Salon: The United States of Texas

[kskiska]

Two new books document the death grip that Bush, Cheney and their corporate cronies have on America.

Four years ago, in an otherwise utterly undistinguished vice presidential debate, Joe Lieberman got off one clean shot at Dick Cheney.

"I'm pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years ago," the senator said. It was a nice dig at Cheney's immense wealth, but the response was better. With a self-satisfied grin that dominated the news for the next few days, Cheney shot back, "I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."

In Dick Cheney's version of the life story of Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney is a self-made man. During the 2000 debate, and countless times since, Cheney has credited his fortune to the magical powers of the "private sector"; for Cheney, the millions he earned as the CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services firm, are completely unrelated to the close connections he forged with government officials during the decades he spent in public office. To hear Cheney describe it, becoming Halliburton's CEO was a testament to his own individualistic business savvy; just part of Dick Cheney's fulfillment of the American dream.

But on its face, Cheney's line is impossible to swallow. If we didn't know it in 2000, by now just about every voter in the land understands that Halliburton is an immensely successful federal contractor, and many of its biggest deals have involved government agencies. It's not just the war in Iraq -- for more than half a century, Halliburton's fortunes, and especially the fortunes of Halliburton's construction subsidiary Brown & Root (which has received some of the largest contracts in Iraq), have tracked closely with the fortunes of the politicians it has chosen to get close to.

(snip;)

…What happens if you bet on the wrong horse? What happens when, as Brown & Root has done in the past, you cast your lot with the Shah of Iran, or Saddam Hussein? And what happens, if, as occurred with former President Lyndon Johnson, the president that you bankrolled embroils your country so deeply in an unpopular foreign war that he ends up bowing out of office?

more…
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2004/06/24/halliburton/index.html