Posted on 10/30/2006 3:50:01 PM PST by PhilipFreneau
NBC Nightly News just did a hit piece on Halliburton, alleging accounting discrepancies. There is absolutely no proof -- only allegations.
But this is one week from the election, and NBC is in lockstep with the DNC to do everything possible to help the Democrat party takes over. A hit piece on Dick Cheney's old company was in order.
Note that NBC has yet to point out that Halliburton was the Clinton Administration's company-of-choice for war reconstruction efforts. When Halliburton was underbid on a contract, Clinton stepped-in and awarded a contract to Halliburton anyway. And Al Gore gave Halliburton an award for its outstanding service in war reconstruction efforts. Of course, that was before Dick Cheney became the Vice President.
Ping for usual insidious NBC tripe.
"But this is one week from the election, and NBC is in lockstep with the DNC..."
They aren't the only ones. CNN, ABC, CBS, AP and MSNBC are all in overt DNC spin mode. They aren't even trying to hide it anymore.
This week is really, really going to be ugly.
Did anyone see ABC Nightly News Sunday night? It was almost like it was a GOP broadcast. Unbelievable how they came out and said that most Hollywood elites and entertainers back the democrats. Then they ran a touching piece on an Army widow of an Iraq casualty who ran a marathon and stood by our military in Iraq. Then they ran a piece on the Michael Fox ad and did not show bias to either side. I really don't expect this to continue but it was nice to see, if for only one night.
Payback for Lynn Cheney standing up to Wolff Blitzer on CNN.
She demolished him BTW. Great clip of that putdown on youtube.
Many years ago I was an overseas telephone operator and I can tell you that about half the U.S.-Vietnam phone traffic involved Brown Root business. (Brown Root became part of KBR, the subsidiary that Halliburton is soon to spin off.) So they had plenty of defense contracts back in the 1960's too, when LBJ was president. Maybe it's just that they do the work better than other companies.
I wish these ass-breaths would realize that Cheney has no more to do with Halliburton than retired Jack Welsh does with GE.
For the record, Byron York discussed the Clinton-Halliburton connection in a 2003 NRO article:
"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
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/york/york070903.asp
I misstated my "Al Gore" comments in my initial post. Gore did not give Halliburton an award, only praise. Byron explains Gore's praise(s) in the same article:
"[Halliburton's] 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.""
Michael Moore made more off of Iraq than Halliburton.
Every corporation has accounting discrepancies. It is not the business of the press to point this out. Corporations are the responsibility of the several States, and whatever international trade agreements may apply, which is FedGov's responsibility--all three branches.
>>>And you watch NBC Nightly News - why?<<<
"Keep your friends close; your enemies closer." - J.R.
The following is from the hit piece by Lisa Myers:
". . . Another report finding that less than half the budget for some reconstruction projects actually went to rebuild the country.
Where did most of it go? Some for security, but even more to house, feed and pay contractors while they did nothing for months. Some were in Iraq as long as nine months before significant work on projects began.
"This was a waste of money because the contractors were ordered to go to Iraq to work, but they weren't working," says Stewart Bowen, Iraq Reconstruction Special Inspector General.
Who's to blame? Investigators mostly blame the government's poor planning. But they also single out a Halliburton subsidiary — KBR.
In this 2004 letter obtained by NBC News, a U.S. official criticizes KBR for "accruing exhorbitant indirect costs at a rapid rate" and for failing to provide adequate cost information.
Government watchdogs now say Halliburton actually tried to hide data from auditors. "I believe that KBR was attempting to impede the scope of our oversight," Bowen says.
Halliburton denies doing anything improper and says it has restricted access to such data for years. But a U.S. official was sufficiently angry, that at one point, he threatened to cancel Halliburton's contract if it didn't provide information to justify costs."
I wonder if that was ordered by the folks at GE...
>>>Is this true?<<<
These were unsubstantiated allegations in an NBC report. Since NBC is part of the DNC Propaganda Machine, there is really no need to explain further. But I will anyway.
Note that Lisa quoted only one named source - Bowen - and she took his statement out of context by using unnamed "Investigators" in the next statement (which actually exonerates Halliburton), and a unnamed "U.S. Official" in the next, which alledges accounting irregularities. There is absolutely no proof cited in any allegation. In summary, this is little more than a Henry Waxman-style smear campaign by Lisa Meyers and NBC News a week before the general election.
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