Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
— Leonard Cohen
A massive government contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil fields after the war has been handed over, without bidding or consultation with Congress, to Haliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney‘s old company, from whom he apparently still receives up to $1 million in yearly compensation. The news probably couldn’t have come at a better time for Haliburton, which had been planning to final for bankruptcy. As The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart put it: “I feel like the government just took a shit on my chest.”
And Haliburton won’t have to worry about pesky U.N. interference, now that the United States has officially said it
Powell said the United Nations should, however, have a role in a post-Saddam Iraq, if only because it makes it easier for other countries to contribute to reconstruction costs.
Effectively, what this says to the world community is: we won’t let you stop us from making a mess, and we won’t let you tell us what to do with that mess when it’s done, but we will expect you to help pay for it.