Is it Cheney-gate or Halliburton-gate?

Halliburton, Ties to Secret Deals, Cheney Keep Issue Alive

In the fall of 2002, a group of Pentagon advisers assessing the condition of Iraq's oil fields saw the need for a plan to repair damage from the impending war. The effort had to be secret, because the government had not publicly committed itself to fighting, and it had to be done by trustworthy experts.

The Energy Infrastructure Planning Group turned to a familiar resource: Halliburton Co., the global oil services company where Dick Cheney was chief executive until a couple of weeks after he was nominated for vice president.

So I guess they knew they were going in and they knew Cheney's buddies would keep quite. On the surface it was not a big deal but after the invasion it grew like the tiny mustard seed into a flowering plant.

It was a small project, worth $1.9 million to a company that brought in $12.6 billion in revenue that year. But it turned out to be the bridge to something much larger. Four months later, Pentagon officials granted Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., Halliburton's engineering and construction subsidiary, one of the contracting plums of the war: a classified no-bid deal worth up to $7 billion to do the restoration work.

Of course the Democrats are bringing up the Cheney ties to Halliburton but if we had any kind of press in this country they wouldn't have to, it would be all over the front pages. Sadly we don't have a press in this country, only Pravda.