>>>Meanwhile, "Halliburton" seems to be a real bogeyman to the left. Have you ever bothered to learn anything about the company? You might have a read over their annual reports before yelping about their profits.
>>
>>It is not about the profits. It is about the iffy situations of the many no-bid contracts for well-connected companies like Halliburton, Bechtel, et al. It does pay to be connected, doesn't it? Who cares if the law is followed and if the taxpaying public interest is served?
>
>I'm not particularly happy about no-bid contracts either, but are there any other companies qualified to do the work? None that I'm aware of.
>
>I don't own Halliburton stock and I don't work for them. I'm just tired of the BS coming from the left about their "war profiteering".

So am I, tired of the unknowns, and I really wish the left didn't have anything to complain about, and that the right didn't have to invent ingenious rebuttals like "you're always complaining about it". As if there is a "best by date" on a problem, and after that one is supposed to shut up, even if the problem didn't go away, or got worse. IOW, the bogeyman argument is a bogus argument.

http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=296
http://www.harpers.org/Corruption.html
http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/fema_report.html
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113746003186348100.html

WSJ subscription req'd for the last one - which I don't have - but here's from Google's cache:
"Earlier audits by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction -- a post Congress created in late 2004 -- found that oversight of contractors by the Authority was so lax that widespread abuse was likely. An audit in April 2005, for example, found "significant deficiencies in contract administration," which meant that "there was no assurance that fraud, waste, and abuse did not occur in the management and administration of contracts" the U.S. awarded with Iraqi oil money administered by the United Nations."

Also,

"But the audit agency's calls to withhold some payments from Halliburton have been resisted by Pentagon units that awarded the contracts. The Army Corps of Engineers disclosed in November 2005 that it was going ahead with a $1.5 billion payment to Halliburton for work on Iraqi oil fields, including $124 million for costs the defense-department auditors had challenged as questionable. It also paid Halliburton nearly $38 million in bonuses allowed under a contract formula for good performance."