NP? Sleeping With the Enemy

[Doug Millison]

Trading On Conflict
86 US Firms Trade With 'Enemies'
Sen. Passes Strong Corp. Crime Measures
Sleeping With the Enemy
According to the documents released by the Treasury's Office of Foreign
Assets Control, since 1998 no fewer than 86 US companies have violated the
Trading With The Enemy Act, a US law that bars companies from doing
business with declared enemy nations Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea. The
companies were fined a combined total of $5.8 million.

Conspicuous by its absence was any mention in the Treasury documents of
Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based oil-services company formerly run by Vice
President Dick Cheney. Halliburton opened an office in Tehran in 2000,
while Cheney was chief executive officer.

As has been the case with other potentially embarrassing public documents, 
the Treasury Department settlements were released only after a fight. The
documents were released as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of
Information Act filed by Public Citizen and the Corporate Crime Reporter, a
newsletter.

The Treasury Department says it now plans to disclose more settlements
later this year. They would not comment on whether Halliburton might be
included in the next batch of settlements. The company has denied its
office in Iran violated the law.

In other news, Halliburton and Vice President Cheney were named as
defendants in a civil fraud lawsuit filed yesterday by the public watchdog
group, Judicial Watch. The group charged that during Cheney's reign at
Halliburton, he conspired with fellow executives and the Arthur Andersen
accounting firm to inflate the company's earnings by nearly half a billion
dollars between 1998 and 2000.

The suit represents one of those "strange bedfellows" stories unique to
Washington. Whitewater scandal fans will recall that it was Judicial Watch
that filed suit against then-President Bill Clinton on behalf of Paula
Jones. It was that case that established that a sitting President - and by
implication a sitting Vice President - can be sued for damages.
Conservatives cheered the ruling at the time as proof that no one, not even
the President of the United States, was above the law. Those same voices
have been pointedly silent on Judicial Watch's lawsuit against Dick Cheney.

Halliburton is also the subject of an SEC investigation into its accounting
practices during Cheney's tenure as CEO.

http://www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020711082816-15680.asp





"Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The
murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to
non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways.
It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It
provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be
taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more
prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just
ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while
they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
markets." (GR 105)