Calling a War Profiteer by Any Other Name

Re “Don’t Blame Halliburton,� Commentary, April 22: Max Boot has cleared it up again. Kellogg Brown & Root, now a Halliburton subsidiary known as KBR, profited in Vietnam because of its close ties to President Lyndon Johnson, but the connection between Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney in Iraq is a nonissue. Halliburton just happened to be there already. Got it. True, “not a lot of other firms have similar expertise,� but gee, some do. Why weren’t they given a shot? Probably coincidence.

Boot feels we “desperately need to create jobs so young Iraqi men will have something better to do with their time than shooting coalition soldiers.� If lack of jobs was the problem in Iraq, think how much shooting there would be right here in the U.S. How about creating jobs here? Too radical? Is there nothing we could do with the “few million dollars [that] goes astray� in Iraq? I do not blame Halliburton. I blame Cheney and the other influence peddlers who use government positions as their private piggy bank.

Michael Valente

San Clemente

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Thanks, Max. As a Halliburton employee, I appreciate a kind, knowledgeable word about my company. With Osama bin Laden’s latest accusations about Halliburton, my engineering job has just become more dangerous and we have heightened security. I am sure he knew little about Halliburton or even the term “war profiteer� prior to the partisan rants of the Democrats and other liberal protesters. We now have protesters at our facility weekly.

Phil Thomas

The Colony, Texas

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Boot refers to Halliburton and its sister companies as “war traders and vampires� (oops, that was Bin Laden) and then supports this contention by stating that Halliburton has accepted the deaths of 33 employees in exchange for a guaranteed 1% profit -- $85 million last year. Boot then asks us to support Halliburton, as it faces criminal prosecution for overcharging, by relaxing government oversight. I agree with Boot that we shouldn’t blame the “Texas plutocrats� (as he calls them). We should lay the blame squarely on the current administration and the neocons who got us into this mess.

Mark Winitsky

Los Angeles