Posted on 11/01/2005 6:49:04 PM PST by BoulderEnviro
And enjoy your stay. The concierge is at your disposal; yet please understand that the turndown service is by reserved request.
touche'
You might be right on this one... :)
Looks like she was taken off of the tit and weaned on a dill pickle.
Definitely. Fires in California, New Mexico and Colorado, too. What was the irony of those fires in the Southwest? Because the dead trees weren't cleared out - per the enviros, thousands of acres of - get this - Spotted Owl habitat were destroyed in the fires. Only the Northeast Dems - Kerry and Co. voted against the Bush forest bill a couple of years ago. No forest fires in Massachusetts!
OK I call BS, you are shilling for NYPost hits.
NB4ZOT
Oh goody. A two-fer. After you clowns have had your little fun, be certain to turn off the light.
>>>The only source of that expertise? What else but the Halliburton Co. of Houston, which Sen. Clinton has been accusing since early in the Iraq war of profiteering through no-bid government contracts.<<<
LOL. Check this out from David R. Guarino of the Boston Herald article titled, "Halliburton hypocrisy?: Teresa profited when VP was CEO":
"Teresa Heinz Kerry liked the Cheney-run Halliburton enough to buy and sell more than a $250,000 in company stock in 1996, netting a tidy profit of up to $15,000, records show. The Kerry family Halliburton investment is tucked in the Massachusetts senator's lengthy financial disclosure forms, reviewed by the Herald . . . The revelation comes as Kerry dispatched one of his top surrogates, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), to hammer Cheney and President Bush anew on Halliburton. "
You just can't trust those Kerry's to be honest. Anyway, Halliburton is a fine company with unique skills. So unique, in fact, that the company received no-bid contracts in the first Gulf War in Kuwait by GWH Bush, in the Balkans by Bill Clinton, and in Iraq by GW Bush. Actually it was a little more complex than that, as explained by this National Review report in 2003:
"The first U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (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." -- Byron York, NR White House Correspondent, July 9,
2003
For the record, Al Gore's "reinventing-government panel" singled out Halliburton, praising the company for its military logistics work in the Balkans.
Also, for the record, over 40 Halliburton employees have been killed in Iraq.
On April 21, 2003, Christopher Hitchens of MSNBC.com wrote:
"In front of me is a copy of the Arab Times, published in Kuwait City and picked up during my recent trip to the region. It gives a matter-of-fact account of the state of affairs in the Rumaila field, as of March 29. About 10 oil wells were ablaze, many fewer than had been feared. (A great number of bombs and charges had been laid, but either the local officers did not obey the order or the order never came or the fields were secured by British and American special forces too swiftly to allow the planned sabotage to occur.)
THE CORPORATE TRAIL At any rate, a burning well is a tough proposition and an uncapped well — permitting a wholesale discharge — an even tougher one. The situation was being handled by Boots and Coots, a fire-control company with an almost parodically American name, which is based in Houston. Boots and Coots, which also worked in Kurdistan and Kuwait after the much worse conflagrations of 1991, is subcontracted for the task by Kellogg, Brown, and Root (another name Harold Pinter might have coined for an American oil company), which is in turn a subdivision of Halliburton. And “Halliburton,” which admittedly sounds more British and toney than Boots and Coots, was once headed by — cue mood music of sinister corporate skyscraper as the camera pans up in the pretitle sequence — Vice President Dick Cheney.
Well, if that doesn’t give away the true motive for the war, I don’t know what does. But unless the anti-war forces believe Saddam’s fires should be allowed to burn out of control indefinitely, they must presumably have an idea of which outfit should have got the contract instead of Boots and Coots. I think we can be sure that the contract would not have gone to some windmill-power concern run by Naomi Klein or the anti-Starbucks Seattle coalition, in the hope of just blowing out the flames or of extinguishing them with Buddhist mantras. The number of companies able to deliver such expertise is very limited. The chief one is American and was personified for years by “Red” Adair — the movie version of his exploits (played by John Wayne himself!) was titled Hellfighters. The other main potential bidder, according to a recent letter in the London Times, is French. But would it not also be “blood for oil” to award the contract in that direction? After all, didn’t the French habitually put profits in Iraq ahead of human rights and human life? More to the point, don’t they still? "
In the July 12, 2004 Accuracy In Media article called, "The Attacks On Halliburton", Cliff Kincaid wrote:
"It was big news that Vice President Cheney used bad language to Senator Patrick Leahy. Cheney was angry about Leahy's relentless attacks on Cheney and his old firm, Halliburton, for alleged "war profiteering." Cheney was wrong to use such language. But the Halliburton critics are wrong, too.
Exploiting the controversy, an author named Dan Briody is out with a hatchet job on Halliburton. But during the end of a Federal City Club event featuring Briody and his new book, someone in the audience asked a question about Halliburton being an American company that generates jobs for Americans. Briody acknowledged that was the case and he went on to admit that Halliburton's main competitor is a French firm, Schlumberger.
So the French, who don't support America in Iraq and had sweetheart deals with Saddam Hussein, stand to benefit if Halliburton suffers. That's certainly newsworthy. But one searches almost in vain for references to this fact in the major media, or in Michael Moore's 9/11 movie, which also attacks Halliburton. The attacks are phony; there was no controversy when Halliburton performed similar services in the Balkans under President Clinton.
When the Democratic campaign for president got underway, far-left candidates such as Howard Dean started picking on Halliburton. Soon, John Kerry sounded the cry. Dave Lesar, chairman and CEO of Halliburton, has written, "In the 2004 campaign season, Halliburton apparently is no longer entitled to answer questions before being accused of mismanagement, profiteering or misuse of funds... The primary reason for the attacks on our integrity seems to be that the vice president of the United States used to hold my job.
While she has been critical of Halliburton, liberal columnist Molly Ivins notes that "Democrats are involved in similar dealings." She cites former [Clinton] CIA director John Deutsch, who serves on the board of Schlumberger. She failed to note that another board member of Schlumberger is Jamie Gorelick, deputy Attorney General under Clinton. She was accused by Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft of erecting the "wall" that kept U.S. intelligence agencies from cooperating to discover and prevent the 9/11 terrorist plot. Deutsch, who also served under Clinton, could have been prosecuted for mishandling classified information. But Clinton gave him a last minute pardon before he left office.
Halliburton today employs 100,000 people in 120 countries. In Iraq, in addition to helping to rebuild the country's oil infrastructure, it provides housing, meals, and other services for our troops. It has 24,000 employees in Iraq alone. But the political attacks on Halliburton make the company's employees targets as well. To date, 34 (now over 40) Halliburton employees have been killed because of the war. The liberals attacking Halliburton haven't issued any statements of regret over that. Why aren't they giving speeches demanding that the media show pictures of those caskets? We've got news for them—the enemy in Iraq isn't Halliburton. It's the terrorists killing Halliburton's American employees. We can understand Cheney's anger."
In the 7/20/04 column, "Animal House: Michael Moore Gives Truth the Old College Try", Andrew Stein wrote:
"Let us also use this opportunity to lay to waste the claims that the Iraq War was about oil and Halliburton. Fahrenheit 9/11 tiptoes around explicitly making such an assertion, but the suggestion is there. Moore outlines Cheney’s connection to Halliburton. He illustrates the money that will be made by Halliburton and he inserts interviews with people who feel that the Iraq war was about oil. Plainly put, this war was not about oil because it didn’t have to be. If the Bush Administration only cared about oil, all they needed to do was lift the sanctions that had been implemented on Iraq over a decade ago. Not a shot would have been fired, not a dollar would have been spent and not a single American life would have been lost. The only evidence I’ve seen pointing to a war for Halliburton is the fact that they won a no-bid contract. First let me make sure we all realize that for what Halliburton has been hired to do, they are the best in the world. The only company coming close is a French company and the United States is not in the business of rewarding countries that do not come to our aid in a time of war. Let me also pose a question. Did the fact that Clinton granted a no-bid contract to Halliburton after the Yugoslav war make that a war for Halliburton?"
READ THAT LAST LINE AGAIN!
"Clinton granted a NO-BID contract to Halliburton after the Yugoslav war make that a war for Halliburton?"
AND THIS!
The French are no longer the exclusive owners of Slumberger since it is now a publicly held corporation listed on the NYSE, along with Halliburton. But two former Clinton administration officials, Jamie Gorelick, and John Deutsch, serve on Halliburton's board.
Gorelick, who served on the 9/11 commission, established the "Gorelick Wall" in the 1990's that made it very difficult for the FBI and CIA to communicate with each other. (Gorelick should have never been on that commission -- she should have been testifying before it).
John Deutsch was the scandalous former CIA director who was pardoned by Clinton.
AND FINALLY THIS!
Halliburton is a publicly held corporation listed in the S&P 100 and S&P 500 indices. Therefore, many, if not most individuals who have 401k's own a portion of Halliburton. The fools who insinuate that Halliburton is Cheney's company are, well, fools.
Ok, I'm not the first to mention it.........
In before the zot?
Huh? What's your problem?
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