Halliburton's tentacles are everywhere

Cernig notes this morning that at the same time as the Bush Administration is gearing up to attack Iran, Dick Cheney's pension provider is busy running an oil field there:

It's just another Halliburton oil and gas operation. The company name is emblazoned everywhere: On trucks, equipment, large storage silos and workers' uniforms.

But this isn't Texas. It's Iran. U.S. companies aren't supposed to do business here.

Yet, in January, Halliburton won a contract to drill at a huge Iranian gas field called Pars, which an Iranian government spokesman said "served the interests" of Iran.

[snip]

Halliburton says the operation — videotaped by NBC News — is entirely legal. It's run by a subsidiary called "Halliburton Products and Services Limited," based outside the U.S. In fact, the law allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to do business in Iran under strict conditions.

[snip]

Still, Halliburton stands out because its operations in Iran are now under a federal criminal investigation. Government sources say the focus is on whether the company set out to illegally evade the sanctions imposed ten years ago.

For Halliburton to have done this legally, the foreign subsidiary operating in Iran must be independent of the main operation in Texas. Yet, when an NBC producer approached managers in Iran, he was sent to company officials in Dubai. But they said only Halliburton headquarters in Houston could talk about operations in Iran. Still, Halliburton maintains its Iran subsidiary does make independent business decisions.

[snip]

Halliburton says it is unfairly targeted because of politics, but recently announced it is pulling out of Iran because the business environment "is not conducive to our overall strategies and objectives."

Halliburton? Conduct business in an illegal manner? I'm shocked that anyone would even INSINUATE such a thing -- or for that matter, wonder about why Halliburton, after being in Iran for two years, has only decided it's "not conducive to our overall strategies and objectives" after it's the subject of a criminal probe.

Cernig wonders:

...if their old boss Dick Cheney manages to get his way and the US attacks Iran, would Halliburton get government compensation for it's destroyed equipment and potential profits?

And I can't help but wonder what the outcry would be from the right if it were a company Barack Obama used to run that was doing business in Iran.