The Halliburton Two-Step

Welcome to your Halliburton two-step lesson! Here's step one: The US government runs a gulag-like prison in Guantanamo with horrible living conditions. So have your former CEO, Dick Cheney, defend the facility amid calls for it to be shut down.

Here's step two: Halliburton to the rescue!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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.

An air-conditioned two-story prison, known as Detention Camp #6, will be built at Guantanamo to house 220 men. It will include exercise areas, medical and dental spaces as well as a security control room, the contract announcement said.

I guess Cheney knew just the guys that could spruce up the place. It begs the question of whether the intention all along was to build a shitty facility and get called out for it, just so Halliburton could swoop in under the guise of "you said we needed to fix it!"

By the way, this is not the first time Halliburton has received a contract for work on Gitmo. In 2002 they built 200 new cells for $9.3 million. In 2003 they were paid another $13 million for additional construction. I'm sure sooner or later they'll get it perfect.

According to Runsfeld, US taxpayers are now in for $100 million at Gitmo since 2001, and we're about to dump $30 million more. That's a lot of money to subsidize al Qaeda's greatest recruiting tool.