Some Questions for the Vice President

Ruben Navarrette has some questions for Vice President Dick Cheney. He wants to know how a subsidiary of the company Cheney ran before joining the Bush Administration keeps getting invitation-only contracts with the government. As Navarrette explains:

It is a Halliburton subsidiary -- Kellogg, Brown & Root -- that landed on a short list of companies invited by the US Agency for International Development to bid on what could grow to be a $900 million contract to rebuild Iraq. That's the same Kellogg, Brown & Root that was recently awarded, by the Defense Department, the contract to put out fires at oil fields in Iraq.

Close observers of Vice President Cheney will not be surprised to learn that a veil of secrecy has been created around the process used to select these firms.

That secrecy must not be allowed to stand. The American people may accept an irresponsible wartime tax cut. But I still believe that they will not abide war profiteering. Or favorable treatment to a company who ended up providing stock that upon its sale handed the Vice President $22 million after he left Halliburton to assume the Vice Presidency.

The bidding process for these jobs needs to be open and transparent. Congress should insist upon it. Since the Republicans likely will not, it is time for some Democrats to hit the talk show circuit. In case they need the help, Navarrette provides some simple questions that the Vice President should answer:

Are the new contracts for Halliburton Cheney's idea of reciprocity? If not, why was the process done by invitation only and not opened to other bids? And why was all this done in relative quiet?

Moreover, why hasn't the vice president's office been more forthcoming in trying to clear up any confusion about any benefit that Halliburton might derive from having its former CEO now sitting to the right hand of the president? Why has Cheney's office typically referred inquiring reporters from The Washington Post to Halliburton, only to have Halliburton refer them back to the vice president?

And given that these are tax dollars we're talking about (lots of them), why isn't there more transparency in the whole process?

Our government must not be allowed to transfer questions about these transactions to the Army Corps of Engineers and stamp them "classified."

I know Vice President Cheney hates being forced to answer questions from other branches of government or release information to U.S. voters. If columnists like Navarrette can point out these important questions, someone in Congress needs to start asking them.