[lit-ideas] Cheney & Iraq

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&e=1&u=/afp/us_iraq_hallib
urton
Cheney coordinated Halliburton Iraq contract: report


WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Pentagon (news - web sites) e-mail said Vice President 
Dick Cheney (news - web sites) coordinated a huge Halliburton government 
contract for Iraq (news - web sites), despite Cheney's denial of interest in 
the 
company he ran until 2000. 
The March 5, 2003 e-mail, from an Army Corps of Engineers official, said that 
top Pentagon official Douglas Feith got the job of shepherding the contract, 
according to the newsweekly Time that hits newsstands Monday. 
Feith had approved the multi-billion-dollar deal "contingent on informing WH 
(the White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been 
coordinated w(ith) VP's (vice president's) office," said the e-mail obtained by 
Time. 
The newsweekly said it was three days later that Halliburton won the 
contract, although no other bids had been submitted. 
"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, 
knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of 
Engineers or 
anybody else in the federal government," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" 
in September, Time said. 
Cheney had been Halliburton's CEO until 2000, when he accepted the vice 
presidential spot. 
Cheney's spokesman Kevin Kellems told the magazine that since 2000, the vice 
president "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions 
involving Halliburton." 
The e-mail was sent "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a 
sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the vice president's 
staff a 
heads-up," a Pentagon spokesman said. 
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith was handed the job of 
coordinating the contract by his boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul 
Wolfowitz, Time said. 
Feith, Wolfowitz and Cheney, along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 
and Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, form the core of Bush 
administration "hawks" who pushed for the war in Iraq. 


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