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CHENEY THE FLIP FLOP KING Cheney recently reminded America that, �These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another, the next.� FLIP.... "Government spends a lot of money, but it doesn't build factories .... The key to more jobs is not more government, but free enterprise" -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... Halliburton took $7.8 billion in U.S. taxpayer assistance since 1992 to grow its company -- and that doesn't include money from the Pentagon. FLIP.... �And one of the best ways to encourage stock ownership is to make sure that pension plans give workers better information, and treat them fairly.� -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... While CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney took advantage of a legal loophole that robbed $25 million from the pensions of Halliburton's workers. Nine months later the company gave Cheney a $20 million pension. Experts call it "scandalous." FLIP.... "And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... As vice president, Cheney continues to receive a salary of over $150,000 each year from Halliburton while maintaining 433,333 shares of unexercised stock options in the company. FLIP.... "We are going after the terrorists wherever they plot and plan." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... "We'd be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions [on Iran]," said Cheney when he was CEO for Halliburton. President Bush says Iran sponsors terrorism. Halliburton sales to Iran totalled $63 million in 2003. FLIP.... "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was briefed in October 2002 about a proposal to give contract work to Halliburton's KBR unit for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq. Moreover, an internal Pentagon e-mail proves that a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton on March 8, 2003 was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Pentagon officials admitted that Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith discussed the March 2003 Halliburton contract in advance with Cheney's office. FLIP.... �I can tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it,� Cheney said in answer to questions about his exorbitant personal wealth earned from Halliburton. FLOP.... The value of Halliburton's government contracts increased by nearly 100 percent, from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion, during Cheney's tenure as CEO. Guaranteed and direct loans from government lenders increased over one thousand percent, from $100 million to $1.5 billion. FLIP.... "We [Halliburton] have not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... Halliburton sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq from the first half of 1997 through the summer of 2000 -- while Cheney was chairman and CEO of the company. FLIP.... "I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein [in 1991] we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force .... then we'd have had to put another government in its place .... it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... �Our soldiers and Marines raced to Baghdad [in 2003] across 350 miles of hostile terrain in one of the fastest advances in history.� � Dick Cheney FLIP.... "And we believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... "I did misspeak .... We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon." -- Dick Cheney FLIP.... "There's no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. There's no doubt he's amassing them to use .... I think [weapons inspector] David Kay will find more evidence [of weapons of mass destruction] as he goes forward .... It�s a hard task, but I have got great confidence that he can do this." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... "Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong [about weapons of mass destruction], and I certainly include myself here." -- Weapons Inspector, David Kay FLIP.... "We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he [Saddam Hussein] had gone out and acquired. We�ve, since the war, found two of them. They�re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... "An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist." -- The Observer FLIP.... It is"pretty well confirmed" that a Sept. 11 hijacker "did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the [Sept. 11] attack." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... "I never said that. Absolutely not ... we've never been able to confirm it or to knock it down. We just don't know." -- Dick Cheney "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred." -- 911 Commission Staff Report FLIP.... "The cost of one attack on 9/11 was far greater than what we�re spending in Iraq." -- Dick Cheney FLOP The City of New York said the 9/11 attacks will cost the city between $83 billion to $95 billion. As of May 2005, Congress has already authorized $300 billion for the Iraq war. FLIP.... "We take seriously the responsibility to be honest and to be civil .... Whatever the issue, we are going to deal with facts and show a decent regard for other points of view." -- Dick Cheney FLOP.... Cheney lacked "civility" when he used profanity on the Senate floor against a political opponent. The vice president said, "Go [expletive] yourself" to a Democratic senator and later refused to apologize for it. He described his profanity as "appropriate" and that he "felt better" after uttering it. |