IMPEACH THE VICE PRESIDENT
E-mail links Cheney's office, contract

From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Cheney's office "coordinated" a multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded to his former employer Halliburton, Time magazine reported Sunday.

The e-mail, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official March 5, 2003, said Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, provided arrangements for the RIO contract, or Restore Iraqi Oil, between Halliburton and the U.S. government, Time said.

The e-mail said Feith, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH (White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated (with) VP's (vice president's) office."

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Of course, Cheney denies any wrongdoing here, which echoes his more general claims that there is no confict of interest regarding the mega-deals that the Pentagon has been making with his former company. So how are they going to explain this email away? It says, pretty clearly, "coordinated VP's office." The explanation that this was simply a "standard courtesy call" simply doesn't ring true: "coordinated" is just not the same as "courtesy call," at least in my dictionary.

You know, the cynic in me says that nothing will come of this, thanks to the pathetic news media and the Republican dominated Congress, but there really needs to be a Kenneth Starr-style investigation of this kind of crap. The White House is so obviously in bed with Big Oil, and no one in power seems to care. What will it take to get a fucking impeachment? A photograph of a Halliburton executive handing Cheney a big cloth bag with a dollar sign on it?

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