You can spell Halliburton without it, but you need it to spell "Dicked"!

Dick Cheney's influence to get his old company contracts and help his stock is one of the least investigated major financial crimes I can ever recall. It's Teapot Dome out in the open, yet few journalists have taken it one, believing nobody would be so baldly corrupt. Finally, the bean counters have won ... god knows how long it took them to pull this off.

From Reuters.

The U.S. Army plans within months to break up Halliburton Co.'s contract to provide support services for U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites) -- valued at up to $13 billion -- and open the work to competitive bids, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday, citing an internal Army memorandum.

Houston-based Halliburton, whose chief executive from 1995 to 2000 was Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), has been buffeted for months by accusations of overcharging on the contract, under which its Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) unit provides services such as dining, housing, laundry and transportation.

...

Pentagon (news - web sites) auditors last month "strongly" urged the Army to withhold paying 15 percent of Halliburton's bills in Iraq, saying the company had not provided enough details to support at least $1.82 billion out of $4.3 billion of logistical work.

The newspaper quoted a Pentagon official as saying the intention in Iraq is to break up Halliburton's work into six or more smaller contracts, and complete the bidding process by the year-end.

So, if this involved the Clenis, how loudly would the right-wing bloviators be screaming?

Ask Daryn Kagan.

...shudder...