David Brooks in the NYT today regarding the Halliburton slander:
Last week, Kelman wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Post on the alleged links between contributions and reconstruction contracts. "One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded — whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert — who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd," he observed.
The fact is that unlike the Congressional pork barrel machine, the federal procurement system is a highly structured process, which is largely insulated from crass political pressures. The idea that a Bush political appointee can parachute down and persuade a large group of civil servants to risk their careers by steering business to a big donor is the stuff of fantasy novels, not reality.
The real story is that the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, won an open competition to provide the service support for overseas troops. This contract is called the Logcap, and is awarded every few years. KBR won the competition in 1992. It lost to DynCorp in 1997, and won it again in 2001.
Under the deal, KBR builds bases, supplies water, operates laundries and performs thousands of other tasks. Though the G.A.O. has found that KBR sometimes overcharges, in general the company has an outstanding reputation among the panoply of auditing agencies that monitor these contracts.
But some circumstances are not covered under Logcap. During the Clinton administration, the Pentagon issued a temporary no-bid contract to KBR to continue its work in the Balkans. In the months leading up to the Iraq war, Defense officials realized they needed plans in case Saddam Hussein once again set his oil wells ablaze. KBR did the study under Logcap. Then in February, with the war looming, Pentagon planners issued an additional bridge contract to KBR to put out any fires that were set. KBR had the experience. Its personnel were in place. It would have been crazy to open up a three-to-five-month bidding process at that time.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1018969/posts I would point out that Halliburton, unlike the UN, is still there.
The "Hailburton" story of the Left is just bunk. There are very few companies in the world today that actually can do the work needed in Iraq to upgrade and repair their oil infrastructure. Bechtel and Haliburton could do it. But Bechtel had their share of the pork and more in the Big Dig in Boston. Schlumberger of France is about the only other company that could rize to the challenge in Iraq. But would we ever give that contract to a French owned company? NO WAY! Haliburton was the only rational choice. ANd just to show how impartial I am I will admit to this- I am against this war in Iraq. But if we are going to be there- then we better make sure that American companies benefit!