About that, um, "American company" in the port deal

Am I surprised that this port deal didn't go down with Dubai Ports World taking over? Not at all.

Could I guess that this was another Bu$hCo smokescreen to get more money to Halliburton in a "bait and switch"? Sure. They did it with Harriet Miers and ScAlito for the Supreme Court. But this time it was more of a "watch those fuckers bail out and give the port deal to Halliburton" thought.

Well, guess what--according to Norm Ornstein, a longtime congressional watcher with the American Enterprise Insititute for Public Policy Research on last nights PBS News Hour, guess who is one of the only "American companies" with the experience to run port security?

Yup, Dick Cheney's very own Halliburton.

Not that Dick has any problem with being unethical, or a war criminal for that matter, or a looter of the treasury with the no bid contracts to Halliburton that overcharged the US Government (and We the People) by hundreds of millions in Iraq, and that is only what we already know about.

But according to Ornstein:

And while a number of Republicans breathed a sigh of relief that, at least in the short run, they have averted a disaster, and some were saying publicly, well, it's fine now, many, privately, were almost as cautious as Democrats.

And it's partly because of that first scenario that Simon mentioned. In fact, what Dubai Ports had offered earlier, what the administration had been talking about, was having a kind of separate U.S. entity. That wasn't acceptable to Congress.

If this is done now through the backdoor, where D.P. has any role at all, Congress is going to go ballistic, and it's going to be a disaster, I think, for the administration.

They have got a dilemma now, because there simply aren't American companies that have the know-how and the breadth to do this. Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, what I had heard earlier in the day, as they were looking at those that have the -- the kind of resources, Halliburton was a name that came up. And Democrats, I'm sure, are saying, please, God, let that happen.

And what is the response from the fine upstanding people at Halliburton? Not us? Nothing to see here. Move along. These thoughts are just absurd:

Melissa Norcross, a spokeswoman for the controversial U.S. company once headed by Vice President Cheney, called suggestions circulating on the Hill that they might take over "false and baseless."

Yeah, sure. Because Halliburton has such a fine upstanding track record in Iraq, we should believe them to tell the truth.

What's next, selling exclusive broadcasting rights to Halliburton TV network?