Who says war has no winners?
Stock PRices:
Halliburton: (former CEO quit to become the US VP in 2000)
10/11/02: $13.36
(insert war here)
10/11/05: $61.78
Exxon-Mobil:
10/11/02: $31.69
10/11/05: $59.40
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steveyo
Maybe I should get involved in the war business.
Do you get to blow stuff up?
Hey, I got a letter to the editor published regarding the winner of the war in Iraq.
Here’s a link:
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=410019&category=LETTER&BCCode=OPINION&newsdate=10/18/2005
and here’s the text:
Who says war has no winners?
Since 1999, defense industry giant Halliburton has donated more than $700,000 to the Republican Party and its former CEO Dick Cheney is the U.S. vice president.
In the last three war-torn years, Halliburton’s stock price has risen almost 500 percent. Since the start of the Iraq war, now shown to be dishonestly conceived, in no small part by Cheney himself, the firm received billions of our tax dollars in no-bid contracts. Turning $700,000 into billions? They’re the winners all right.
STEVE RELLES
Delmar
Very nice, Steve. It’s good to have views like this make it into local papers.
ah yes, i hear my brother rant about halliburton and all that stuff all the time
Just like the wacko caucus in the Republicans used to rant about whitewater, the FBI files, the travel office, the Vince Foster suicide, and on and on. It makes no difference overall. It’s all preaching to the choir. The people that rant about such things are already so partisan and set in their ways that nothing is going to change their mind. The rants do nothing to nothing to convince others to change their mind. It’s just preaching to the choir.
so John, it doesn’t bother you that the president’s administration are taking millions of dollars of profit from this war. A war they’ve been planning since 1998?
Just like all the ranting about Clinton lying under oath probably had a big effect on your opinion?
Haliburton is a business that goes to dangerous areas and does dangerous jobs. They’ve been doing that for a while. They didn’t just start in '98 to profit from the inevitable war. It’s capitalism.
No Hallibruton didn’t start in 1998 but htat is when the Bush people decideded to go to war with Iraq as soon as they had the opportunity. And no Halliburton doesn’t do dangerous jobs they are a midde man, they get contracted by the government to do a job, then they sub contract it to someone else for pennies on the dollar.
Remember back during World War II when war profiteering was looked down upon.
Personally I don’t think someone with such financial interest in a war should be in a place to have one declared.
It doesn’t bother you that someone in a positon of power uses that position for personal economic gain.
The war profits show that Cheney and subsequently Bush clearly do not have the nations best interest at heart.
When you are running a business it’s okay to higher your friends because if they fail your business fails, and therefore you fail. You’re taking a personal financial risk in them.
But when the president hires his friends and they fail, it reflects badly on him, but he doesn’t suffer any financial loss because of it. The only one’s who suffer are the American Public and tax payers.
A government can not be run like a corporation.
John - look what you’re comparing.
Clinton was a jackass and lied under oath.
The Bush-Cheney administration is an unstoppable war machine, making a war and selling the taxpayers the weapons and services at non-competitive, no-bid prices. How can you say that’s capitalism?
Clinton morally degraded himself and his family.
Cheney and the neocons, themselves all millionaires from the oil and defense industries, are profiting obscenely from the least socially productive expenditure - death and destruction.
I’m surprised you even want to bring up such a comparison.
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steveyo
I didn’t. You did.
Haliburton is just a code word for the standard liberal rant against the rich, corporate welfare, the privileged class, corporations, tax breaks for the rich, the war machine, and all the other favorite liberal economic buzz topics. All you have to do is say Haliburton and you can get a Pavlovian response that starts a rant.
All I care about Haliburton is that there be oversight. The anti-Bush crowd has made sure that Haliburton gets a good going over so that pretty much covers that.
Me following the Haliburton conspiracies is as productive as someone on the Left following the anti-Clinton conspiracies back when President Clinton was in office.
The Right had their code words back in the Clinton era and saying those code words would get them all riled. It’s all the same, just a different shoe on a different foot.
But John, do you believe it’s okay for the vice president to be a war profiteer?
you’re very good at not expressing your actual views.
The clinton scandal was different it was his personal life, not his policy decisions that were beign criticized.
I merely stated facts about Halliburton. You made the first comparisons to Clinton.
That doesn’t cover it, John. These days, with republican majorities everywhere, Halliburton screws up time and again, yet continue to rcv billions in no-bid contracts.
No, John. It’s not even close to the same. Code words? Riled? Complaints about Clinton had to do with sperm stains and questionably criminal land deals. The Bush-Cheney administration you’re defending is directly responsible for the horrible death, torture and maiming of tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of people, including uncounted innocent children in Iraq and nearly 2000 of our bravest armed forces.
I’m not comparing the actions of Halliburton with actions by Clinton. I’m comparing the buzzword effect of the word Halliburton with the buzzword effect of various words and phrases the Right got riled about when Clinton was in office.
The only effect the word Halliburton has on me is disinterest at this point and the realization that I’m probably going to be subjected to yet another rant.
For those of us who support the war the anti-war rhetoric and the Halliburton rhetoric just passes through without even an attempt to comprehend it anymore. I’ve heard it all before. It’s not worth the effort to go chasing that tail anymore. Just like it was not worth the effort for those on the Left to go chasing the tail of the various Clinton conspiracy theories by the Right.
All the buzzwords do is rile up the supporters at a campaign rally or demonstration. They have no effect on the non-supporters.
So does this mean you think it’s okay that the vice-preisdent is a war profiteer?
Do you think it’s okay that vice-president pushs policy fopr the purpose of putting money in his own pocket?
I don’t view him as a war profiteer any more than anyone else who works in the defense contracting business, either building things or contracting services. It’s business and the government doesn’t own or manage all of the defense work that is done in this country. Some of it ends up being done by private and public business. That’s the military-industrial complex for ya.
Those conspiracy theories about Cheney pushing policy just to get rich from Halliburton are just fantasies by the Left much like how the loonies on the Right coddled themselves by making up conspiracy theories about things like the Vince Foster suicide, drug running by Clinton’s friends, Whitewater, and all sorts of other things.
Here’s the thing, though. Cheney ostensibly doesn’t work in the defense industry anymore. It isn’t a conspiracy theory, John. There’s a clear conflict of interest when you’re one of the chief war architects and you or your cronies profit (obscenely) from making the bombs and bullets. Cheney may be indicted soon for the Plame outing and the (RIGHT-WING) conspiracy to sell the Iraq war, but he’ll get pardoned and move right back into an exorbitantly salaried defense industry job. The conflict of interest is highlighted even more starkly when Halliburton does a crappy job and continues to be rewarded with billions of dollars.
Fantasies from the left? No, these are nothing but clear facts: Halliburton stock price was $13.36 on 10/11/02 and rose to $61.78 on 10/11/05.
Please wake up and stop posturing about conspiracies. This sh!t is real.
The hoopla about Halliburton and Cheney is fiction. It was investigated during the campaign and nothing of substance was found. FactCheck.org did a couple investigations:
Kerry Ad Falsely Accuses Cheney on Halliburton
http://www.factcheck.org/article201.html
There is nothing there for me to get worked up about.
That’s why I call it a buzzword or code word. It gets Moveon.org all worked up but the rest of us have just moved on to real matters.
In other words, even though the fatcats at the top of the defense industry have quintupled their no-doubt monstrous stock options, they haven’t been caught breaking the law, though they have been caught and fined for serving rotting food to troops, and paying 5 times the price (and thus 5 times the profit) for gasoline.
John, you’ve managed to avoid the fact that the no-bid contracts have ballooned these vile people’s personal assets due directly from a war that they started. Getting rich from blowing up poor people. No problem with that?