Tuesday, September 03, 2002

Pot calls kettle 'evildoer'

Thank you, Molly Ivins, for resurrecting this from the memory hole:

I don't want to be tacky or anything, but hasn't it occurred to anyone in Washington that sending Vice President Dick Cheney out to champion an invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is a "murderous dictator" is somewhere between bad taste and flaming hypocrisy?

When Dick Cheney was CEO of the oilfield supply firm Halliburton, the company did $23.8 million in business with Saddam Hussein, the evildoer "prepared to share his weapons of mass destruction with terrorists."

So if Saddam is "the world's worst leader," how come Cheney sold him the equipment to get his dilapidated oil fields up and running so he to could afford to build weapons of mass destruction?...

No one is ever going to argue that Saddam Hussein is a good guy, but Dick Cheney is not the right man to make the case against him. I have never understood why the Washington press corps cannot remember anything for longer than 10 minutes, but hearing Cheney denounce Saddam is truly "Give us a break" time.
One thing, though: Halliburton did $73 million in business with Hussein while Cheney was CEO, at least according to this report from the Washington Post.