Somebody out there has been adding a smidgen of speed or something to wake up the SCLM boys and girls, or else the polish is finally starting to come off the turd...either way, I'm pretty happy. CBS does a little story on how the mysterious 'bidding' process for Iraqi post-war reconstruction contracts (the extent of the 1600 Crew's plannig for post-war Iraq apparently) somehow managed to land with firms who had friends in high places...

The U.S. will spend approximately $25 billion to repair Iraq by the end of next year - and billions will be needed after that.
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Given all the taxpayer money involved, you might think the process for awarding those contracts would be open and competitive.
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But, as 60 Minutes reported last spring, the earliest contracts were given to a few favored companies. And some of the biggest winners in the sweepstakes to rebuild Iraq have one thing in common: lots of very close friends in very high places.

Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well fires and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.

But Robert Andersen, chief counsel for the Army Corps of Engineers, says that oil field damage was much less than anticipated and Halliburton will end up collecting only a small fraction of that $7 billion. But he can't say how small a fraction or exactly what the contract covers because the mission and the contract are considered classified information.

But is political influence not unknown in the process? In this particular case, Anderson says, it was legally justified and prudent.

But not everyone thought it was prudent. Bob Grace is president of GSM Consulting, a small company in Amarillo, Texas, that has fought oil well fires all over the world. Grace worked for the Kuwait government after the first Gulf War and was in charge of firefighting strategy for the huge Bergan Oil Field, which had more than 300 fires. Last September, when it looked like there might be another Gulf war and more oil well fires, he and a lot of his friends in the industry began contacting the Pentagon and their congressmen.

“All we were trying to find out was, who do we present our credentials to,” says Grace. “We just want to be able to go to somebody and say, ‘Hey, here's who we are, and here's what we've done, and here's what we do.’”

“They basically told us that there wasn't going to be any oil well fires.”

Both Halliburton and the Pentagon believe Lewis is insulting not only the vice president but thousands of professional civil servants who evaluate and award defense contracts based strictly on merit.

But does the fact that Cheney used to run Halliburton have any effect at all on the company getting government contracts?

“Zero,” says Dominy. “I will guarantee you that. Absolutely zero impact.”