Halliburton: We're here to put out fires*

[Guest Blacklight Angel]

Tyler,

 

A) I wasn't talking down to you. If I wanted to, believe me, you'd know it.

 

B) You were the one who put up your own answer to your own question (doesn't matter if it's rhetorical), which implies that you have a pre-conceived notion of what conservatives/right-wingers/Republicans would answer, which is fine. I'm just saying that the average conservative believes in law enforcement as a valid function of the government, and that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

actually, avoiding the shift key is more the result of my posts already taking long enough, and thus, i don't really feel like taking much longer by holding down shift. thanks for noticing, though.

 

"Well now, I guess we don't need to regard this as a forum for discussion anymore. We have a "polysci" major here to bring us Pravda every day. Everyone can just sit and worship at your feet until you dispense a pearl of enlightenment, and then we can simply marvel at your wisdom. How grand!"

 

well, i wouldn't be much of a polysci major if i didn't know what a conservative was, would i? i mean, woo! marvel at my "vast knowledge"!!!!!!!!!!!!! jesus, way to continually play to your "angry, conservative lesbian" gimmick, i forgot that was you for a second.

 

"It's a pity they didn't operate on both your arms. (Nice work avoiding the shift key, by the way. Very convincing - or it would be if it weren't quite easy to use it with one hand.)"

 

i'm certainly glad that they don't require maturity to work for our current administration.

 

"I might've been spared at least one whiny pompous self-aggrandizing farce of a post. Do you ever get tired of giving yourself blowjobs?"

 

this coming from a massive attention whore who chooses a *wrestling board* to debate politics on. you're a damned government official and you come here to debate? why, because you figure you can spread your unholy bullshit without much of a challenge from a bunch of idiot wrasslin' fans?

 

your posting here in the first place is one huge cunnilingus fest for you, so taking one comment of mine and contorting it into self promotion is somewhat ambiguous.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

First of all, are you trying to say "polisci?" Unless this "polysci" stuff is some kind of new-age all-science-is-relative-so-let's-study-various-cultural-approaches-to-it crap (which wouldn't surprise me, frankly), could you please try to get the spelling of your supposed major correct?

 

Second, could you please remove your massive inferiority complex and stuff it in your shoe? I started posting here, as everyone knows, because Tom invited me. I stayed because I found people like TheMikeSC, Verne Gagne, and Vyce, among others, who share my political views and happen to be intelligent debaters. I also found people who fall on the other side of the political spectrum, like Frank Zappa Mask, Mystery Eskimo, and Zorin Industries - but they also happen to be intelligent and honest debaters (most of the time). And then there are those in the middle, like Agent of Oblivion, Will Cooling, and EricMM, and those who are just plain entertaining, like Samurai Goat. Finally, and lastly, of course, there are people like you. But I tolerate the nonsense your ilk spews because the others make up for it.

 

Seriously, you're telling me I'm an "attention whore" because you think the entire population of the board is too uneducated and too stupid to debate with "a damned government official?" Perhaps that applies to you, but you should stop speaking for everyone else. Quite a few of them aren't. They've put up more than one good fight in the past, and I'm confident they'll do so in the future as well. Your contemptible attitude might serve you well in France, where government officials commonly consider themselves to be so far above the rest of humanity that they shouldn't have to breathe the same air, but in the United States we the people are the government. I see no reason to segregate myself from anyone, especially not at your behest.

 

PS. If Tom decides to take the Top Secret clearance job he's considering, should he stop posting here as well? Even my access to that level is narrowly restricted to half a dozen fields.

Edited May 27, 2003 by Cancer Marney

[Guest MrRant]

I get no mention? I am the glue that holds Current Events together.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

I was mentioned. Satan must be wearing long underwear.

[Guest Renegade]

jesus, way to continually play to your "angry, conservative lesbian" gimmick, i forgot that was you for a second.

in the sig it goes.

[Guest TheMikeSC]

 

I love that the public who supports the President are "mindless followers", but those who OPPOSE aren't "mindless", even though the ALL seem to use the exact same rhetoric.

                    -=Mike

I didn't mean everyone who agrees with the administration. However I am speaking of the "9/11" crowd, that just feels that we shouldn't be questioning the president, so they just follow by default.

What are we supposed to be questioning?

 

At its WORST, what we did is the kind of thing liberals are SUPPOSED to support --- we freed enslaved people from a dictatorial psychopath. We made people's lives IMMEDIATELY better by removing Saddam. We saved people from a man who has killed more Arabs than any man in history.

 

If there isn't a smidgeon of WMD (unlikely, considering that Iraq has admitted that they had 'em), if there was NO tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda (also unlikely), we STILL did the right thing.

 

We're supposed to be upset about anything in regards to what we did?

-=Mike

[Guest TheMikeSC]

We are giving out contracts on behalf of the Iraqis. 

Indeed.

 

Iraq needs money NOW. Are we supposed to wait a few years for a stable gov't to fully form before oil is sold?

 

We'll rebuild Iraq --- then we'll get out of the way.

 

I can't even IMAGINE what some on these boards would have said when we rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII had they been alive at the time.

-=Mike

i would venture a guess that a very modest percentage goes straight back to the company pumping it, though, and that in and of itself is something we pledged not to do.

Tyler, how are we supposed to feed the Iraqis? We can't afford to pay for it ourselves. Waiting on the rest of the world to assist is an iffy proposition at best.

 

So, Iraq has one commodity and we'd be idiots to NOT get it flowing to give the country money. It is ALL they have right now.

 

And who else should be overseeing it? The U.N was given years and it proved to be an absolute joke in terms of oversight. I hear all of these complaints that Haliburton is selling the oil (and the assumption that, somehow, Bush is in their pockets while Sen. Feinstein, who has been AWFULLY quiet about this, isn't) and I simply must ask ---

 

WHO should be doing it?

 

Iraq has no gov't outside of our military, so they can't sign ANY contracts until they actually FORM one. I wouldn't trust companies like Shell et al as they have gouged the heck out of us for a while now and I have little hope that they'd be honest with the money. The U.N is a joke.

 

Who would be a better choice than Haliburton?

-=Mike

...Who will respond --- and politely, to boot --- to Tyler when he's being polite

[Guest Hogan Made Wrestling]

Here is a far bigger joke than Hilburton getting a contract:

 

Worldcom gets Iraq contract

 

Pentagon hands major Iraq deal to scandal-ridden WorldCom, rivals incensed

 

NEW YORK: The Pentagon made an interesting choice when it hired a US company to build a small wireless phone network in Iraq: MCI, aka WorldCom Inc, perpetrator of the biggest accounting fraud in American business and not exactly a big name in cellular service.

 

The Iraq contract incensed WorldCom rivals and government watchdogs who say Washington has been too kind to the company since WorldCom revealed its US$11bil (RM41.8bil) accounting fraud and plunged into bankruptcy last year.

 

"We don't understand why MCI would be awarded this business given its status as having committed the largest corporate fraud in history," said AT&T Corp spokesman Jim McGann.

 

"There are many qualified, financially stable companies that could have been awarded that business, including us."

 

"I was curious about it, because the last time I looked, MCI's never built out a wireless network," said Len Lauer, head of Sprint Corp's wireless division.

 

The contract in Iraq is part of a short-term communications plan costing the Defence Department about US$45mil (RM171mil), said Lt. Col. Ken McClellan.

 

The Pentagon also plans to have Motorola Corp establish radio communications for security forces in Baghdad, a deal worth US$10mil to US$25mil (RM38mil to RM95mil) depending on the options exercised, said McClellan, a Pentagon spokesman.

 

 

 

Secret dealings

 

The contract with WorldCom -- which plans to adopt the name of its MCI long distance unit when it emerges from bankruptcy -- has prompted grumbling in the telecommunications industry from people who say it was not put up for bids.

 

"We were not aware of it until it showed up in some news reports," Motorola spokesman Norm Sandler said.

 

McClellan said he had no details on the process that led to the deal, which he said was signed early this month. WorldCom spokeswoman Natasha Haubold declined to comment on details of the contract.

 

The company is to build a small wireless network with 19 cell towers that can serve 5,000 to 10,000 mobile phones used by reconstruction officials and aid workers in the Baghdad area.

 

The network, using the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) wireless standard dominant in Europe and the Middle East, is expected to be running by July.

 

"This is an interim, quick government solution -- this is not the basis for some national long-term solution for Iraq," McClellan said. "That will probably have to be undertaken by the Iraqis."

 

WorldCom is not a commercial wireless carrier. It once resold other wireless carriers' service in the United States but dropped that approach recently.

 

However, Haubold said her company is fully qualified to perform the Iraq work.

 

 

 

'Deep' relationship

 

She pointed to the company's work on a wireless system in Haiti in the 1990s and a 2002 contract, in which it served as a subcontractor, to provide long-distance connections for a wireless network in Afghanistan.

 

McClellan agreed that WorldCom's experience in Haiti and Afghanistan is "analogous work" to what is needed in Iraq.

 

Haubold also stressed the company's overall deep relationship with the US military and government.

 

In fact, a recent review by Washington Technology, a trade newspaper that follows computing-related sales to the government, found that WorldCom jumped to eighth among all federal technology contractors in 2002, with US$772mil (RM2.9bil) in sales.

 

It was the first time WorldCom cracked the top 10.

 

That US$772mil figure refers only to deals in which WorldCom is the prime contractor to federal agencies. The company gets much more taxpayer money -- exactly how much is not disclosed -- from state contracts and from federal deals in which it is a subcontractor.

 

That infuriates WorldCom critics, who say the government has kept the company afloat while the General Services Administration barred Enron and Arthur Andersen from getting contracts after their scandals emerged.

 

 

 

US govt bailouts

 

They also say it shows how little WorldCom would be hurt by the proposed US$500mil (RM1.9bil) fine the company has agreed to pay to settle Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges.

 

"The US$500mil is in a sense, laundered by the taxpayers," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

 

Although the Iraq wireless deal is minor compared to other government contracts WorldCom has won -- including a satellite data pact announced Tuesday with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration -- Schatz found it questionable.

 

"Why would you have a company that is not really in that line of business providing that service for another country?" he said. "Given the circumstances and the bailout the government seems to be engaged in, that is certainly is not fair to their competitors or the taxpayers."

 

McClellan declined to comment on whether the WorldCom fraud made the company a bad choice for the Iraq contract.

 

"That would probably be a question for the lawyers," he said.

 

Last year, Sprint and Global Crossing Ltd, another WorldCom rival, complained to the General Accounting Office about a US$450mil (RM1.7bil) contract awarded by the Defence Information Systems Agency to WorldCom for a computer network used by Pentagon scientists.

 

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the Defence agency "relied on grossly inaccurate financial information in making a determination that WorldCom was a responsible contractor."

 

But the GAO said it lacked the jurisdiction to rule on the complaint. -- AP

[Guest NoCalMike]

Hilarious.