Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

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 will not cede control of Iraq to the U.N. at the end of the war:

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.