August 2004 | Hightower Lowdown

Halliburton’s Campaign

by Jim Hightower

You can tell when a corporation has been caught doing bad things, just by watching television. Not the news, the commercials. The stinkier the corporation, the more commercials you’ll see extolling the pure sweetness of the company.

The latest to saturate the airwaves with ads is Halliburton—and does it ever need them! Dick Cheney’s old outfit has a heap of stink on it, starting with the fact that it “magically” got some $9 billion worth of “no bid” contracts from the Bush-Cheney Pentagon to provide such services in occupied Iraq as gasoline, running the mess halls, and bath towels for the GIs. And Halliburton has been ripping us off on all this stuff.

The company is now under assorted criminal investigations, for grossly overcharging us on the gasoline, serving spoiled food in the mess halls and supplying towels bearing its own logo, charging $3 each for them when non-logo towels are much cheaper. Halliburton has gotten so stinky that it’s become a political issue in the presidential campaign, and even George W. has had to criticize its profiteering.

So now we’re suddenly subjected to ads showing Halliburton accomplishing miracles in Iraq, ads that use our soldiers and the Iraqi people as props to justify its bilking of U.S. taxpayers. How defensive is Halliburton? So defensive that it felt compelled to make an ad trying to separate itself from its cozy ties to Cheney: “We’re serving the troops,” says this hilarious pitch, “because of what we know, not who we know."

But the company has also gone on the offensive—in both senses of that word. Halliburton’s CEO, in a statement that is both cynical and whiney, attacked all who dare criticize the corporation, saying that they are guilty of “political profiteering."

What a greedhead. Halliburton profiteers on this war, uses some of those war profits to whitewash its actions, and then tries labeling its taxpaying critics as profiteers.

© 2004 Jim Hightower and Associates. Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush from Viking Press. For more information, visit www.jimhightower.com.

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