News and Politics

From CNN:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – The first contracts for rebuilding post-war Iraq have been awarded, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s old employer, Halliburton Co., is one of the early winners.

The Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) unit of Halliburton (HAL: up $0.54 to $20.66, Research, Estimates), of which Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000, said late Monday that it was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil fires and make emergency repairs to Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

President Bush Tuesday asked Congress for $489.3 million to cover the cost of repairing damage to Iraq’s oil facilities, much or all of which could go to Halliburton or its subcontractors under the terms of its contract with the Army.

Cheney divested himself of all interest in Halliburton, the largest U.S. oilfield services company, after the 2000 election.

Halliburton wouldn’t speculate about the total monetary value or duration of its contract, under which it will put into action some of the firefighting and repair plans it outlined for the Army in a study it conducted in November.

“KBR’s … contract is limited to task orders under the contract for only those services which are necessary to support the mission in the near term,” Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said.

The Army Corps of Engineers told CNN Tuesday that Halliburton would be paid on a “cost plus” basis, meaning it would be reimbursed for the costs of its work and would get a certain percentage of those costs as a fee.

Since it’s still unknown how much damage has been or will be done to Iraqi oil fields in the war, it’s difficult to estimate the contract’s eventual dollar value.

But its biggest value could be that it puts Halliburton in a prime position to handle the complete refurbishment of Iraq’s long-neglected oil infrastructure, which will be a plum job.

Getting Iraq’s oil fields to pre-1991 production levels will take at least 18 months and cost about $5 billion initially, with $3 billion more in annual operating expenses, according to a recent study by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, named for the first President Bush’s secretary of state during the first Gulf War.

Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a division of the Houston-based oil services company Halliburton, has won a Pentagon contract to assess and rehabilitate possible damage to Iraq’s oil infrastructure, in case Saddam Hussein sets his oilfields ablaze following a US military strike.

The company was also contracted to oversee firefighting operations in Iraq’s oilfields.

The KBR contract adds force to the arguments of those who believe oil is Washington’s primary motive for war, considering George W Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton’s chief executive officer (CEO) from 1995 until the 2000 Presidential election.

A historian foresees a United States that crushes opposition around the world and tolerates little dissent at home. [Salon]

AppleLinks doesn’t seem to be able to separate politics from their mission to provide Mac information.

I believe that a Mac news site shouldn’t write about religion & politics. I only read that site when something is linked at MacSurfer, although it’s getting to be like a train wreck.

Conservatives and Liberals obviously think differently. Here’s how. George Lakoff, a highly respected linguist and author of Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know and Liberals Don’t is tipping. Why? Part of it is that while Lakoff is obviously a Liberal, he’s one of the few around to have taken the time to understand that Conservatives, too, have a coherent worldview. He’s then added to that, er, insight his neuroscientific understanding of the power of metaphor in human communication. He’s getting mad buzz right now, I just heard him lecture, and folks, Conservative or Liberal, this guy’s ideas are worth exploring. [metafilter.com]

Robert Wright thinks it’s the long term and second order stuff that we’ll need to worry about now th [More Like This WebLog]

A good article & some good links.

This war is going to make things more dangerous rather than safer, due to Bush’s lack of diplomatic skills alienating most of our potential allies and stirring up anti-US sentiment around the world.

I just saw the President on TV. He announced that the US was ignoring the will of much of the country, ignoring the will of the Security Council, ignoring the will of much of the world, and going ahead with using our weapons of mass destruction to attack a country which hasn’t done anything to us, for no real reason that he will admit to.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve become worse than our enemy. America must be disarmed.

[Aaron Swartz: The Weblog]

From The Sacramento Bee:

The government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Tuesday.

“The Constitution just sets minimums,” Scalia said after a speech at John Carroll University in suburban Cleveland. “Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.”

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Scalia, one of the court’s most conservative judges, was responding to a question about the Justice Department’s pursuit of terrorism suspects and whether their rights are being violated.

Scalia did not discuss what rights he believed are constitutionally protected, but said that in wartime, one can expect “the protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum. I won’t let it go beyond the constitutional minimum.”

Scalia was interrupted once briefly by a protester who shouted an anti-war statement. The protester was removed from the room by security officers but was not arrested.

Scalia stopped speaking during the scuffle, then joked that the protest probably was more interesting than his topic, which was the constitutional protection of religions.

Bulldozer vs. bullhorn: Israel slaughters a non-violent American protestor in the Gaza Strip. [Morons Dot Org]

And we still think Israel is our friend? We need to stay out of the middle east and remain neutral in the conflicts there. That’s what got us into our current situation in the first place.

In the latest insult to our intelligence, some members of a Congressional panel are suggesting that Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing is funding terrorism… [Morons Dot Org]

Sheesh!