The real issue for the American Taxpayer is not Dick Cheney's deferred comp or the % of profit to Halliburton but the fact that the actual cost of the services compared with providing that service with military personnel is the issue. Some of the services Halliburton provides are things like laundry, food preperation, supply and transport. When I served in the Army the military provided thoes services as either combat support or combat service support. They were the cooks, QM, transportation, Supply. The Bush brain trust decided to outsourse many of these services so more of the people in the military would be in the combat branches.
Two big problems with that concept. First, the salaries that Halliburton must pay for people to perform those functions in a combat zone are several times more than Uncle Sam pays the military members. Halliburton was paying about $80,000 salary plus benefits for a person to drive a oil tanker. That function was normally done by a PFC SP4 for about 1/3 of the salary. The second problem is that when one of these support functions become involved in combat operations they are not able to protect themselves and we divert our combat military personnel to help protect them. Under the old system, drivers, clerks etc were soldiers first and were able to defent themselves and were not be a drain on the combat forces.
This idea is an example of how Bush and Cheney have screwed up the military and added to the tax bureden at the same time.
