By Scott Wright

All this business lately about what Karl Rove told to whom, when, and why, is a distraction from another issue that I think is far more important to Americans. At least, I believe I know of one that should be.

That's not to say, of course, that it's not important to spank Rove's conniving carcass if he did intentionally leak the name and secret identity of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Based on my past experience watching Rove hack his way through any and every opponent of George W. Bush, including Sen. John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries, I will not be at all surprised if Rove is eventually found to have outed Plame as retribution for Wilson's candor regarding the Bush administration's WMD hocus-pocus. After all, no magician likes to have someone reveal his methods of prestidigitation, regardless of the fact that all 300 million of us can plainly see now, in retrospect, the phony legs that were sticking out the other side of the WMD box Rove and his ilk have been sawing on.

As Joe Conason wrote in the August 2005 edition of "The American Prospect" magazine, the leak Plame's name "displayed the style Rove has developed ever since his youthful apprenticeship with the Nixon gang; false information, whispered and broadcast, designed to damage the reputations of 'enemies' and to divert attention away from substance, to further partisan advantage and to exact person vengeance."

I'll second that motion.

Anyway, there is a very important story involving the war in Iraq that is getting crowded out of the headlines because of all the clamor over Rove and Plame and Wilson and that slimy little man Robert Novak, not to mention the never-ending debate over whether or not we ought to even be in Iraq (nope), how well the fighting is going (not spectacularly) and if the soldiers are going to get to come home anytime soon (don't bet on it).

Here's the story, according to a June 29, 2005 report on the website www.Halliburtonwatch.org: apparently, Congress recently heard evidence detailing the cozy relationship between Halliburton and top officials of the Pentagon which provided further revelations that "the Army's number one defense contractor abuses taxpayer funds in Iraq with impunity."

I know, I know. We've known about this for months, right? Yes, we have. And that's part of the point I'm trying to make here. No one seems to care much about it. Granted, there are more pressing concerns regarding the American presence in Iraq than exactly how much it's costing us or where the money's going, exactly. At least in the short term.

But, in the long term, the money we're all being bilked out of by the company that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run could serve to further increase a war burden that's already costing Americans as much as $8 billion a month, by some estimates.

During the hearings, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., released a previously-secret military audit -- conducted by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) -- which exposed over $1.4 billion in "questioned" and "unsupported" Iraq-related expenditures by Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

One senior contracting specialist with the Army Corps of Engineers told the congressional investigatory panel that she was hired in 1997 to prevent the proliferation of "chummy" contracting practices. But she says that when the Bush administration took office in 2000, all that changed as Dubya's boys began "... ignoring regulations in order to give Iraq contracts to Halliburton/KBR." By the DCAA's own admission, KBR has received 52 percent of ALL contracts awarded for work in Iraq.

In the words of 20-year civil servant Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, the employee who blew the whistle on KBR, the graft represents "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

Hang on. The stink only intensifies.

In one case, Greenhouse criticized the Army Corps for hiring KBR to create "contingency plans" for repairing Iraq's oil infrastructure. Problem is, the Corps of Engineers doesn't repair oil infrastructure and besides that the project is "outside the scope of the Corps' congressionally-mandated mission," she said.

Here's the kicker: before awarding the contract, the Corps asked someone to come up with a list of "reasonable" costs they could expect to be charged if and when they awarded the contract. The laundry list, to the tune of $7 billion, was compiled by -- surprise! -- KBR. Essentially, KBR created the parameters for the contract, then had the job handed to them by the Corps without having to worry about any competing bids from other companies. Shockingly (not), last month's hearings revealed that the DCAA found Halliburton's cost estimates for the contract to be "many times higher than independent government estimates."

And just in case you Cheney-lovers out there think your beloved VP never had his hand elbow-deep in this particular pile of manure, I'm glad to squelch that notion for you here and now.

According to the article on www.Halliburtonwatch.org: "In 1992, defense secretary Dick Cheney paid KBR to conduct a still classified study to determine if privatizing troop logistics would be beneficial to taxpayers and the troops. After KBR concluded that it would be beneficial, Cheney awarded the first large troops logistics contract in American military history to KBR ... In exchange, Halliburton hired Cheney as its chief executive in 1995."

Harry S. Truman had a word he often used to describe behavior like Dick Cheney's. That word was "crookedness."

There are plenty of other examples of the Bush administration pulling financial strings that ultimately benefitted Halliburton, along with several instances when other qualified corporations were excluded from bidding procedures so that Halliburton/KBR could be awarded contracts which they had assisted in the preparation of the initial cost estimates. That's illegal, folks.

Oh, and there's the case, from December 2003 when, just days after Defense Department auditors preliminarily concluded that Halliburton was charging excessive amounts for fuel imports from Kuwait into Iraq, the Department granted Halliburton a special waiver releasing the company from providing certified cost and pricing data from its Kuwaiti fuel subcontractor.

Most recently, in April 2005, Defense Department officials dismissed auditor findings that Halliburton had submitted $200 million in questioned charges for dining facility services, deciding instead to retroactively change the formula for Halliburton's billing and increase the company's profit margin.

Nothing in the Army's press release found any fault with the auditors' conclusions that Halliburton had billed for meals it never served. Instead, the officials developed a new formula for calculating the number of meals for which Halliburton could charge. Rather than paying for one meal each time a person ate, the Department agreed to pay for 1.3 meals. At the same time, the Department increased the company's fee for the food services work. Although not mentioned anywhere in the Army's press release, Department officials agreed to increase the company's fee from 1 percent to 3 percent, generating an extra $26 million for Halliburton.

Read that again if you need to. I read it three times and still find it hard to believe.

That's the same Department of Defense that sent 150,000 American troops to fight a war in Iraq without supplying them with proper body armor or a clear plan to win the damned war in the first place.

Are you surprised? After all, the men who run the Dept. of Defense were put in place by the likes of Cheney and Rove. Thankfully, everyone is now learning the depths to which Rove is capable of sinking. And perhaps this congressional committee's conclusions will eventually find the front pages again and the American people will be reminded, once again, of what a bunch of crooks and connivers these guys really are.

And maybe, unlike in the months that led up to the 2004 presidential election, we won't forget that fact so quickly this time around.
 

Scott Wright is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and an award-winning member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a native of Cherokee County.