Post by NateDid anyone else get a nice laugh out of this?
Naw, this is funnier:
Dec. 24, 2003 -- Current criticism over Halliburton's lucrative Iraq
contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy
involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.
Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its
work for the U.S. government in Vietnam -- allegations of overcharging,
sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering. Back then,
the company's close ties to President Johnson became a liability. Today --
as NPR's John Burnett reports in the last of a three-part series --
Halliburton seems to be distancing itself from its former chief executive
officer, Vice President Dick Cheney.
The story of Halliburton's ties to the White House dates back to the 1940s,
when a Texas firm called Brown & Root constructed a massive damn project
near Austin. The company's founders, Herman and George Brown, won the
contract to build Mansfield Dam thanks to the efforts of Johnson, who was
then a Texas congressman.
After Johnson took over the Oval Office, Brown & Root won contracts for huge
construction projects for the federal government. By the mid-1960s,
newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to
suggest that the company's good luck was tied to its sizable contributions
to Johnson's political campaign.
More questions were raised when a consortium of which Brown & Root was a
part won a $380 million contract to build airports, bases, hospitals and
other facilities for the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. By 1967, the General
Accounting Office had faulted the "Vietnam builders" -- as they were
known -- for massive accounting lapses and allowing thefts of materials.
Brown & Root also became a target for anti-war protesters: they called the
firm the embodiment of the "military-industrial complex" and denounced it
for building detention cells to hold Viet Cong prisoners in South Vietnam.
Today, Brown & Root is called Kellogg, Brown & Root -- a Halliburton
subsidiary better known as KBR.
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1569483.html
"I don't think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after 3 1/2
months," Blix said in his first public appearance since 134 U.N. inspectors
were evacuated from Iraq, effectively ending a 12-year effort to disarm Iraq
through inspections. "I would have welcomed some more time."