Take Cheney's Advice

Chuck Sheketoff

During the Cheney-Edwards debate, the Vice President didn't like how Edwards and Kerry were repeatedly bringing up Halliburton.

Cheney said:

Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false.

They know that if you go, for example, to factcheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton.

It's an effort that they've made repeatedly to try to confuse the voters and to raise questions, but there's no substance to the charges.

Take Cheny's advice and go to Factcheck.com and you will see that he was a bit confused. And if you go to www.factcheck.org and you will see that Edwards was "mostly right" about his charge that Cheney had responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles.

  • brett (unverified)
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    his charge that Cheney had responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles.

    Yeah, that's the context in which Democrats always bring up Halliburton. It's not as if Kerry has an official campaign ad accusing Cheney of personally profiting from Halliburton while in office. Because that would be completely and utterly full of shit, wouldn't it?

    You might even say, although I wouldn't recommend it, that it's a misleadisement.

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    You want to talk misleading? There's a Bush ad that takes about a dozen Kerry comments completely out of context to try to perpetuate the flip-flopper BS. It's ridiculous. They picked it apart on the news the other night (don't remember which network) and showed the actual quotes IN context and they told a completely different story.

    Oh wait, here it is.

    You might want to step outside the glass house now.

  • Justin (unverified)
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    The best part of this story is that factcheck.com is actually a site that sells encyclopedia. But all the traffic crashed the site, and the webmaster was so pissed that he re-directed the site to George Soros' site. Ahhh, even when he wins, Cheney loses.

  • raging red (unverified)
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    Ahhh, even when he wins, Cheney loses.

    Hey - just like in Florida in 2000! Or, I guess that would be, even when he loses, Cheney wins. But whatever.

  • Tenskwatawa (unverified)
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    Cheney gave an addled plug for a website, so rattled and spent is he, and the slip lost him more than his intended step had to gain him.

    Mainly, spam beats spin. He raised it to others' attention because it's what's on his mind, his worry -- and it is immaterial whether or not his advice is taken, going to said site, and to its misdirection, and to the investigation of who goes to the site, and to the compilation ... seeing the details facts and info along the threads misses seeing the wide pattern across the fabric, what's material, that those threads are part in; seeing the specific website(s), albeit informative, misses seeing that Cheney warps and woofs a wide pattern drawn to the theme the internet wins. He isn't as much advising or admitting it, though he is doing both, but more that he is conceding it. Which spells his demise. Ah, the goodness angels of humankind herald the victory again of human decency against evil-attached desire in Cheneyworld-a-burtin, burning they are -- hark!

    Span beats spin. Which heiroglyphically says the pay-internet channeling beats pay-cable TV channeling for news values such as accuracy, timely, availability, relevance, and, the one Cheney sits worried on, influence. It is the tipping point, (as precisely as I could determine it was Sept.30's debate that the shifting dimensions now measure back to), where more minds became made up by the internet ('span' is the symbol for it), than were made up by cable TV -- 'spin' is its symbol.

    Cheney's dour visage gains importance for boosting the contrast to a degree more -- the tipping point -- people see. In that his whole life's whole progress was invested in spin and continues riding on it in this campaign quite conspicuously in the eggs he has countenanced in Murdoch's basket, a basket of cable TV braids. The bough broke, the basket's falling, Cheney's downcast, so much even a percent of cable-heads sensed it ==> the internet has the news. Those were enough people when moved over to the side of the dish around existing internet-heads, to tip the point that way.

    Cheney wasn't just giving advice, though it is one mental fun to look at it that way and feel the irony of his own lies convincing himself. He was raising a flagging white tapestry with Appomattox Courthouse and McLean's stitched in it.

    Spam beats spin. Take his advice and travel into the internet halls and you'll see. He has. Travel is broadening. Look at his paunch. Look at his eye bags. The wheels of his life ran by spinning, and in the end he was spun around into himself. Don't try this at home.

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  • JS (unverified)
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    Brett,

    You are, using your own eloquent words, "full of shit". Cheney has been profiting quite well from his ties to Halliburton while in office.

    Does it bother anyone else that this past year Cheney received almost as much money in "deferred compensation" from Halliburton ($178,437) as we taxpayers are paying him to “serve” as Vice-President ($198,600)?

    I'm sure this group needs no reminders, but this is the same year that the government awarded Halliburton billions of dollars in no-bid contracts while Halliburton overcharged the government upwards of $100 million for gasoline and food.

    And then there's this bit of Cheney hypocrisy and deceit: "According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company."

    And this: "A Halliburton subsidiary is under investigation by the US stock market regulator [SEC] over allegations it paid bribes for Nigerian gas contracts.

    "Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) and three other partner firms allegedly paid $180m (£99m) in bribes, the SEC says.

    "US Vice President Dick Cheney was head of oil services conglomerate Halliburton at the time."

    You can read the whole Washington Post and BBC articles here:

    http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/02.03E.Hallib.Iraq.htm

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3799635.stm

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    And how much money do we think Haliburton will be paying Cheney once he's no longer VP? Not profiting from the money Haliburton is getting now? Yeah, right.

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