The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94278   Message #1831975
Posted By: Old Guy
11-Sep-06 - 01:41 PM
Thread Name: BS: Right to Workgate
Subject: RE: BS: Right to Workgate
So who is Boss Hog? Have you got another name for him or it?

How did Clinton do with those no bid contracts he gave to Halliburton? Did he get any kickbacks?

Did Boss Hog rent the Lincoln Bedroom? Is he or it a Red Chinese?

Bobert has been brainwashed again:

Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Michael Kinsley called the Halliburton contract "nation-building, Republican-style, with huge contracts awarded in secret to politically connected companies." The New York Times editorialized that the contract "looks like naked favoritism" and "undermines the Bush administration's portrayal of the war as a campaign for disarmament and democracy, not lucre."

One element missing from all the criticism was a serious examination of what the Halliburton contract actually involved and how it came to be signed. For example, was it really reached without competition, as Waxman charged? As it turns out, the evidence that is publicly available (some of it remains classified) suggests that Waxman's accusations are misleading at best and flat wrong at worst. It appears not only that there was not "naked favoritism" at work in the Halliburton contract, but that the Corps of Engineers, and the Bush administration, acted reasonably and properly in awarding the contract — no matter what Waxman says...
...The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992, as the first Bush administration (including then-Secretary of Defense Cheney) was leaving office. Four companies competed, and the winner was Brown & Root, as it was known at the time (Halliburton changed the name to Kellogg Brown & Root after an acquisition in 1998). The multi-year contract was in effect during much of the Clinton administration. During those years, Brown & Root did extensive work for the Army under the LOGCAP contract in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia; contract workers built base camps and provided troops with electrical power, food, and other necessities.

In 1997, when LOGCAP was again put up for bid, Halliburton/Brown & Root lost the competition to another contractor, Dyncorp. But the Clinton Defense Department, rather than switch from Halliburton to Dyncorp, elected to award a separate, sole-source contract to Halliburton/Brown & Root to continue its work in the Balkans. According to a later GAO study, the Army made the choice because 1) Brown & Root had already acquired extensive knowledge of how to work in the area; 2) the company "had demonstrated the ability to support the operation"; and 3) changing contractors would have been costly. The Army's sole-source Bosnia contract with Brown & Root lasted until 1999. At that time, the Clinton Defense Department conducted full-scale competitive bidding for a new contract. The winner was . . . Halliburton/Brown & Root. The company continued its work in Bosnia uninterrupted.

That work received favorable notices throughout the Clinton administration. For example, Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review mentioned Halliburton's performance in its Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense, issued in September 1996. In a section titled "Outsourcing of Logistics Allows Combat Troops to Stick to Basics," Gore's reinventing-government team favorably mentioned LOGCAP, the cost-plus-award system, and Brown & Root, which the report said provided "basic life support services — food, water, sanitation, shelter, and laundry; and the full realm of logistics services — transportation, electrical, hazardous materials collection and disposal, fuel delivery, airfield and seaport operations, and road maintenance."
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http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york070903.asp