Lautenburg versus Halliburton

It’s no contest, of course. Everyone loses against Halliburton.

But Senator Frank Lautenberg gave a valiant effort nonetheless, responding to the news that Halliburton has been given five billion dollars of additional work in Iraq, on top of the nine billion dollars they’ve already made, with the following bit of snark:

At this point, why don't we just hand Halliburton the keys to the U.S. Treasury and tell them to turn off the lights when they are done?

I guess since no one seems to be able to stop Bush & Co. from transferring every last American dollar into one account or another that will serve Cheney well in his retirement, the only thing left to do is make disdainful jokes.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m picking on Senator Lautenburg (even though I guess I am, a little); I really like Senator Lautenburg. It’s just kind of disappointing that this is what it’s come to—snide comments from a helpless opposition—especially when I remember back before the Iraq War, a time when suggesting that Cheney and Halliburton would be getting filthy rich off this deal would elicit charges of being a crackpot conspiracy theorist. And it wasn’t just the Republicans who lobbed those charges. As I recall, the Dems were fairly determined to separate themselves from the traitorous anti-war set who dared suggest there might be ulterior motives for this war in the first place.

People who said the exact same thing Senator Lautenburg is quoted as saying above, but said it three years ago, were called lunatic fringe. Funny how things change, isn’t it?