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How does anyone support the Republican Party

Posted: May 26, 2015

The No. 1 recipient? Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007. The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg. With all of the faux outrage at the Democratic party, President Obama, et al. show me connections like these that affect his policies. Even if the Clinton Foundation has questionable sources (which I don't believe, but I see the effort being made to prove that so), the majority of their funds go to tangible charitable causes. How so with Cheney, unless you count his heart transplant?;

We all know Bush's Iraq War, but we don't know much about - Obama's Iraq War. Republicans

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fight wars. Democrats engage in police actions, impose No-Fly Zones and provide security for humanitarian missions. They don’t do anything as vulgar as fight wars. That would be warmongering.

Even by the war-shy standards of Democrats, Obama’s word games with war have been something else.

Obama’s wars are complex shell games. When he goes to war, he claims that it was at the request of a third party, which was actually fulfilling his request to file a request that it later takes back, based on a pretext that turns out to be false, to carry out a mission that turns out to be a pretext for regime change.

At least that’s how it happened in Libya.
When he inherits a war, he changes its name and announces a withdrawal while leaving a heavy military presence in place, before then actually withdrawing. If the first withdrawal doesn’t result in a disaster, because it never really took place, he can’t be blamed for the disaster that begins after the real withdrawal. After all the original withdrawal worked, so withdrawing can’t be the problem.

That’s what he did in Iraq. It’s what he plans to do in Afghanistan.

Obama’s Iraq War doesn’t exist as a distinct entity because the administration has gone to great lengths to distance itself from any appearance of being involved in it. When his original promise of withdrawing within sixteen months proved unfeasible, he declared that “By Aug. 31, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end.”

The war was renamed from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn. The 50,000 soldiers became members of “Advise and Assist Brigades”. When two soldiers were killed and nine wounded on that September, they did not die as part of a combat mission. When two members of the Puerto Rico Army National Guard were killed by an IED in January, they died as advisers and assistants for New Dawn.

Five years later, America’s combat mission in Iraq is still going on. We’re still advising, assisting and bombing. And there’s no new dawn anywhere in sight.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was a name that made liberal elites turn up their noses, but it succinctly expressed a purpose and a goal. New Dawn could have been anything from a brand of soap to a cult. It was a cheerfully meaningless name and that was its purpose. It created a sense of progress without any actual progress having been made. Like everything Obama did, it was a shiny box with nothing inside.

When it came to Iraq, Obama tried to fool everyone; selling the anti-war crowd an immediate withdrawal while promising everyone else a sensible withdrawal once the mission was finished.

And he managed to lie to everyone.

When the real withdrawal came, it was followed by an onslaught of Al Qaeda car bombs. More significantly it turned Al Qaeda in Iraq into the first franchise to be able to claim to have beaten America.

Obama had been so set on withdrawal that he had paid little attention to Al Qaeda in Iraq’s resurgence. Its continued activity in Iraq combined with the withdrawal allowed the terror group to create the myth that it had defeated the United States and driven it out of Iraq. And Obama allowed the myth to grow.

Al Qaeda around the world was looking for new tactics and inspirations. While Obama insisted that Al Qaeda had to be urgently fought in Afghanistan, its presence there was light. It was much more of a threat in Yemen, a locale that would become the source of a number of terrorist attacks directed at America and Europe, and a major player in the current civil war there, as well as back in Iraq.

Obama insisted that Bush had taken his eyes off the ball by ignoring Afghanistan, but he was the one who had taken his eyes off the ball by focusing on Afghanistan and ignoring Iraq. His eagerness to get away from Iraq created a situation in which the United States could target Al Qaeda in Yemen and Pakistan, but not in Iraq where it was strongest. This policy turned Iraq into an Al Qaeda haven.

His unwillingness to confront Al Qaeda in Iraq added to the myth that it had won and that the United States was too frightened of it to fight it. The myth had some elements of truth to it.

Obama was afraid, but he wasn’t afraid of Al Qaeda. He was afraid of Iraq.

September 11 had badly panicked Democrats who suddenly saw themselves losing the post-Cold War narrative of soft power and multilateral diplomacy. Their feigned patriotism only lasted long enough for them to spot a weakness by seizing on Al Qaeda’s campaign of terror in Iraq to turn the narrative around. The last thing Obama wanted to do was risk undermining the anti-war victory of the left in Iraq.

The left needed a defeat and so it created one in Iraq. The Islamists needed a victory so they derived it from Iraq. Osama bin Laden and the Democrats were both reading texts on Vietnam and drawing the same conclusions. But the Democrats did not understand the implications of those conclusions.

By positioning Iraq as a war that America had lost, they also made it a war that Al Qaeda had won.

Al Qaeda had thrived in Afghanistan because it could claim to have beaten the USSR. Now it was thriving in Iraq because it could claim to have beaten America. The transformation of Al Qaeda in Iraq into the Islamic State would become a self-fulfilling prophecy powered by propaganda and American apathy.

Obama had made Iraq into America’s blind spot. The blindness became policy. Even as ISIS was capturing entire cities, Obama clung to the narrative that the local franchises were Jayvee teams and that the entire War on Terror could be wrapped up by withdrawing from Afghanistan.

The administration’s insistence that the Iraq War couldn’t exist made it inevitable that it would. Each denial was read by ISIS, its supporters and opponents as proof that Obama was afraid of to fight it.

Televised genocide and mass rape forced Obama back into Iraq, but with the same lack of commitment. Just as before his final withdrawal, his priority is not to win the war but to avoid the appearance of blame. Once again he is trying to fight a war without fighting it by doing as little as he can get away with.

Obama does not fear an ISIS victory. He fears Bush’s Iraq War becoming his Iraq War. He worries about having his soft power foreign policy mired in the mud of Iraq. He is afraid of losing his Nobel Prize in Baghdad.

He ignored ISIS for as long as possible. Even now he does not envision defeating it, only “degrading” it until he can go back to safely ignoring it again. The rise of ISIS has not changed his Iraq policy. It is still the same disastrous and irresponsible policy that led to the rise of the world’s first Al Qaeda nation.

The plan is to reboot New Dawn, wait a while and then forget about Iraq all over again. But ISIS isn’t making it easy.

The roots of ISIS lie in the unwillingness of many Democrats to confront what Al Qaeda actually was and their expediency in seizing on its attacks in Iraq for political gain. Obama and his party have reaped the political benefits of Al Qaeda terror only to discover that the terror won’t go away just because Bush did.

Obama may refuse to call the war by its name, but the Iraq War has not ended and it’s his war now.

Legendary journalist Bob Woodward shot down the - notion that Pres. Bush lied

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to get America involved in the Iraq War in 2003 — and strongly implied President Obama didn’t make the right call by ordering the U.S. troop pullout.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the Washington Post icon and bestselling author noted that Bush made mistakes leading up to the war — but came down hard on the “line” saying Bush lied.

“I spent 18 months looking at how Bush decided to invade Iraq … lots of mistakes, but it was Bush telling George Tenet the CIA director, ‘Don’t let anyone stretch the case on WMD.’ And he was the one who was skeptical,” Woodward told host Chris Wallace.

“And if you try to summarize why we went into Iraq, it was momentum. That war plan kept getting better and easier, and finally at the end people were saying, ‘Hey, look, it’ll only take a week or two.’ And early on it looked like it was going to take a year or 18 months, and so Bush pulled the trigger. A mistake certainly can be argued, and there’s an abundance of evidence. But there was no lie in this that I could find.”

But as for Obama’s decision to pull out all the troops from Iraq, Woodward strongly implied that he would have been better off following the military’s advice by keeping 10,000 to 15,000 troops in Iraq “as an insurance policy.”

“And we all know insurance policies make sense,” Woodward added. “We have 30,000 troops or more in South Korea still, 65 years or so after the war. When you’re a superpower, you have to buy these insurance policies, and he didn’t in this case. I don’t think you can say everything is because of that decision — but clearly a factor

It's sad, isn't it? Once hailed for accuracy, he is largely credited for being responsible - for wrong press info on the war (JS)

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The first key to his demise was writing a private book series on Bush, once telling Larry King in 2002 there was "0% chance there weren't WMD in Iraq", and he has refused to recant that possibility in every interview he has given since, even after the Senate's bipartisan investigation in 2008 (Republican majority) found massive intel failure.

I could not find the original clip in a quick search, but here he is repeating it in 2006, despite the bipartisan senate investigation ultimately determining there weren't any.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/interviews/woodward.html

The old man is trying to save face for his book sales, plain and simple, as well as to admittedly keep a promise to George Bush not to write anything too damaging and be fair, which he promised to Bush for him to even allow Woodward that close to him to write the books - and it's a sad fall from grace to watch.

Woodward also claimed that in 2012 and 2013 the White House officials threatened him in his column

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/27/bob-woodward-says-he-was-threatened-by-white-house/?hpt=hp_t1

But when the full email exchange was released to Politico by Sperling himself, it proved not to be true - the email said "I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim."

Even conservatives backed off that being a threat, after reading the whole exchange.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/exclusive-the-woodward-sperling-emails-revealed-88226.html#ixzz3bG9XHzj6

It's sad, really - he's trying to to keep up with the article-headline-grabbing sensationalist youngbloods, but not checking the facts as thoroughly, anymore, after dropping the ball on the war scoop, when he should just retire or get back to fact-checking rather than speculative belief.

The WP keeps him on as an associate editor to edit the actual writing/grammar of others' stories out of respect, but frankly, they don't appear to trust his accuracy in actual reporting much, anymore.

There are several lies that Woodward exposed, that's - why the press is trying to destroy

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him. One is Obama actually conceived of and proposed the sequester. That's when the press started going after him.

Once adored for taking down a Republican is scored for reporting the truth about a Democrat. Figures.

When he was young; however, release of the email exchange proved his "White House threat" - story untrue in 2013- Julia Sugarbaker

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The press didn't hang him, he hung himself by writing inaccurate stories in the last decade.

Perhaps you haven't yet read my comment above, which includes his first big botch, inaccurate reporting on Iraq, as well as Bob's initial claims about the White House in 2013 versus the actual public release of the full email exchange, which Woodward admitted WAS the full exchange.

Here's the initial claim:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/27/bob-woodward-says-he-was-threatened-by-white-house/?hpt=hp_t1

Here's the public release of the full email exchange:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/exclusive-the-woodward-sperling-emails-revealed-88226.html#ixzz3bG9XHzj6

Even conservatives admitted the full context helped and that they didn't consider it a threat, they considered it a warning not to embarrass himself without all information.

Other conservatives might be wise to the same, considering most of what Bob says is liberal ;)

Or, we can realize the once accurate and fair, great man has just gotten old and misses details now, sometimes, confusing his own beliefs for fact, which has now become detrimental to both conservatives and liberals alike, and is the main reason he is now an associate editor of other people's writing skills at the WP rather than reporting stories.

Sorry, I was distracted by "release of emails" and - thought of Hillary. nm

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nm

Let's not blame the words "release of emails" for anti-Hillary obsession - Julia Sugarbaker

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And none of her emails thus far have revealed any bombshells like the release of Woodward/Sperlings email have

That reminds me of the Germans telling Pollock jokes - because they were getting

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their @$$e$ handed to them by the Polish resistance.

A person can ignore the fraud from the Clinton Crime Foundation and laugh about the "effort: being made to prove so, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

Cheney hasn't been affiliated with Halliburton since - before he was VP. More to the point...

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...can you show me any way that Cheney was enriched by the Halliburton deals? Quite different from the Clintons, who WERE enriched by their collusion and misuse of the cabinet position held by Hillary.

Something else - "no-bid contracts" are VERY common in the Federal government, for very legitimate reasons. Having been involved in government contracting and holding a certificate in that field, you can take it from this horse's mouth that although it's popular for the press to use this as if it were an indictment of the process, it really isn't. Oh - and that kickback lawsuit never went anywhere. It was politically motivated, pure and simple.

Nice try, though.

Remember the Dems. modus operandi, it's the - seriousness of the charge that

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matters, not the facts. Cheney in fact resigned from Halliburton.

This is one lie that the Dems just refuse to let go. I don't know why, when it's so easily disproven.

We assume all politicians/lawyers lie, severity does make a difference. So did Repub/TPer Rand Paul - lie when he accused Cheney/Halliburton in 2009?JS

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In this video, Rand Paul very clearly accuses Cheney of leaving Halliburton, still hold Halliburton shares, btw, but getting into government and pushing for war in Iraq for self interest.

Funny how he's done a 180 on the middle-east in some ways since, isn't it?;)

But nah, only Democrats backpeddle and lie, right? ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl4XvN2kWB0

PS: Sorry, Rand Paul accuses Cheney/Halliburton video link added above now - Julia Sugarbaker (nm)

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nm

Cheney's connection - sm

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2000

August: Cheney leaves his position as Halliburton's CEO to run as Bush's Vice President. Halliburton announces that it is giving Cheney a retirement package worth more than $33.7 million.19 Under public pressure, Cheney sells company stock worth $30 million. October 5: In a broadcast debate with Joe Lieberman, Cheney asserts that "the government has absolutely nothing to do" with his financial success as chairman of Halliburton Co.20

Halliburton is by now the world's largest diversified energy services, engineering, construction and maintenance company, with some $15 billion in revenues annually, 100,000 employees, and 7,000 customers in over 120 countries.21

2001

KBR wins a $300-million exclusive contract to supply logistics to the Navy, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation.22 One of Cheney's largest projects as Vice President is to coordinate the development of a new National Energy Policy (NEPDG). According to the former climate policy adviser in the Environmental Protection Agency, who was present at the task force's sessions, Cheney "continually pushed plans to increase [�] oil supplies while paying little heed to promoting energy efficiency and clean energy sources".23 Casting as an inevitability that by 2020, the United States will need to import two-thirds of its oil, mainly from the Arabic peninsula, the NEPDG recommends "that the President make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy".24 April: After having unsuccessfully requested information on recent secret meetings between the Cheney-led National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) and executives of several energy industry companies, Representatives John Dingell and Henry Waxman ask the GAO (General Accounting Office) to request information about those meetings.

July: GAO Comptroller General Walker requests records from Dick Cheney providing the names of the attendees for each of the meetings.25

November: Kellogg, Brown & Root is paid $2 million to reinforce the United States embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under contract with the State Department.26

December: Kellogg, Brown & Root secures a 10-year deal with the Pentagon with no cost ceiling to provide support services to the Army.27 The contract is known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). This contract is a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite delivery/indefinite-quantity service," which means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Kellogg, Brown and Root anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for profit.28

2002

February: Kellogg, Brown & Root pays out $2 million to settle a lawsuit with the Justice Department, which alleged that the company defrauded the government in the mid- 1990s by overbilling expenses.29 KBR was accused of inflating contract prices for maintenance and repairs at Fort Ord, California, a now-terminated military installation. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento, alleged KBR submitted false claims and made false statements in connection with 224 delivery orders between April 1994 and September 1998. The false statements were allegedly made during Cheney's term as CEO.

February 27: The New York Times reveals the identity of some of the top executives from the oil and gas industry that met with Cheney on Feb. 8, 2001.30 One of them is Robert J. Allison Jr., the Chairman of Anadarko Petroleum, with which Halliburton has been doing business since 1959. The Times also reports that Cheney's wife Lynne had been a director and significant stockholder of Union Pacific Resources, an energy company that had merged with Anadarko in 2000, and that she received Anadarko stock worth $250,000 to $500,000 from the merger.

March: The press identifies the names of 22 oil and gas companies whose officials met in secret with the NEPDG.31 Nineteen of these were among the top 25 energy industry financial contributors to the Republican Party. Among the nineteen were Enron, ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, Anadarko Petroleum, Shell Oil, and Chevron.32 David M. Walker, the comptroller general of the GAO, as well as Judicial Watch, launch lawsuits against Cheney because he refuses to turn over to Congress documents that reveal the identities of industry executives involved in the National Energy Strategy.33 The GAO's lawsuit will be abandoned in February 2003, after Republican threats to cut the GAO's $440 million budget.34 But Judicial Watch's legal efforts continue. (see below)

May 22: A New York Times article alleges that Halliburton artificially inflated its stock price between June 1999 and May 2002 and counted cost overruns on construction projects as additional revenue.35 Following these allegations, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) launches an investigation into Halliburton's accounting practices.36 The company's then-accountant was Arthur Andersen.37 Despite the ongoing investigation and previous revelations about cost overruns, Halliburton continues to receive government contracts worth billions.

June: Brown and Root is awarded a $22 million deal to run support services at a military camp in Uzbekistan, a country whose leader, Islam Karimov, is a ruthless dictator accused of human rights violations and boiling his political opponents alive. This is the first LOGCAP contract in the "war on terrorism".38

June: Halliburton informs workers its pensions will be reduced in value in order to pay for mergers and acquisitions.

July 15: Newsweek publishes the article, "Halliburton CEO Says Cheney Knew About Firm's Accounting Practices" revealing that Cheney was aware that the firm was counting projected cost overrun payments as revenues.39

July 29: A New York Times article quotes Cheney about corporate fraud: "The American people can be certain that the government will fully investigate and prosecute any wrongdoers". Cheney says the reform measure will "protect investors, bring more accountability to corporations and toughen controls of the accounting industry".40

July/August: It is revealed that while Vice President Cheney was Halliburton's CEO, the number of its subsidiary companies in offshore tax havens increased from 9 (in 1995) to 44 (in 1999). One of these subsidiaries (Halliburton Products and Services Ltd.), incorporated in the Caiman Islands, is used since 2000 to get around sanctions on doing business in Iran.41 At the same time, Halliburton's federal taxes dropped dramatically from $302 million in 1998 to an $85 million rebate in 1999.42

Despite these revelations, the company continues to be awarded massive government contracts, including a new 10-year deal with the Army with no lid on potential costs. In the year 2002 alone, Brown & Root received $1.3 billion for services to the U.S. government.43 These services include a $115 million contract to design and construct an embassy compound in Afghanistan; $37.3 million to build 816 detention cells at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and $2 million to reinforce the U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan.44 As the press and Democratic Party leaders increasingly focus on Cheney's role in alleged accounting violations at Halliburton,45 the Bush administration turns the nation's attention to Iraq.

August 26: Cheney delivers a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, warning that "seated atop of ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, [�] and subject the United States to nuclear blackmail."46

October: A Washington Post article describes Cheney as the "fulcrum of foreign policy", and that his influence for a pro-war policy comes to the fore on the eve of a possible conflict with Iraq.47 Cheney's wife Lynne is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a "right-wing think tank exercising significant influence in Washington circles"48 which is one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy and one of the leading voices pushing the Bush administration's plan for "regime change" through war in Iraq.49 The AEI has received funding from the Bechtel Foundation and ExxonMobil.50

November: Brown & Root begins a one-year contract, estimated at $42.5 million, to cover services for troops at bases in Bagram and Kandahar, Afghanistan.51

2003

January: The Wall Street Journal reports that Halliburton officials met informally with representatives of Vice President Cheney's office back in October to figure out how best to jumpstart Iraq's oil industry following a war.52 Cheney and Halliburton deny it.

March: Congressman Henry Waxman launches an inquiry into the fact that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has secretly awarded a no-bid contract to KBR to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq. The contract has a huge cost ceiling of $7 billion, with additional fees of up to seven percent ($490 million). The mission and the contract have been "awarded without any competition or even notice to Congress, [� and] were entered into on March 8, but not disclosed publicly until March 24".53 This contract is open-ended. It is also a "cost-plus" contract, i.e. the company is guaranteed to recover costs plus an additional percentage of those costs as its profit. It is later revealed that the contract not only includes fighting fires, but also operating the oil fields. The administration replies to Waxman's questions on the lack of competition: "To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement [�] would have been a wasteful duplication of effort. [�] Only Kellogg Brown & Root Services [�] could commence implementing the plan on extremely short notice" and "No other contractor could satisfy mission requirements in the time available".54 However, CBS reports that other qualified companies had attempted to bid on the contracts, but were shut out of the process. Bob Grace, president of GSM Consulting, after having contacted the Pentagon to inquire about the contracts, received a letter from the Department of Defense dated December 30, 2002 saying that it was "too early to speculate what might happen in the event that war breaks out in the region".55 This was "more than a month after the Army Corps of Engineers began talking to Halliburton about putting out oil well fires in Iraq",56 and in fact one month after the Secretary of Defense had granted such a contract to Halliburton.57 Furthermore, KBR did not actually put the fires out itself, but subcontracted the job to other companies: Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc., and Wild Well Control Inc.58

Thousands of employees of Halliburton are working alongside U.S. troops in Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a billion dollars. KBR is also supporting operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Georgia, Jordan and Uzbekistan. The overall anticipated cost of task orders awarded since the contract award in December 2001 (LOGCAP) is approximately $830 million.59

May 8: Halliburton admits having paid 2.4 millions of dollars in bribes to a Nigerian official in return for tax breaks.60

May 30: Twenty shareholder class-action lawsuits accusing Halliburton of using deceptive accounting practices while Dick Cheney led the company is settled for 6 million dollars. Halliburton doesn't admit to any wrongdoing.61

July 8: Following Judicial Watch's attempt to force the White House to disclose the names of nongovernmental officials who were consulted by the task force in 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirms a lower court judge's order and thereby rejects Cheney's bid to keep all the workings of the Energy Task Force secret.62

Sept. 14, 2003: On NBC's Meet the Press, Cheney said, "And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company [Halliburton], gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." But the vice president conveniently forgot to mention that he continues to receive from the company deferred salary of over $150,000 per year while maintaining 433,333 shares of unexercised stock options.

December 2003: The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) confirmed in a preliminary audit that Halliburton and a Kuwaiti firm, Altamnia, had overcharged the U.S. government by at least $61 million through Sept. 2003 for the cost of gasoline imported into Iraq. Halliburton's KBR unit had been charging $2.64 per gallon to transport gasoline into Iraq while its competitors were transporting gasoline for less than half that price. The DCCA formerly asked the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate the overcharges and said the fuel importation contract was given to Altanmia "under unusual circumstances."

2004

January: Halliburton reportedly wants to drill on Mars at U.S. taxpayers' expense.

January 16, 2004: House Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA) discloses serious irregularities regarding Halliburton Co.'s contract to transport oil into Iraq.

January 17, 2004: The Army awards Halliburton subsidiary KBR a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to rebuild the oil industry in southern Iraq. The Army previously had awarded a no-bid contract to KBR in March 2003 for the purpose of rebuilding Iraq's oil infrastructure in both the north and south of the country. But, under charges of cronyism and favoritism leveled at Halliburton, the Army subsequently opened the contract for competitive bidding in the Fall of 2003. The Army split the contract into one for northern Iraq and one for southern Iraq. The northern Iraq contract, worth up to $800 million, was given to a joint venture of California-based Parsons Corp. and the Australian firm Worley Group Ltd.

January 23, 2004: In Paris, a French judge warns that Cheney could be charged over allegations that Halliburton paid $180 million in bribes to build a Nigerian gas plant.

January 24, 2004: Halliburton admits two of its employees accepted a $6 million bribe in exchange for awarding Army subcontracts to a Kuwaiti-based company involved in rebuilding Iraq. Halliburton fired the employees.

January 25, 2004: CBS Television's 60 Minutes program shows how Halliburton does business with Iran even though U.S. law bans companies from doing business with the country.

January 26, 2004: New York City's controller accuses Halliburton of taking blood money from state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran and Libya. Controller William Thompson - who oversees an $80 billion pension fund for city workers - says cops and firefighters are outraged that their retirement portfolios include stock in U.S. firms getting fat off contracts with rogue nations like Iran, which funds the terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas and is suspected of giving sanctuary to Al Qaeda leaders.

January 30, 2004: New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert, details how Halliburton evades U.S. taxes and export bans by establishing foreign subsidiaries. Halliburton�s Wendy Hall admits the company paid only $15 million in taxes in 2002 even though the company earned $339 million in profits from continuing operations and $12.5 billion in total revenue.

January 2004: Halliburton discloses that a subsidiary paid a $2.4 million bribe to a Nigerian government official's business in exchange for favorable tax treatment.

January 2004: Halliburton admits in an internal memo that its cost controls for government contracts are "antiquated" and "weak" and its procurement "disorganized" and marked by "weak internal controls." The memo, which was leaked to the Wall Street Journal, contradicts the company's public statements which claim it has a "rigorous system of internal controls" for contracts in Iraq.

January 2004: Halliburton begins an advertising campaign to improve its tarnished image with the public. A television spot running on CNN says Halliburton supplies hot meals, laundry and telephone links for soldiers in Iraq. The ad shows a man in desert camouflage holding a phone, his lip trembling, and shouting, "It's a girl!" "Halliburton: Proud to serve our troops," an announcer says.

February: The Pentagon reports that Halliburton Company would repay the government for overcharges estimated at $27.4 million for meals served to American troops at five military bases in Iraq and Kuwait last year. In one military camp in July 2003, KBR billed the government for an average 42,000 meals a day but served only 14,000 meals. Pentagon auditors found the overcharges during a routine audit of Halliburton.

March: As of March 1, 2004, KBR is awarded reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan worth at least $3.9 billion.

Given how often Dems like to criticize Halliburton, - George Soros owns millions of shares of Halliburto

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and why would he do that? What's the rationale behind a global financial billionaire buying stocks in a company supposedly supporting politicians?

He supports moveon.org, very critical of Halliburton.

Given how Republicans like to accuse others of deflection off topic, here's a fine example. - Was Soros ever our VP pushing for war? JS

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I'm pretty sure that's a no answer because unlike Cheney, Soros was, and never will be, our vice president - completely irrelevant point.

Republicans must be voting for the Bushes - connection with Bin Laden

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that must be it. The whole bunch of them are insidious crooks that have harmed, maimed and damaged thousands of innocent U.S. citizens.

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Boehner executes a long overdue smack-down of the Tea Party, et al, and Paul Ryan quotes Mick Jagger in a very eloquent smack-down of his own. It's about time. ...

Sep 28, 2015
At a campaign event in South Carolina on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush was asked how he planned to include black people in his campaign and get them to vote for him. Bush responded, “Our message is one of hope and aspiration.” But he didn’t stop there. He continued: “It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting — that says you can achieve earned success.” There it is! If you ...

Oct 30, 2015
I was talking to a Republican this week who, to paraphrase him, said that the Republicans have offered the country what it wants, a woman presidental candidate and one of color. NO! That is not what we want. We want candidates who are intelligent and capable. What you've offered us is incompetence and labels. It isn't important to have a woman president unless she knows the issues, as Hillary Clinton does. It most certainly doesn't help to have a person of color unles ...

Mar 05, 2011
I had been so hopeful that our country could stop fighting and get things done, but the actions of the Republican party this week convinces me that's not going to happen. I'm very discouraged and disappointed. I don't want to be a Democrat either, but the Republicans' actions are pushing me that direction. Independents, do you feel left out if you aren't connected to one of the large parties? Maybe that's what I want to do. I'm also thinking, after this week&# ...

Sep 24, 2012
a political party...they're not. They're a cult. Facts and reality do not matter to these people. They've morphed what was once a political party and blended it with some distortion of Christianity where they support policies that are complete contradictions of the teachings of Jesus Christ. They've convinced millions that the best way to achieve economic prosperity is through facilitating more power and wealth towards the greedy at the expense of everyone else. T ...

Oct 10, 2014
Maybe he can join Palin in Alaska. In the above radio interview, Huckabee stated: “If the Republicans want to lose guys like me — and a whole bunch of still God-fearing Bible-believing people — go ahead and just abdicate on this issue, and while you’re at it, go ahead and say abortion doesn’t matter, either.” http://bluenationreview.com/mike-huckabee-will-leave-gop-dont-fight-gay-marriage-can-buy-ticket/ ...

Aug 26, 2015
Lindsey Graham stated yesterday that if Trump became president he is going to get us all killed. I have heard this spontaneously uttered by various people when listening to The Donald. and then there is this... http://www.forwardprogressives.com/10-examples-prove-donald-trump-perfect-republican-candidate/#comment-2217700842 Obviously, Republicans have a difficult time understanding diplomacy as evidenced by the multiple wars on their watch, the Congressmen sending the letter to Iran, ...

Oct 29, 2015
Have all of you noticed that when they don't get their way, they throw temper tantrums? They will not discuss, debate, negotiate, or otherwise consider any other view but their own and, if they don't get their way, they take their ball and go home. This is so dangerous for our country. I hope they self-implode, and it looks like that's what they are in the process of doing. ...

Jul 21, 2016
Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, John Kasich and now Ted Cruz. McConnell and Ryan read the tea leaves correctly and barely escaped extinction. Cruz flamed out in spectacular fashion last night, to which I have only one thing to say: Good riddance! ...

May 27, 2014
and switches to the American Independent Party. The Republican party can wipe the sweat from their brow now that Mr. Black-People-Were-Better-Off-as-Slaves-Bundy has removed his taint from their pool. ...

Oct 19, 2015
Extend minimum wage; Protect Social Security; Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex; Improve the unemployment benefit system so it covers more people; Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union; In 1956 Republican action created the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. My how the republicans party has changed! ...

Oct 06, 2012
Summary paragraphs from article in Kansas City Star: " Norman Ornstein, a distinguished political observer and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (hardly a liberal bastion) and his colleague Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than four decades. They say they’ve never seen Washington as dysfunctional as it is now. And they blame Republicans. “We have no choice but to acknowledge that the core ...

Oct 31, 2016
Paul Ryan has been running a not-so-secret shadow campaign for Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton and Paul Ryan have many things in common, such as progressiveness, open borders, amnesty, special interest lobbyists, and global worldviews. None of that coincides with Donald Trump’s “America first” approach, and that is very telling. In a leaked WikiLeaks email, we see more collusion between Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton. It has been revealed that the Clinton campaign attempted to list a ...

Mar 29, 2010
The Party Of YES! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/voyeur-west-hollywood-mic_n_516903.html Tucker Carlson responds to RNC complaints about DC’s Michael Steele article By Tucker Carlson - The Daily Caller 03/29/10 at 2:30 PM The complaints from the RNC about this morning’s Daily Caller article, “High Flyer: RNC Chairman Steele suggested buying private jet with RNC funds,” while loud, lack substance. Despite claims to the c ...

Apr 02, 2015
So, I read on a friend's private conservative blog elsewhere that James O'Keefe, a conservative documentary filmmaker, had just "caught red-handed" some college administrators at a university in Florida who were "encouraging and supporting" ISIS supporters. I like my friend, but, erm, I don't always agree with his politics and I'm not so sure his assertion is actually the case on this one. In fact, the blog author wrote his post based on his assumption on a ...

May 02, 2015
one poster and completely ignore another...... ...

Sep 05, 2012
So many great speakers. ...

Oct 16, 2009
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform 44% support for health care reform, 50% oppose. ...

Oct 15, 2011
From: http://whitehonor.com/white-power/the-occupy-wall-street-movement/ The Communisty Party, Socialists, Celebrities, Unions, Nancy Pelosi, Rangel, other crats, the Lamestream Media, and the list goes on. Oh, Obama (biggest Wall Street recipient of $$$$) feels the frustration of OWS too. Who else is jumping on the bandwagon? NOTE: Hey libs, don't forget to send YOUR MONEY to the Occupy Wall Street Donation B ...

Jan 16, 2012
http://www.protectncfamilies.org/ thanks ...

Jan 09, 2010
My little sister got married young (18), even after we said she should probably wait... was only with the guy for like 8 months but he was joining the military and being deployed, so they got married. Four years later, she has a gorgeous 16 month old, but apparently is no longer "in love" with hubby. she says she has felt this way for 3 years. to make a long story short, she basically doesn't want to stay in the marriage. My parents who are very conservative tell h ...

Apr 29, 2011
Anyone out there have a child with a disability and recieved child support from their ex after the age of 18? Both of my boys have Asperger's syndrome, high functioning autism. My older son is turning 21 in May and his dad had stopped the child support after he graduated from high school (about two weeks after he turned 18). Now my younger son is turning 18 in May and his dad told me today that he is cutting off that child support at the end of May. Neither boy is ab ...

May 12, 2010
My son deployed a few months ago. His wife and my grandson live a few hours away. She is always in some crisis or another, complaining about how she can't handle their child. He is 3... She works full time, makes time for the gym and "girls time" with her friends and he is in day care 8 - 10 hours a day! How hard can it possibly be for her! Seems like all she needs to do is cook him dinner and put him to bed! I figure if she can make she she's ...

Jun 18, 2011
Considering withdrawing support now?! Maybe some people have finally read the bill. http://www.1888pressrelease.com/ama-should-admit-the-error-of-its-ways-pr-311614.html AMA Should Admit the Error of Its Ways (1888PressRelease) June 18, 2011 - "In supporting the new health care reform law, the A.M.A., and other Obamacare-supporting groups, followed left-of-center leaders who did not represent the majority of their supposed constituents, or (worse yet) sought out self-serving ...

Oct 16, 2012
Dtr owed over 8,000 in child support now and the sperm donor apparently has no intention of working. Child support enforcement will try to do "address verification" when we give them a new address but that's as far as that goes. Has anyone ever tried one of those companies that are supposed to help get your back owed money for a percentage? Do you know what the percentage is? ...

Sep 25, 2013
Sign in favor of strong Dodd-Frank rule. ...