Flosum: Try this. I consider myself to be moderate-to-liberal in my politics. Nevertheless, I am a confirmed capitalist; I strongly endorse a free market economy. However, that presumes that it is truly a free market. When various forces attempt to limit or eliminate competition, all bets are off. With that in mind, perhaps you watched as I did the Sunday evening edition of 60 minutes with its report on how Haliburton, Kellogg/Brown/Root, and Bechtel have managed to "win" billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to provide various services in Iraq. One example. Various qualified American contractors contacted the Pentagon as early as December, 2002, to inquire about contracts to put out oil fires should America go to war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein has a track record for starting such fires. All of them were told by the Pentagon that we were not expecting such fires. In the meantime and in secret, the Pentagon was in the process of awarding Haliburton a $7 billion contract to -- among other things -- put out oil
fires in Iraq. Why the secrecy? The Pentagon's response, "It was classified." Why was it classified? Everybody knows that Saddam Hussein starts oil fires. The answer: "It was classified because it was classified." (!!!) Nothing illegal because under then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney in the early 1990s, the rules were re-written for procurement. Subsequently, Dick Cheney became CEO of Halliburton and expanded their Pentagon contracts to over 2600. They can charge what they like because they provide their own oversight. Thus far, Halliburton has made a profit of over $1 billion on Iraq contracts with much more to come. Capitalism, free enterprise, open markets? Ask the contractor from San Antonio, Texas, who tried to bid on putting out oil fires -- which he did during the first Iraqi
War -- and wasn't given a chance to bid. He alleged in the "60 minutes" report that Halliburton was charging more than double the cost for that work than was necessary.
During World War II, similar stories of exploitation of the war for profit produced the Truman Commission which aggressively investigated and prosecuted any efforts to unfairly limit competition, provide shoddy equipment, or inflate
prices. Cheney and company need to have their activities brought out into the light of day for everyone to see. And, of course, this kind of
information raises still further questions about the reasons the Bush Administration was so eager to go to war with Iraq.