No-bid Or Nobody Else?
“White House awards Halliburton no-bid contract to rebuild country following regime-changing war costing billions of dollars in which purported cause for war proven false.”
Does that sound like headlines from today’s media regarding Iraq? Surprise – that same headline applies to Clinton’s war in Serbia. For all of the loudly protesting liberals out there, Clinton spent $77 Billion to depose Milosevic following the Clinton administration’s claims of rampant mass-murdering of civilians in the former Yugoslav province. Let’s check the scoreboard: no mass graves were ever found and there was never any proof of war crimes.
Despite the parallels, the Democrats latest battleground in Iraq is Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Principle Assistant Responsible for Contracting. Her job is to oversee the billions of dollars awarded to government contractors, not just in Iraq, but in any place the US Army feels that private companies can provide better service to Army personnel than the Army itself could.
Conveniently ignored in the artificially politicized battle of her impending demotion is that her questioning of contracts to Halliburton pre-dates the war in Iraq, and indeed stems from awards under the Clinton administration following the Serbian disaster. To disguise this, the Democrats have resorted to pointing out that VP Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton at that time. How that could have resulted in preferential treatment before he was even considered as a candidate is beyond me, but certainly passes the (il)logic check of today’s ‘Dems.
Also conveniently ignored is the fact that Halliburton is the only company in the world capable of doing the work required under both the Clinton and Bush contracts. In other words, the no-bid claim is nonsense. Imagine for a moment that you were organizing an event for a client who insisted that only Coke be served. You therefore award the contract to a Coke distributor (of which there is only one in your area due to anti-competition rules). Is it fair to say that this was a “no-bid” contract since no Pepsi distributor was able to participate?
The government has a vested interest in ensuring that any bidders for a contract are capable of providing the service required at a competitive price. A company that lacks the materiel or experience ought to be rightly refused without the minority political party crying foul. The current problem is that the ‘Dems are only focusing on the Halliburton angle of Greenhouse’s complaints. However, her questioning of the contracts had less to do with the recipient than they did with the terms and conditions.
Listening to her testimony before Congress, it would seem that her underlying question was whether the T’s & C’s were unfairly narrow so that only Halliburton could make the bid. It defies logic to suggest that Clinton’s administration would provide such a benefit to a company run by the future VP. If there were in fact a political motive behind the Serbia contract, it seems reasonable that the administration would expect the benefit to flow to their own party, rather than a future Republican contender.
John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The fact is that for the last four years the Democrats have routinely hurled false allegations at the Bush administration for no other reason than because they lost the 2000 presidential election. They have consistently repeated flagrant lies and half-truths and have relied heavily on the left-leaning media to make their statements sound credible, all the while refusing to acknowledge that Clinton engaged in the exact same activities for which they rebuke daily Bush.
Does that sound like headlines from today’s media regarding Iraq? Surprise – that same headline applies to Clinton’s war in Serbia. For all of the loudly protesting liberals out there, Clinton spent $77 Billion to depose Milosevic following the Clinton administration’s claims of rampant mass-murdering of civilians in the former Yugoslav province. Let’s check the scoreboard: no mass graves were ever found and there was never any proof of war crimes.
Despite the parallels, the Democrats latest battleground in Iraq is Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Principle Assistant Responsible for Contracting. Her job is to oversee the billions of dollars awarded to government contractors, not just in Iraq, but in any place the US Army feels that private companies can provide better service to Army personnel than the Army itself could.
Conveniently ignored in the artificially politicized battle of her impending demotion is that her questioning of contracts to Halliburton pre-dates the war in Iraq, and indeed stems from awards under the Clinton administration following the Serbian disaster. To disguise this, the Democrats have resorted to pointing out that VP Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton at that time. How that could have resulted in preferential treatment before he was even considered as a candidate is beyond me, but certainly passes the (il)logic check of today’s ‘Dems.
Also conveniently ignored is the fact that Halliburton is the only company in the world capable of doing the work required under both the Clinton and Bush contracts. In other words, the no-bid claim is nonsense. Imagine for a moment that you were organizing an event for a client who insisted that only Coke be served. You therefore award the contract to a Coke distributor (of which there is only one in your area due to anti-competition rules). Is it fair to say that this was a “no-bid” contract since no Pepsi distributor was able to participate?
The government has a vested interest in ensuring that any bidders for a contract are capable of providing the service required at a competitive price. A company that lacks the materiel or experience ought to be rightly refused without the minority political party crying foul. The current problem is that the ‘Dems are only focusing on the Halliburton angle of Greenhouse’s complaints. However, her questioning of the contracts had less to do with the recipient than they did with the terms and conditions.
Listening to her testimony before Congress, it would seem that her underlying question was whether the T’s & C’s were unfairly narrow so that only Halliburton could make the bid. It defies logic to suggest that Clinton’s administration would provide such a benefit to a company run by the future VP. If there were in fact a political motive behind the Serbia contract, it seems reasonable that the administration would expect the benefit to flow to their own party, rather than a future Republican contender.
John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” The fact is that for the last four years the Democrats have routinely hurled false allegations at the Bush administration for no other reason than because they lost the 2000 presidential election. They have consistently repeated flagrant lies and half-truths and have relied heavily on the left-leaning media to make their statements sound credible, all the while refusing to acknowledge that Clinton engaged in the exact same activities for which they rebuke daily Bush.
posted by exsubdriver at 1:29 PM
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