High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq By DON VAN NATTA Jr., NYTimes

The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show. …

Gasoline imports are one of the largest costs of Iraqi reconstruction efforts so far. Although Iraq sits on the third-largest oil reserves in the world….

Independent experts who reviewed Halliburton’s percentage of its gas importation contract said the company’s 26-cent charge per gallon of gas from Kuwait appeared to be extremely high.

“I have never seen anything like this in my life,” said Phil Verleger, a California oil economist and the president of the consulting firm PK Verleger LLC. “That’s a monopoly premium — that’s the only term to describe it. Every logistical firm or oil subsidiary in the United States and Europe would salivate to have that sort of contract.”

In March, Halliburton was awarded a no-competition contract to repair Iraq’s oil industry, and it has already received more than $1.4 billion in work. …

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Waxman responded to the latest information on to costs of the Halliburton contract. “It’s inexcusable that Americans are being charged absurdly high prices to buy gasoline for Iraqis and outrageous that the White House is letting it happen,” he said.

Waxman says the White House is ‘letting’ this happen. They are making this happen. mjh

See also: mjh’s weBlog: 2 in House Question Halliburton’s Iraq Fuel Prices October 16, 2003

Two senior Democratic congressmen are questioning whether Halliburton is overcharging the United States government in the procurement of gasoline and other fuel for Iraq, which is now importing oil products to stave off shortages.

Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids By DOUGLAS JEHL, NYTimes

The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect ”the essential security interests of the United States.”
The directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, represents the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq. …

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement criticizing the Pentagon move as a “totally gratuitous slap” that “does nothing to protect our security interests and everything to alienate countries we need with us in Iraq.”

A Republican congressman who recently returned from Iraq said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that it was a mistake to exclude particular countries from the rebuilding effort.

”Howard Dean really is the only candidate who has been able to inspire at the grass-roots level all over this country, the kind of passion and enthusiasm for democracy and change and transformation of America that we need.” — Al Gore

Like a lot of people, I was at first a bit disappointed that Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean. First, I was still dreaming that Gore might be drafted when no one else proved as popular. Second, though I like Dean most of the other candidates (after Gore), I was looking forward to the primary process to weed out some of the Nine. Let the voters speak.

On the other hand, many have been bothered by too many candidates with little or no chance. For example, though I greatly respect Carol Mosley Braun, like much of what she has said and would, in fact, vote for her instead of Bush, she doesn’t really have a chance — and I am truly sorry to say that. I could say the same about Dennis Kucinich. I don’t fault any of these candidates for trying and appreciate the messages they have communicated. If only they had stayed on target with attacking Bush and uniting voters against him. The last few “debates” seem mostly to be try-outs for VP — who will bring the most to the presumptive Dean ticket? Who has attacked Dean the least?

There should be one thing that unites ALL Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, and countless others: dump Bush. Get Bush out of the White House. This is going to be much more difficult than it should be — the Radical Right literally has a stranglehold on power. It is already time for the general campaign against Bush. It is time to stop spending money and time undermining the eventual Democratic candidate. I’m afraid that Gore’s announcement will not succeed in uniting everyone NOW, not later, but that may have been the right idea.

Dump Bush and the Radical Right. Vote for the Democrat! mjh

Dump Bush — Keep George W. Bush a one-term president

News Analysis: Dean’s Role Is Redefined by Gore’s Endorsement By R. W. APPLE Jr., NYTimes

Al Gore’s endorsement confirms the status of Howard Dean as that rarest of animals in the jungle of presidential nominating politics: an insurgent front-runner. It gives him the legitimacy he has been seeking, but it also presents him with problems of self-definition.

Gore’s endorsement divides Dems / Race now pits Dean against everyone else

Gore praised Dean’s early opposition to the war in Iraq, calling him “the only major candidate who made the correct judgment.” He urged Democrats to rally around the former Vermont governor, saying “we don’t have the luxury of fighting among ourselves to the point where we seriously damage our ability to win” the White House back.

Gore, the party’s standard-bearer in 2000, declared Tuesday morning that Dean is the strongest candidate to defeat Bush. By evening, none of the other candidates would even acknowledge the possibility that Dean could win the presidency, an indication of potential divisiveness ahead.

United Press International: Figures show ‘hype’ of terror war By Shaun Waterman, UPI

[An] analysis, carried out by statisticians and long-time law enforcement observers at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse based at Syracuse University, found that in the two years after the Sept. 11 attacks about 6,400 people were referred to prosecutors in connection with terrorism or terrorist offenses. But of the 2,681 cases that had been wrapped up by the end of September 2003, some 879 were convicted of a crime and less than half of those — 373 — were sent to prison. Five received sentences of 20 years or more, which was actually fewer than in the two years before Sept. 11.

The figures analyzed have been repeatedly cited by administration officials to justify their contention that the government is winning the war against terror. …

Tim Edgar of the ACLU told UPI that the data showed the government was “cooking the books” on the war against terror.

In a speech at the FBI academy in Quantico, Va., on Sept. 10, President Bush — ticking off a long list of continuing achievements in the war on terror — said, “More than 260 suspected terrorists have been charged in U.S. courts; more than 140 have already been convicted.”

“This report reveals the gap between that rhetoric and the reality,” said Edgar.

“These figures have been used over and over again by the president and others to make people feel safer and to stifle the debate about whether the administration’s strategy and the new laws they’ve passed are working.”

Op-Ed Columnist: Stalking the Giant Chicken Coop By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes

The Bush administration has mastered the art of legalized banditry, in which tons of government money — the people’s money — are hijacked and handed over to the special interests.

Drug company stock prices soared with the passage of the Medicare bill, a sign that another government vault had been blown open and the big Medicare money was in play. The Republicans are not subtle about these matters. The bill, for example, specifically prohibits the government from negotiating discounts or lower drug prices, and bars the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad. …

[In 1965,] the growls of opposition in the background were muted. Medicare was a desperately needed program, and it grew to be a wildly popular one. But conservatives were outraged by it. Socialized medicine, they snarled. Un-American.
…

Ronald Reagan saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ”invade every area of freedom in this country.” …

Newt Gingrich ranted against Medicare in the 1990’s, comparing its operations to “centralized command bureaucracies” in Moscow. …

After nearly four decades, during which Medicare significantly improved the health and economic conditions of the nation’s elderly, this unrelenting hostility can fairly be called an obsession.

Today President Bush will sign into law a prescription drug benefit under Medicare that will introduce the first cold drafts of bitter reality to the G.O.P.’s long dream of dismantling Medicare as we’ve known it.

by Jared Bernstein and Ross Eisenberry, Economic Policy Institute

Ultimately, despite aggressive administration and business arm-twisting, both ouses of Congress voted to block the new rule [cutting overtime pay eligibility for 8 million workers].

Historically, when both houses agree that a rule is unacceptable, the administration drops it. … But not with this administration. This rule is so important to their friends and funders in the business world … that they decided to buck history as well as the wishes of both houses of Congress. They’re pushing the rule through anyway. …

[T]he Bush administration decided it didn’t like the outcome and would therefore ignore the bipartisan wishes of the nation’s representatives. That’s undemocratic….

www.epinet.org

Guantánamo Chaplain and His Wife Speak Out By SARAH KERSHAW, NYTimes

Captain Yee was held in solitary confinement in a South Carolina Navy brig for nearly three months while he was under investigation, permitted only two 15-minute telephone calls a day after a month and, his lawyers said, barred from speaking Arabic to his wife, whom he met while studying Islam in Syria in 1997.

He was released last week without any espionage charges brought against him. But in a twist that Mrs. Yee said was more devastating than the espionage investigation, the military has charged him with adultery — a violation of military code — and possession of pornography, in addition to charges that he had disobeyed orders by taking classified information home. …

Captain Yee’s supporters say the government has charged him with adultery and keeping pornography — a fairly unusual move by the military justice system — to save face and trump up what has always been a weak case.

“He was defamed and smeared and accused of being a spy,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington advocacy group whose Seattle chapter was in close contact with Captain Yee’s relatives during his detainment. “Then all of sudden, they’re not even sorry. They’re saying, `You can go now, and for good measure we’ll throw in a few charges to further damage your reputation.’ It’s a very suspicious scenario that developed.”