Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Raw story ran this article on Judicial Watch and their FOIA lawsuit and forced  open some e mail from the Corp of Engineers and DOD  here is a link to the article in  The Raw Story | Newly released emails suggest Army Corps lied about Cheney role in Halliburton contract  and then there is this investigation by Senator Frank Lautenberg and his discoveries

If this was not bad enough then there is this paragraph that about seals the deal

A non-partisan congressional report requested by Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-N.J.) office showed that Cheney still has substantial financial interests in Halliburton, including lucrative deferred compensation and more than 433,000 stock options. But instead of acknowledging the ties divesting himself from his former company, Cheney denied everything.

Lautenberg, to his enormous credit, has stuck with this story, and issued a report today explaining that the value of Cheney's Halliburton stock options rose in value 3281% in one year.

An analysis released today by the Office of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg reveals that Vice President Cheney's Halliburton stock options have increased in value 3,281 percent in one year. The stock options, which were worth $241,498 one year ago are now valued at $8,165,489.07. In light of the surging value of Vice President Cheney's holdings, Senator Lautenberg reiterated his call for the Vice President to forfeit his continuing financial interest in the Halliburton Co (HAL). Vice President Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options and receives almost $200,000 a year in deferred salary from Halliburton.

"As Halliburton's fortunes rise, so do the Vice President's, and that is wrong," said Senator Lautenberg. "Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts. It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all."

Here is the extent of his Halliburton Holdings  from his own discolure forms, he di donate a large portion of his earnings this past year to charity, but which he received a two million dollar tax refund according to the newpaper article that ran after April 15,2006 about the White House tax filings

According to the Vice President's Federal Financial Disclosure forms, he holds the following Halliburton stock options:

• 100,000 shares at $54.5000 (vested), expire 12-03-07
  
  
• 33,333 shares at $28.1250 (vested), expire 12-02-08
  
  
• 300,000 shares at $39.5000 (vested), expire 12-02-09

Then this pales in comparison to the above but it still makes one question why he felt the need to exempt himself and his office staff from filing travel forms that the rest of government officials are required to file. from November 16th 2005.

Then  there is this article from the NY Times found at Truthout.org t r u t h o u t - Army Whistleblower Demands Halliburton Probe   it is dated 25 October 2004.

What we appear to have here is e mails showing that the Vice Presidents office was involved with the initial no bid contracts awarded to Halliburton for control of the oil, one of the e mails shows that Donald Rumsfeld a close ally of Dick Cheney for decades since the Nixon Administration, had Douglas Feith award the contract as a no bid contract due to the urgency of the aftermath of the war, my question is they knew they were going to start the war and when, that was not exactly a surprise to anyone in the White House nor the DOD, why was it urgent then? They had months to plan for it, plenty of time to take bids.

The e mail shows that since the VP's office was involved they doubted the contract would be competitvely bid, and history has shown that fact to be true. All involved have maintained that Dick Cheney has had nothing to do with Halliburton getting the contracts, this e mail shows that to be false, he has stated he would not benefit from the award of the contracts to Halliburton and it's subsidaries, we now see that his stock has risen in value 3821%, if that's not finanacial gain, I don't know what is.

This shows that President Eisenhower was right, beware of the "military industrial complex" the amount of money to be made from taxpayers will drive the necessity of war for the wrong reasons. PNAC and company had a plan to start the war and no plan for dis-engagement, why, there is no profit in leaving the war zone, they can only make money as long as the insurgency lasts, and who cares what it's called, A War on Terror, Al Qaida, Insurgents, terrorists, keep the money flowing.

When does it stop, when other countries quit buying our funny money, that is backed by nothing but trust, and right now the trust is really on thin ice.