Dick Cheney's Halliburton made 39.5 billion off of the Iraq War. Just in case you were still wondering why we sent our troops there.

Courtesy of ZNet: 

The accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels. 

Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops. 

Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday. 

The No. 1 recipient? 

Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007. 

The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.

Conservatives would argue that Cheney broke ties with Halliburton when he chose himself to be George W. Bush's VP, and before the start of the war, but that is actually false.

The truth is that Cheney received a payout of 34 million dollars when he left the company to become the Vice President, and I don't think it can simply be chalked up to a conspiracy theory that after only three years Cheney helped start a war, and provided no-bid contracts to his old company, as possibly part of a prearranged deal with his old company.

After all records show that there was talk of invading Iraq, WELL before the events of September 11, 2001.

To put it bluntly Dick Cheney is a traitor, and possible domestic terrorist, and his relationship with Halliburton seems riddled with corruption.

A thorough investigation of Dick Cheney, his ties to Halliburton, and how their association led to the start of a completely unnecessary, war is long overdue. 

Rachel Maddow interviews Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman at the center of Al Franken's "anti-rape" amendment.

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The fact that 3 out of 4 Republican Senators voted against protecting a woman from being raped and then stripped of her legal rights is an abomination.

Woman who was gang raped in Halliburton compund finally gets a court date.

A Houston woman who says she was gang raped by co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad won a major court battle late Friday when a Texas judge ordered that she can bring her case to court instead of forcing her into secretive arbitration proceedings with Halliburton and KBR.

Jones says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

This young woman went to Baghdad to do a job only to find that she was in a place of lawlessness where she was treated like a piece of meat and violated repeatedly while nobody did anything to help her. In fact they kept her a prisoner in a shipping container, and if she had not been able to call her father there is no telling what may have become of her.

I certainly hope this young woman gets justice, and I also hope this leads to further investigations into Halliburton's numerous infractions and that the company is forced to pay restitution for its shoddy work and its jacked up prices.

This is what comes from having your former CEO become Vice President of the United States, multi-million dollar no-bid contracts and no accountability.

Well as Bob Dylan once said, "The times they are a changin".

Halliburton has been raping our country for years. Now they are gang raping our women.

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

I n a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

As a father of a twenty year old daughter I can only imagine what receiving this phone call must have done to this father. I would have been out of my mind with worry.

I think as Americans we thought our country could never stoop to the kind of attitude toward rape victims like the ones in Saudi Arabia.

But if that was true then this women should be able to receive justice against Halliburton. So let's pay attention to see if this is the outcome, because if it is not then we know that justice has truly died in this country.

What do you do when you notice massive corruption in the company that employs you in Iraq? You sue their asses, that's what.

Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers' behalf. Whose side is the Justice Department on?

I just love watching the wheels of justice finally starting to turn. I have to confess that for some time I was afraid that we had forgotten just who we were as a country.

When all is said and done we will be amazed by how deep the corruption went, and from how high up it was okayed.