Halliburton Gouging the Government

Please, tell me it isn't so! [mock horror]

I blogged about this more than a month ago but it seems the Pentagon and congress is just now figuring it all out(WSJ link, subscription required).

The Pentagon has launched a sweeping investigation of Halliburton Co. activities in Iraq and found evidence of "substantial overcharging" in $1.2 billion of fuel sales by the company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.

An audit of fuel costs, which still isn't complete, found that the company may have overcharged by as much as $61 million for gasoline in Iraq, a claim that Halliburton denies.

While these allegations have been out in the open for quite a while, with the Pentagon and congress involved, the story may just get more traction in the press and in the public mind. Some of the Democratic presidential hopefuls are already making political hay from this - hopefully to good effect.

In a foreshadowing of the political uproar likely to erupt around the Halliburton allegations, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean accused President Bush of standing by as "campaign contributors ... continue to overcharge the American taxpayers." Halliburton gave $708,770 in political contributions between 1999 and 2002, 95% of it to Republicans, according to the contributions monitoring group OpenSecrets.org. Of that, $17,677 went to support President Bush.

Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, another presidential contender, said "Vice President Cheney's former employer ... proceeded to bilk the American taxpayer for tens of millions of dollars."

It is issues like this that those hoping to oust aWol from the Whitehouse have got to use, to get into the voters' minds. The deep rooted cronyism and wide ranging corporate connections inside the administration, the constant lies about everything from WMDs in Iraq to just how great the so-called Medicare drug coverage will be for seniors. These are issues that will resonate with voters, but they have to be put out there by the candidates in a forceful manner. The usual soft peddling will not work - the right has become too loud, too shrill for that to work.