By Beauty Damned

I Have to Know

I have a question for Bush supporters out there and I am asking it seriously.

Do you think it's okay that George W. Bush has revoked regulations put into place by the Clinton administration, that would prevent companies that had been convicted or penalized in the previous three years, from procuring government contracts?

Does it bother you that Bush has shown that he believes that companies who have been convicted of unethical business practices should not be punished for their misdeeds, but instead, rewarded with new government contracts in Iraq?

I read an article about this in the paper this morning and it made my stomach turn. I want to know if this is okay with the people who support Bush, if they think that what is happening here is wrong or if it is just one more glaring perversion occurring within this administration that you are all too ready to dismiss as no big deal.

According to the article, "[a]n AP investigation [revealed that] ten companies with a combined $7 billion worth of Iraq reconstruction contracts have paid more than $300 million in penalties since 2000 to resolve allegations of bid rigging, fraud, delivery of faulty military parts and environmental damage."

Halliburton was one of those companies, and not only were they one of the first to receive a huge government contract in Iraq (the transparency of the BushCo interest here is painful), but they have already come under fire for overcharging the U.S. government for work performed there. So we can get this straight, after Halliburton paid $2 million in 2002 to settle charges of inflating costs on a maintenance contract at Fort Ord in CA, it is being rewarded with our trust and tax dollars, which they have since already greedily extorted beyond the worth of their services.

Dick Cheney's old company is not the only shady corporation in the war profiteering business. AMEC, a British firm with $780 million worth of contracts from the U.S., was convicted of fraud on three federal construction projects and banned from U.S. government work during 2002. Yet this is another company that Bush has opened his arms to and welcomed into Iraq at the expense of Americans.

Not even broaching the subject of whether or not any of this is in the interest of past and future Bush campaign funding, on a purely moral level, does it make sense to reward corporations that have already proven themselves time and time again to be untrustworthy?

Posted by Maria at April 27, 2004 12:19 PM