A piece we ran in Viewpoints yesterday, “Iran’s Election Drama More Elaborate Than You Think,” indicated that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a former member of the Revolutionary Guards. This was incorrect (see this for details). We regret the error.
On a less clear-cut matter, I received the following e-mail from Halliburton’s PR department:
FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION
The article, “Where are they now?†by Philip Giraldi, posted June 23 on Antiwar.com, incorrectly states that Halliburton is a military contractor. [Editor’s note: Giraldi’s offending sentence was “Cheney headed defense contractor Halliburton after his stint at the Defense Department under George H.W. Bush.”] Halliburton has never been contracted for services by the U.S. government, particularly none of the logistics support services frequently discussed in the media today.
To confirm, Halliburton is not a military contractor. Halliburton is one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, and serves the upstream oil and gas industry throughout the lifecycle of the reservoir – from locating hydrocarbons and managing geological data, to drilling and formation evaluation, well construction and completion, and optimizing production through the life of the field.
You will note that all of the government services and engineering and construction businesses have been and remain with KBR. To confirm, KBR and Halliburton are completely separate and independent of each other. Halliburton separated KBR from the company in April 2007 ( http://www.halliburton.com/public/news/pubsdata/press_release/2007/corpnws_040507a.html ).
We respectfully request you make this correction immediately.
Kind regards,
Diana Gabriel
Senior Manager, Public Relations
Halliburton
Well, this is a little like complaining that the sentence “Hirohito ruled Imperial Japan” is inaccurate because Japan no longer has an empire. At the time that Cheney headed Halliburton (1995-2000), Kellogg Brown & Root (now KBR) was a subsidiary of the company, and it sure as hell was a defense contractor. As Gabriel notes, Halliburton only split with KBR in 2007, after 44 years together.
But just to avoid any confusion about Halliburton’s present status, we removed the offending modifier “defense contractor.” Also, Japan is no longer an empire.*
*But it was one when Hirohito became its emperor.
Halliburton! Me thinks the protest is too much.
I suppose it all boils down to how you define "is" or "was". Sheesh!
This is a fair objection posed by Halliburton. The split happened two years ago, but journalists who love to pin the all the evil in the world on Halliburton because of Cheney's position there years ago have never bothered to look at the actual facts.
Isn't Giraldi a former CIA employee? Then this would be inexcusable.
KBR's involvement with military contracting goes way, way back in American history, long before Cheney. The issue has never really been news, so distorting the picture does nothing except show that the author(s) are deliberately distorting the picture.
Say what? All Giraldi said was that Cheney headed defense contractor Halliburton. It was a defense contractor, by virtue of owning Kellogg Brown & Root, at the time Cheney headed it. What are you going on about?