Demagogue

Recently Cheney has been making a few semi-rare public appearances lately, mostly to defend recent criticism of Gitmo.

Which makes this little tidbit interesting.

A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.

The announcement comes the same week that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the jail after U.S. lawmakers said it had created an image problem for the United States.

As far as I know, Cheney still has financial ties to Halliburtion. If that is still the case, then this should become part of the conversation about Gitmo as well.

Update: A poster just reminded my why my memory is so fuzzy about Cheney's financial ties to Halliburton-- he's still getting deferred salary from them, which doesn't fluxuate based on how well Halliburton is doing. Also, he and his wife still have stock in the company, but any profit they make while Dick is VP goes to charity. Regardless, even if we assume that Cheney has nothing to gain personally-- it's not like he needs the money-- his connections to Halliburton and Halliburton's billions in profits from the Iraq war still stink to high heaven to me.