Democracy Now! | Crisis Profiteering: Dick Cheney, Halliburton and Hurricane Katrina

Democracy Now! | Crisis Profiteering: Dick Cheney, Halliburton and Hurricane Katrina: "As for Cheney, I think it could be, on the one hand, a sort of sick symbolic coincidence that he kicked off his tour down here in this utterly devastated region in Gulfport, Mississippi, because that's one of the main areas where his so-called former company, Halliburton, where its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root has a lucrative contract to rebuild the damaged and destroyed military facilities. As you said, KBR is going to receive about $12 million for work at one naval station and is going to get roughly another $5 million at another station. But what's more significant and what people are not focusing on is that Kellogg Brown & Root is also now traveling throughout the region assessing damage to, for instance, the pumps in New Orleans and the infrastructure of the city. They have already begun providing services for some five hundred Department of Homeland Security personnel. They have set up a camp for the Mississippi Power Company. And so they're setting up these same kinds of camps that we see in Guantanamo and Iraq and elsewhere to service the rebuilding of the Gulf area here of the South."

"And there's a real sick irony here, as well, as Dick Cheney comes to these areas now where his company, Halliburton and KBR are getting these lucrative contracts. And that is that there are hundreds of Halliburton workers missing, that are unaccounted for, as Halliburton stocks are hitting a 52-week high, because of Hurricane Katrina. And it's interesting that after Dick Cheney was told twice to go f*** himself, by that angry person behind him, you hear him asked if he has been hearing those sentiments a lot. Of course, Cheney says that was the first time that he has heard it. Well, that's probably true for Dick Cheney to be on the receiving end of that, but as we know and as you pointed out in the news headlines today, he said almost the exact same thing to Vermont Democratic Senator, Patrick Leahy."