Magicians rely on slight-of-hand to distract their audience while they pull off a trick. It seems that while vice-president Cheney had the media distracted with his shooting story, he was taking care of business elsewhere.
The New York Times reports that while everyone was focusing on his shooting incident,
"The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon's own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified."
The NYT goes on to report that: "One of Halliburton's most persistent critics, Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, said in a written statement about the Army's decision, 'Halliburton gouged the taxpayer, government auditors caught the company red-handed, yet the Pentagon ignored the auditors and paid Halliburton hundreds of millions of dollars and a huge bonus.'"
It helps the profit line to have a slight-of-hand expert in the White House. Cheney, the magician, pulled a fast one on us.
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