So to the best of your knowledge Halliburton is still controlling the entire operation to date?

Yes, Halliburton is controlling the entire operation.

I've also raised questions with the administration about a Halliburton subsidiary that was dealing with Saddam Hussein and breaking the embargo when we had one on Iraq, and the same regarding a Halliburton subsidiary that was breaking our trade embargo with Iran and Libya. I was told by a person I spoke with at the Defense Department, "Well, we don't deal with that issue."

So who does deal with that issue?

Well, that same person said, "The Justice Department might look at it, but they're not concerned about it."

To me it's baffling how this administration has been so insensitive to the obvious appearance of impropriety in the way that they've given Halliburton special treatment. The lack of oversight about the Iraq contract, and having a contract that is so prone to abuse.

For as long as I've been in office, I've heard Republicans talk about how they're against waste, fraud and abuse. In the contract we have with Halliburton, there is clearly waste, and, I think, abuse. I don't know if there is fraud or not, but it appears that the Republicans who control the Congress don't want to do any oversight, and the Bush administration, which has ultimate responsibility, also seems uninterested.

In terms of my Republican colleagues in the Congress, this stands in my mind in stark contrast to the way they were so vigorous in doing oversight during the Clinton administration -- when there wasn't an accusation too small for them to issue subpoenas and call hearings.

Are you concerned that there's fraud going on with the Halliburton contract?

I don't have enough information to reach a conclusion on that subject, but I've certainly reached the conclusion that there's waste of taxpayers' dollars. That in and of itself, when hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted, ought to catch somebody's attention in this government.

What's your view of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's announcement that the Pentagon is shutting out several key U.S. allies, including France, Germany and Russia, from the contract bidding process for the next $18.6 billion in projects in Iraq?

I think it's a mistake for a number of reasons. For starters, this is not a good deal for U.S. taxpayers. With 26 massive new contracts funded with $18.6 billion from the Iraq supplemental, the whole point of full and open competition is to get the best value for taxpayers by comparing bids from different companies. If the administration is going to exclude a Canadian firm that could do the work for less, the taxpayer is out of luck.

It's also a bad idea because it undermines U.S. efforts to win international support for the reconstruction of Iraq. It's so arbitrary in the way the administration decided which countries will be permitted to bid, and which will be excluded. For example, Turkish firms will be allowed to compete even though Turkey refused to allow U.S. aircraft to use its airspace [and refused to allow the staging of U.S. ground troops on its soil] during the war. But German companies can't compete, even though Germany did permit the U.S. to use airbases in Germany during the invasion. On the other hand, Egypt is allowed to compete, though it is hardly a leader in fostering Arab democracy. And then you have Canada, which has pledged $300 million to the humanitarian reconstruction effort and is sending police trainers to Jordan to help train Iraqi police officers, but Canadian companies aren't welcome to bid. [The New York Times reported late Thursday that President Bush had reassured Prime Minister Jean Chrétien Thursday morning that Canada would not be excluded after all.] So this line drawing just doesn't make sense.

What does this mean for former Secretary of State James Baker's diplomatic efforts to reduce Iraqi debt as part of the reconstruction?

Ultimately, it's counterproductive and it doesn't help James Baker at all. Rather than increasing international cooperation in Iraq, this decision will have exactly the opposite effect. Look what's already happening with Russia: We've been trying to get them to forgive the huge debt that Iraq owed them, and now they've promptly turned around and said "absolutely not" in response to being excluded from potentially working with us on these contracts.

If we decide that certain countries are not our friends -- which is a strange notion, because some of these countries that are being excluded have been our allies since before World War II -- it becomes self-fulfilling. They're going to think of themselves as no longer our allies. To me that hardly seems a good result.

According to the Times, Paul Wolfowitz said the primary basis for this policy of exclusion is "national security and national defense." Does that seem like a plausible explanation? What is the administration thinking here?

No, it doesn't seem plausible to me. It appears that the administration's thinking is to get even. It appears to be retribution against countries who they think weren't helpful in the U.N. Security Council, or who weren't part of the initial alliance to go to war in Iraq. It's retribution against countries that didn't buy the arguments this administration advanced for going to war in Iraq -- arguments which, for the most part, turned out to be untrue.

Could there be any reason to think that this type of hardball politics would be a useful or effective way to pursue our foreign policy goals, ostensibly to achieve international peace and security in the Middle East?

This is a policy that rejects diplomacy. It's full of macho unilateralism. I think we've had enough of that. We can't rebuild Iraq alone, and it's primarily U.S. men and women there today who are making the greatest sacrifice that they could be called upon to make for their country.

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