April 14, 2003 - On this morning’s Vince and Tommy Show live from Qatar the featured opening video showed American troops and Iraqi firemen manning the hoses while they extinguished a fire burning at a pipeline valve in the southern oil fields. General Brooks took pains to explain that the clip showed Coalition Forces working to assist Iraqi’s in rebuilding their country. Later in the show the clip was rerun, this time to illustrate General Brooks’ comments about getting the oil fields up and running. The evident cooperation was inspiring but it did raise a question. Since the Iraqi firemen and service personnel are putting out the fires and, according to General Brooks only one fire is burning at a well in the northern oil fields, just what work is left for Halliburton to do for its $7 Billion no-bid Pentagon contract for emergency oil field services?

Representative Henry Waxman, D-CA, is asking that question. In a letter to the Commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, General Robert Flowers Waxman wrote, “Why did the Army Corps issue a two-year, $7 billion contract to perform work that is intended to be short-term and limited in nature? It may be the case that the administration had valid reasons for granting a sole-source contract for emergency work during armed hostilities.

"It is harder to understand, however, what the rationale would be for a sole-source contract that has a multi-year duration and a multibillion-dollar price tag, Yet this appears to be the type of contract that was awarded.''

Representative Waxman, a gadfly that the Conservatives love to hate, isn’t getting much of an answer. Corps spokesman, General Gene Pawlik, said “This is not going to be a huge dollar contract – if nothing changes from today.” There have been 8 fires at wells and pipelines and, according to the Pentagon those have been put out by firefighters from the Kuwaiti Oil Company. So what is it that they are paying for with the big bucks Halliburton contract?

It is just one more question that is raised by this campaign in the War Against Terror; one more question without an adequate answer. But then just asking the question is disloyal carping by another Hate-America Liberal. Everybody knows that this war has NEVER been about oil.