did this, Bush said that, Bush’s policies.

But there was one man whom many considered to be more powerful than Bush, or “second to none”. This man was Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Like most vice-presidents, Cheney preferred to work behind the scenes. But it was his relations with the company Halliburton which really exposed the influence he had in the administration and arguably the Iraq War.

It was even a specific relationship on which Barack Obama mounted his campaign for change.

Halliburton and Iraq

Halliburton is a huge energy and logistics services company. It supplies services to oil and gas companies such as drilling and evaluating sites, and constructing the actual instillations. It also provides a number of services to the military through various companies it owns.

Halliburton has received over US$20 billion in revenue from US government contracts arising from the Iraq war. This is mainly through Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a company it owned until 2007.

The relationship between KBR and the US Army (Pentagon) has been dubious to say the least, with KBR reportedly being the single greatest beneficiary of the US wars since 2001.

KBR actually wrote an enormous $7 billion government contract themselves, and then was awarded it with no competitive bidding process. The excuse used was that only KBR had the expertise to do the job.

Scandal surrounded the performance of the contracts as well. In February 2005, the Pentagon agreed to pay KBR $1.8 billion in ‘questioned’ and ‘unsupported’ expenses, essentially imaginary work that nobody could prove took place.

Again in June 2005 they were accused of over-billing the government and taxpayers a further $1.4 billion.

Incidentally, last year KBR pleaded guilty to a decade-long practice of bribing officials in Nigeria for engineering and construction contracts worth over $6 billion. Their CEO was sentenced to 7 years in prison – the most ever under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

So what is the Dick Cheney link?

Dick Cheney was CEO and Chairman of Halliburton Corporation from 1995 until 2 months before becoming vice-president in 2001.

When he resigned in 2001, he immediately received $20 million from the company. He continued to receive a deferred salary of over US$150,000 a year while he was vice-president.

He also received 433,333 stock options valued at over US$18 million, though he has promised to give the proceeds of these to charity.

Assuming this is true, none of Cheney’s financial interest in the company was actually dependent on its performance. However, one would be naïve to think there wasn’t an implicit understanding that Halliburton would benefit from Cheney’s new position.

Indeed, could it be considered a coincidence that after providing Cheney with a retirement package of over $33 million after only 5 years as CEO (with no prior experience), Halliburton would be benefiting from such relaxed scrutiny over its billions worth of contract awards and billings in Iraq?

It certainly seems that after objectively looking at all the numbers and his relationship with Halliburton, Cheney probably had a secondary agenda behind the Iraq war.

Indeed, there is one particular incident which indicates he wanted to make sure the war went ahead.

The legality of the war in Iraq was dependent on United Nations weapons inspectors being allowed to freely roam the country and declare it free of weapons of mass destruction.

Just before war was declared in March 2003, UN Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix told America and Britain that he only needed a few more months in which to do this. Such an achievement would likely deem an invasion unnecessary.

According to Blix, Dick Cheney told him in a meeting prior to the war that the US administration would not hesitate to discredit him in favour of disarmament.

In other words, give us the results we want about there being WMDs, or we will label you as incompetent and go to war anyway.

In another incident a few years ago, former presidential candidate John McCain said during a filmed interview that he felt the activities of Halliburton bordered on corruption and there should be an investigation.

A few seconds later the phone rang in the interview room. It was Vice-President Cheney warning McCain not to discuss the matter of Halliburton.

According to the Centre for Public Integrity, it was the last time ‘Halliburton’ and ‘investigation’ were mention by a public official in the same sentence.

Bush himself is certainly not without fault during his eight-year reign. But it seemed he was often a front for the cause and someone to take the criticism.

Cheney deliberately stayed in the dark and away from the media (interestingly, something he has not done since leaving the White House). And although the system has been unable to judge his actions, history surely will.

By The Casual Truth

Photo – Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney