Advice to Edwards from The Nation: Use Halliburton

[deutsey]

As he prepares to debate Halliburton CEO turned Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator John Edwards would do well to study up on his Harry Truman. The buck-stops-here President had a word for war profiteering: "treason." He had another word for those political and business leaders who condone "waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and profiteering" during a time of war: "unpatriotic." If John Kerry's running mate wants to have a greater impact in his debate with the Vice President--which follows hard on the first presidential debate--than did the woefully inept Joe Lieberman when he faced Cheney in 2000, Edwards has to drop the faux friendliness of the Washington elites whom Truman so disdained in favor of blunt talk about Cheney, starting with his Halliburton connections.

SNIP

If Edwards brings Halliburton up during his Tuesday night face-off with Cheney in Cleveland, the Vice President will undoubtedly claim--as he has whenever he's been challenged--that he no longer has any connection with Halliburton. Edwards can counter with another of those blunt Trumanisms: "liar." The Vice President continues to receive money from Halliburton--$178,437 in 2003 alone--and a Congressional Research Service study has described the sort of deferred-salary payments he receives and the millions in stock options he retains as "among those benefits described by the Office of Government Ethics as 'retained ties' or 'linkages' to one's former employer." In other words, Cheney has a great big conflict of interest, and pounding away on it will go a long way toward exposing the crony capitalism that has been a hallmark of the Bush Administration.

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http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041018&s=editors

[Lord_StarFyre]

1. Absolutely!

Vice President Edwards needs to hammer unindicted vice-conspiritor Cheney about Halliburton early and often.

Every time he denies any connection, the $$$ he recieves should be thrown in his sneering, lying face.

[Demit]

2. "crony capitalism", for sure. But how long is this debate? There's SO MUCH

for Edwards to attack on...

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. There's SO MUCH"<<

Yes there is.... yes there is....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2452530&mesg_id=2452609

[notadmblnd]

3. Mary Matelin

has been on all the cable news shows spouting this morning that if Edwards brings up Halliburton and the little dicks continued associations with the company then he is lying. She is telling the pundits that people should go to factcheck.org and this accusations will be easily disputed. Miss Mary also says that the cheneys gave 8 million of their stock options to various charities and are totally divested of his interests in Halliburton.

I'm confident that John Edwards will have done his homework if this is brought up but the emphasis that this Haliburton angle of the debate is getting makes one wonder if this is a setup by the KKKarl and the mepublicans.

[spooky3]

8. Here'e the link to factcheck.org.

http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=261

I hope K-E staffers have thoroughly checked this out and any related facts not addressed in this, so that Edwards will be prepared.

Then there's the ethical question of whether to smear Cheney with statements that aren't quite accurate but which will stick in the minds of viewers and voters. I have NO doubt as to what the Republicans would do if they had to make this decision.

[KC21304]

4. Mary Matalin just gave us the Cheney answer to that issue.

Factcheck.org has said Cheney has acted correctly in this matter. Cheney has signed over all his stock options ( approx 8 million ) to charity. I think we have beat this horse enough.

But if Cheney does bring up what Factcheck says about Halliburton, Edwards should bring up that Factcheck.org says Bush's ad about Kerry's health plan is a fabrication, way out of bounds.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. Bring up this... it is far more damning.....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2452530&mesg_id=2452609

[HysteryDiagnosis]

9. Halliburton has a work force in Iraq of more than 4,500 people.

Imagine being in Iraq, unemployed, broke, unable to support your family... and seeing 4500 employes, some if not many making 100,000/year, imagine that.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/ny-uschen1005,0,3253789.story?coll=ny-top-headlines
As defense secretary during the first Bush administration, then as Halliburton CEO, Cheney has had a unique role in downsizing and reshaping the Pentagon. Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department has sharply reduced its size and its operations, from 59 percent of the federal budget in 1990 to 46 percent in 2001, farming out an ever-increasing share of support contracts to private companies like Halliburton. Cheney's corporate strategy included competing for those contracts, and Halliburton was a major supplier of ground services to NATO forces in Bosnia and Kosovo.

But the Pentagon portion of Halliburton's operations exploded with the Iraq War.


http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/6881945.htm?1c
Some Republicans have begun to question the $20.3 billion in the package to be set aside for rebuilding Iraq. But the questions about Halliburton's deals have been raised primarily by Demo-crats and public watchdog groups.

[Rockholm]

5. The QUESTION to Cheney and BUSH sbould be:

Just HOW many shares of Haliburton do you own?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. I've got another question.... just because you give the profits

from your stock options... to a charity, which you then claim as a TAX DEDUCTION.... does that mean that you no longer OWN THESE STOCK OPTIONS?

At the end of the day... if you do hold these options... I say if, and they are worth 4 to 5 times what they were before the nobids were obtained.... well, you see where I am going....

Again, I say... forget about this and go after the real dirty dealings that went on whilst he was controlling the company.... I left out the Nigerian bribery scandal here... I hope it comes up tonight in the debate... but I doubt we will get that much truth out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2452530&mesg_id=2452609

[Rockholm]

11. Very good point!

[DemsUnited]

12. Today on Crossfire, Kucinich said:

In the Bush administration, the buck stops in Halliburton's bank account!

B-)