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​Cheney's Halliburton Becomes 
'Enron' of War Profiteers

Excerpted from the 12/23/2003 Executive Intelligence Review
by Carl Osgood
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.... Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has been relentlessly pursuing his own investigation of Halliburton's war profiteering since last April, said that the revelations in the audit add up "to a company that arrogantly is overcharging when they can get away with it and not providing the quality of service that they agreed to do."

The same day that the NBC report came out, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was questioned about the services that Halliburton provides to American troops in Iraq, by a Midwest legislator at a conference of the National Conference of State Legislators-indicating that it was already becoming a national scandal. Minnesota State Sen. Becky Lourey, who has a son serving in Iraq, told Rumsfeld that "I'm very upset about the services to our servicemen that Halliburton is providing. Not only could we save a lot of money if they weren't overcharging as much as they are, but the services that they are providing now for our servicemen are not as efficient as, for instance, they were in Bosnia, when my son was in Bosnia, and the Army was responsible for that.... It is a great concern when our servicemen and women are over there, and an entity, non-bid, such as Halliburton, is not doing the job that our own Army had always done much better."

Rumsfeld acknowledged that the Defense Department has "moved from uniformed military personnel providing food services" for deployed military personnel, to private contractors, but claimed, "they've done a very good job. To the extent they don't do a very good job, they get let go as a contractor and it gets changed." Rumsfeld protested, "What you're reading about in the paper is not an overpayment at all, it is a disagreement ... as to what ought to be charged."