Cheney’s Cronies

This editorial from The Nation advises Senator John Edwards to remember Harry Truman, who called war profiteering "treason" and those who condone "waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and profiteering" during a time of war "unpatriotic."

Halliburton has been experiencing a growth spurt ever since Cheney passed through the revolving door of Washington politics to set up the Administration he manages for George W. Bush. The Texas-based corporation moved to number one on the Army’s list of top contractors in 2003, pocketing 4.2 billion taxpayer dollars last year alone. It got one no-bid contract after discussions in which Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was involved. (Despite soaring revenues, however, the Halliburton unit doing work in Iraq is plagued by so many problems, from mismanagement to allegations of corruption, that it may be spun off to try to salvage what’s left of the parent company’s reputation.)

The VP

1) Cheny has a conflict of interest. He continues to receive money from Halliburton–$178,437 in 2003 alone.
2) A Congressional Research Service study has described the sort of deferred-salary payments he receives and the millions in stock options he retains as "among those benefits described by the Office of Government Ethics as ‘retained ties’ or ‘linkages’ to one’s former employer."
3) Cheney chaired the corrupt Energy Task Force and pressed Bush to make a second round of tax cuts for the rich, which then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill worried were unwise and unsound.
4) The editorial calls Cheney an "armchair warrior" who as a college student collected five draft deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam but who "entered the White House campaigning for war on Iraq and never let up. Since the September 11 attacks, and with increasing ferocity during the current campaign, Cheney has served as Bush’s scaremonger in chief–evoking images of thousands of Americans killed by terrorists with nuclear weapons and seeking to justify the invasion of Iraq by repeating thoroughly discredited claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime was working with Al Qaeda."

The article ends with a rhetorical question: "Which presidential team can be trusted to put the needs of Americans before their own interests and those of their friends? Cheney has made it clear where his loyalties lie."