Impressive that you manage to turn any event / statement into an argument about biased (to the left) media, build-up for the war included.
This has absoluteley fuck all to do with the allegations against Halliburton with regard to KRB and Iraq. I was quite suprised and disappointed that the Heritage Foundation were trying to make some sort of argument out of it. They are not normally so shrill. It proves nor disproves nothing with regard to the allegations. It is business news, hence why it is not on the front pages. The allegations are political news, hence why they are on the leading pages. I think you may have been lead by the nose on this one.
Love BB
The explosives were missing for 18 months Rascal. The total represents a small small percentage of the total found and destroyed in Iraq. It was released one week before the presidential election by the UN despite the fact that they had this information for 18 months, what’s another week. Why not another week after the election? The NY Times and CBS New colluded and cooperated to release this news and were going to do so two days prior to the election. Yes, I see Rascal how deluded I am to think that this is an example of media bias but then how else to explain this?
On election night, news organizations were hesitant to call a winner in Ohio, where Bush led all night and won by 136,483 votes. They were less hesitant about calling Pennsylvania, where Kerry led all night and won by only 127,927 votes.
If only the media would spend more time highlighting the fact that Germany was responsible for 50%!!! of Saddam’s chemical, nuclear and missile materials and programs. That would warm my heart. It would also warm my heart greatly to have Germany’s role in sparking the conflict in the Balkans headlined by oh say Der Spiegel? It was after all Germany more than any nation that moved to recognize Croatian and Slovenian independence and it forced all the other 14 unwilling members of the EU to do so as well that sparked that conflict. How about some headlines like that! By the way Happy Kristallnacht! or should I say Glucklich Kristallnacht! Wanna talk about a Patriot Act running roughshod over a civilian population’s rights?
BB:
Fine, dislike the Heritage’s comment but then PROVE the allegations are true. I don’t give a shit about Halliburton but what I do care about is that this is being used to target Cheney and paint Bush as corrupt. PROVE IT. Where’s the PROOF? And if there is any, let Halliburton fry but then PROVE that Cheney was involved. PROVE Bush was involved. You cannot and no one including the media can either. That is why there is no story but if they are going to print all the allegations then they had also better give equally prominent coverage to the retractions and evidence that suggests there is no story.
Think about it. What if I accused you of being a child molester and every paper in Taipei printed this story in headlines and then three months later when the allegations are proved false, I print a small one line item on page 11. How would you feel? Fair?
Where there’s smoke around the Bushies and Halliburton, there’s good reason to suspect there’s a bit of fire… when the fire stinks of bushit, our noses lead ourselves to suspicions of the sort that, time and again, keep getting borne out by the facts.
Based on how vociferously the Bush fights all allegations with denials and by telling huge whoppers (e.g., the big lie about the 101st Airborne troops “searching” the explosives compound or the fabrication from the DoD in which they presented a photo of trucks in front of the wrong bunkers as “proof”). How can we trust these guys?
Think about how the Bush administration usually handles accusations with denials, stonewalling, great secrecy, and ultimately a big mess. What if a police officer responding to a domestic-violence report showed up at a residence and heard the sounds of a woman and child screaming – the door is barricaded, and the man inside keeps shouting that what he’s doing is nobody’s business, for the police officer to keep away, and that he’s doing “nothing wrong.” This stalls the police force for the next several days. When they finally go inside, they find no abused people – they find nobody but the man and some hair and blood samples matched to the wife and child. In the Republican view, nothing wrong has been done. How would you feel? Fair?
MFGR:
So I guess that means that you don’t have any proof right?
Well MFGR almost has me convinced on this one.
I am now strongly leaning toward the position that something should have been done about the situation sooner, rather than waiting several days [color=darkblue](10 years)[/color] while the criminal had a chance to bury the evidence in his yard color=darkblue[/color], or ship it off to a neighboring house color=darkblue[/color].
In any event, I agree with you that the fact that the criminal managed to hide much of the evidence of his brutality in no way excuses the police from not going in to make certain that people were safe.
There are only a couple situations in which I would say that the police should have stood by and allowed the violence to continue. Please let me know if either of these was the case in your hypothetical MFGR:
(a) No Police Violence without Inspections First.
The first thing that the police should have done is send in “inspectors” rather than knocking down the door. The ground rules for the inspectors should have been as follows though:
______ (i) the man should be allowed to move his wife and children from room to room while the inspectors searched – so that if the inspectors wanted to look in the bedroom, the man would have a chance to move them to the kitchen before the inspectors went in;
______ (ii) the man should be allowed to designated certain rooms or closets of the house “off-limits” to the inpectors, so that he could hide whatever he needed there; and
______ (iii) the inspectors should have been given about 12 years to look around the house before any action was taken.
(b) Any Corrupt Police Officers Must Agree
If the murderer had been giving bribes or kickbacks to anyone on the police force (or their families), then those corrupt officers should have been allowed to veto the police action. Only with unanimous approval by all those who did business with the murderer would the action be legal and legitimate.
As long as these two conditions were met, then MFGR has convinced me that the police action was not only justified, but it should have happened sooner, and it should have been more widely supported by the community.
Hobbes –
So you also have serious doubts about the Bush administration’s willingness to conduct a meaningful investigation of Halliburton? I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Halliburton gets tip-offs for any investigations. My guess is that the DOJ or SEC wouldn’t be anywhere near so tough as the Japanese antitrust authorities recently were with the Tokyo offices of Microsoft, jumping right in there and carting off truckloads of documents. And so, indeed, it would be likely that Halliburton could move incriminating documents about and thus avoid detection as in the “inspection” scenario you propose.
With regards to “corrupt” police officers having to agree, I suppose you’re talking of Cheney and his Halliburton faction within the Bush administration. Brilliant! I bet they wouldn’t allow any meaningful inspection – not with Dick Cheney continuing to receive checks from Halliburton.
Now, speaking personally, I would be glad to see Halliburton undergo a thorough independent investigation and have the Bush administration keep their mitts off the case until we have some answers about the wacky stuff going on.
With regards to the 1991 Gulf War, absolutely we should have forced the Iraqis to turn over everything way back then – back when we had the tanks parked on the road to Baghdad and Saddam was shitting bricks. I thought it was a mistake for us to rush to bring home the troops when there were so many unresolved issues – as soon as we no longer had a knife at his throat, of course he started screwing about with the inspectors nine ways to Sunday. The following 12 years of sanctions, continuous patrols, etc. made things a zillion times more expensive.
[quote=“fred smith”]MFGR:
So I guess that means that you don’t have any proof right?[/quote]
Fred Smith always talks about proof. I see little coming from him but empty rhetoric, failed logic, and conclusory statements.
Well, here’s the
[color=red]PROOF[/color]
, biatch.
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s … urton_dc_4
Where you at now. holla.
Biatch:
Um, where is the proof? I show the following in this article.
So my dear Jack Burton:
Biatch yourself. You are a lawyer. Waxman is highly partisan and he has made “allegations.” When this goes through the court system and is PROVED then Halliburton will be SENTENCED. Come along people, you know the procedure, innocent until proven guilty. For all the talk about losing rights under the Patriot Act, it seems to me that so many on the Left are very willing to deny this company its rights. When this is PROVED, then throw the book at Halliburton for all I care but how is it that the State Dept is pressuring a private company to get involved with another Kuwaiti company? I mean shouldn’t this be a private business deal? Since when does the US Ambassador to Kuwait or anyone in the State Department have the right to demand that a company close a deal and do it NOW?
So my dear little lawyer friend, you have proved nothing. When and if you can, please feel free to do so but this is a very very lame effort. Better luck next time. BIATCH.
I don’t give two shits about Halliburton but I do very much care about the partisan effort to somehow slime Cheney and Bush through this and how the media is so complicit. First of all, these are the same Democrats and media who said and did nothing while the Internet boom was taking place and all the stock and accounting scandals like Tyco, Worldcom, Enron, Arthur Andersen, the California power fiasco etc etc occurred under Clinton’s watch. When it is proved, throw the book at them but until then, you had better allow the system to work rather than sliming this company without just cause.
BIATCH
Biatch:
Here is an interesting slant on the case from the NY Times. The tone is quite a bit different from your posted article.
This would seem to indicate that Halliburton is the victim here NOT the criminal. What do you think now ah what was that word again, biatch?
And then what about this?
Um, what do you think of that now, er, um what was that word again? Biatch? Such poor investigatory skills will not suit an up and coming lawyer such as yourself. Tsk. Tsk. Back to school. Learned your lesson?
Fred,
Denial ain’t just a river in Eygpt. You demand proof, others provide it, and you pretend it doesn’t exist. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire … and I think it’s about time an independent investigator was appointed to check this out. It appears Cheney and his ilk has been doing everything possible to ensure that nobody gets a close look at Halliburton or the ties to the Administration. I think for a variety of reasons that the Halliburton situation is far more relevant than the Starr investigation of Whitewater.
For one, Halliburton and KBR’s activities are a key concern for Americans. These are the guys who are simply not supplying our troops. Our men don’t have the ceramic body plates, the night-vision goggles, desert camo uniforms, armor-plated humvees, food, water, etc. that they were supposed to get. If we’re going to support our troops, don’t you think one way would be to actually supply them with the things they need to fight the good fight? Of course, Republicans typically try to deny that they’ve been short-changing the soldiers until those of us Americans with a conscience show them (again and again) the websites and legit news articles featuring troops who are simply not getting what they’re supposed to have.
Why is that the Republicans want to do everything possible to ensure that their cronies get big $$ instead of watching out for American interests? So far, your only argument is that Halliburton isn’t making as much money as they thought – but that’s already been shot down by the transfer-pricing and tax-avoidance arguments offered previously within this thread.
Halliburton is not guilty until proven so – but its secretive ways indicate that something stinky is going on. The American people deserve good government and good value from government contractors, and so an investigation would be well in line with establishing the facts necessary for the American people to know the truth. The GOP doesn’t mind us insisting on a little truth, now, do they?
De Nile is all you are doing MFGR:
Show me your proof that Halliburton is guilty. I see only allegations being made. Jack Burton’s post was yet more allegations NOT proof. So, like I said, I do not care about Halliburton and if they are guilty then prosecute them but I do not see any proof of any sort of illegal cooperation between Cheney or the White House and this company and I see no proof yet that this company has done anything wrong. When you can supply that, we will move onto the next step but until then… Sign me Unconvinced.
[quote=“mofangongren”]
For one, Halliburton and KBR’s activities are a key concern for Americans. These are the guys who are simply not supplying our troops. Our men don’t have the ceramic body plates, the night-vision goggles, desert camo uniforms, armor-plated humvees, food, water, etc. that they were supposed to get. If we’re going to support our troops, don’t you think one way would be to actually supply them with the things they need to fight the good fight? Of course, Republicans typically try to deny that they’ve been short-changing the soldiers until those of us Americans with a conscience show them (again and again) the websites and legit news articles featuring troops who are simply not getting what they’re supposed to have.[/quote]
Just to jump in here…but this is a most un-informed statement.
POI: KBR and Haliburton have nothing what-so-ever to do with supplying these items to the US troops in Iraq.
It would appear that you, mofa, have not the slightest idea as to what Haliburton and KBR actually do in their roles as gov’t contractors.
Perhaps, just perhaps, if you were to spend a bit of time and learn what the roles of KBR and Haliburton really are in the Iraqui conflict you would be able to address the situation with intelligent interogatives.
An independent investigation would be well worthwhile at this stage just to clear up the facts, as the Republicans seem completely unwilling to do more than a whitewash at this stage. An independent investigation would be precisely what the Republicans have agreed with in the past – if “Whitewater” was an urgent enough priority to request an independent investigation, then surely this situation warrants it.
The GOP just needs to start coming clean – it’s what America needs at this point.
First of all, the courts are investigating and I do not see what Halliburton should be treated any differently than Worldcom, Enron and other Clinton Era fiascos.
Second, I assume that if you are calling so wholeheartedly for an investigation that this means that you are admitting that you have absolutely no proof that Halliburton has done anything wrong. Right?
Back to you Jack Burton. I assume you have re-examined your “evidence” as well?
Personally no, but do you personally have evidence that completely exonerates Halliburton from wrongdoing? I bet not.
The best thing is to appoint an independent prosecutor who will have the authority to go through all the documents and to get the full story out of the Bush White House on this. Americans need solid answers.
MFGR:
I don’t need evidence to exonerate Halliburton because I am not making any claims, you are. Where is your evidence? Why is this company so deserving of special attention that it cannot go through the regular court system?
When I do make a point about Germany, France or the UN, I can usually supply the statistics and facts to back it up. Where are yours here? Do you want special status in that you need not back up your libelous and slanderous statements?
Off for a few days, traveling. Back later say Tuesday?
[quote=“fred smith”]First of all, the courts are investigating and I do not see what Halliburton should be treated any differently than Worldcom, Enron and other Clinton Era fiascos.
Second, I assume that if you are calling so wholeheartedly for an investigation that this means that you are admitting that you have absolutely no proof that Halliburton has done anything wrong. Right?
Back to you Jack Burton. I assume you have re-examined your “evidence” as well?[/quote]
Naturally, when you provide an argument, it’s proof. When others do, it’s allegations. Yes, I have read the article. It cites corruption on the side of the Kuwaitis, but conveniently, you seem to ignore those sentences which point to corruption in the KBR camp.
I think that in the end they will be vindickated.