John Nichols: Baldwin's going after Halliburton

[RetroLounge]

The recent kidnapping of a Halliburton employee in Iraq has focused at least a little bit of attention on the fact that the company Dick Cheney headed when he was working the other side of the military-industrial complex pretty much owns this war.

With thousands of employees on the ground and a dominant position in the hierarchy of companies that have been given pieces of the "reconstruction" largesse, Halliburton may be the only real winner in what is starting to look an awfully lot like a quagmire.

But that's nothing new. Halliburton has a long history of turning America's wars into profit centers. The Houston-based corporation's Brown & Root construction subsidiary was such a presence in Vietnam - where President Lyndon Johnson made sure the Texas company got most of the big-money contracts - that soldiers on the ground nicknamed the firm "Burn & Loot."

http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/nichols/72657.php

Good to see Tammy Baldwin getting out in front on this...

RL

[starroute]

1. Brown & Root profiteering (via LBJ) goes back to World War II

http://www2.austin.cc.tx.us/lpatrick/his2341/Waging_War_With_Regulars.html

"For Herman Brown, prominent contractor and co-owner of the massive Brown & Root construction firm, {Johnson} had pursued and secured numerous profitable wartime contracts. While average constituents had grappled with shortages and government controls during the war, Brown had grown even wealthier building military facilities at taxpayers’ expense.

<snip>

"Yet another allegation of potential misconduct involved the Johnsons’ 1943 purchase of a two-story triplex in the fashionable Tarrytown section of Austin. The residence, bequeathed by the late Mrs. Hazel Harper White to contractor W. S. Bellows who instructed estate administrator Charles F. Herring to sell, achieved notoriety when the challenger raised questions implying it was a payoff to Congressman Johnson from the construction firm of Brown and Root. Citing Travis County property records, Hollers informed radio listeners that {Johnson} had signed a promissory note to Bellows at the time of purchase for $10,000 payable at a rate of $100 a month. Official documents, however, revealed that Bellows had released his lien against the property eight days later thereby giving the Johnsons title free and clear of all encumbrances. Equally curious, he noted, was the fact that Bellows was '...at that time a partner in Brown and Root Company–the very same company that built the Corpus Christi Naval Base on a cost plus contract and numerous other war projects while you were a member of the House Naval Affairs Committee.' "