by TChris

Remember all those solemn assurances that the invasion of Iraq wasn't about oil? Maybe it wasn't solely about oil, but oil is never far from the minds of Bush and Cheney.

An e-mail from an Army Corps of Engineers official in March 2003 refers to Douglas Feith's approval of a decision to award a contract to Halliburton, the company that was formerly under Dick Cheney's stewardship.

According to an e-mail excerpt in Time, the contract was "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w[ith] VP's office."

The Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract three days later without seeking other bids, Time reports.

It doesn't look good for Cheney to be coordinating business with his former employer, so Cheney's office says that the "action" being coordinated was the announcement of the contract. And why would Cheney's office, in particular, be involved in the announcement of the contract? Well, um, you know, because they thought it might, well, look bad that Halliburton got the contract, and they wanted to give Cheney a "head's up," so he'd be prepared to deny that he had anything to do with it.

So according to Cheney's office, Cheney wasn't coordinating the contract, he was coordinating the announcement of the contract so that he'd be prepared to deny that he had anything to do with the contract being announced. Huh?