But this time, before the VP debate. Maybe someone can send this to Karl Rove. :-) I really like the "mashed potatoes" line...
Edwards: Blah, blah, Halliburton.
Cheney: You know, I'm glad you brought that up. I've been quiet up until now, because I felt that the country had more important things to talk about then me. But since you brought it up, here goes.
There were two Halliburton contracts that were important in Iraq. The first one was a contract to provide logistics. In other words, feeding our fine soldiers. I'll call that one the "mashed potatoes" contract, because for some reason, soldiers like mashed potatoes. Now Halliburton beat out four other companies in 2001 to provide that contract. Now before that, the defense department had been providing their own mashed potatoes, and they weren't as good, and they were more expensive. After Halliburton took it over, the Department of Defense was able to save millions every year and the food was better.
The second contract I'll call the firemen contract, because that contract was to put out any oil fires and such with the company Knowles, Brown and Root, which is owned by Halliburton. The best way to understand what KBR does is to watch the John Wayne movie, Hellfighters. Those guys are fire-eaters, they put out the most deadly fires in the world, they're the sort of guys that John Wayne makes movies about.
Now, my opponent is absolutely correct, that was a sole source contract. Those KBR guys are the only people who do that kind of stuff, so the Pentagon went to them and agreed to pay them a certain amount of profit over their costs. By law, that amount is limited to 7% profit, which is pretty slim profit margins.
My opponent thinks that feeding our troops and putting out fires is something I should apologize for because I used to work for them. That's because he and his running mate are lawyers, and have never built anything in their life. Well, I've built things and I'm proud of that. I'm proud that a company I used to work for is feeding our troops, and puts out the most deadly fires in the world.
Edwards: blah, blah, body armor, humvee armor
Cheney: You know, that really upsets me, and it upsets the President too. If there's one thing the President and I have tried to do its support our troops as much as possible. When we went to war, all the troops had body armor and all of the frontline troops had the most advanced body armor available. Now we didn't think that was good enough going forward, so one of the things in that 87 billion dollars was to upgrade the body armor for our troops.
And you know what your running mate did? He voted against it. And now you're complaining?
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