FBI investigating how Halliburton got Bush administration contracts
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.

FBI agents this week sought permission to interview Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer who went public last weekend with allegations that her agency unfairly awarded a Halliburton subsidiary no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars in Iraq, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

October 15, 2004
DIRTY TRICKS MONTH: REPUBLICANS HAVE NOT LEARNED THEIR FLYER LESSON

WHAT IS IT WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE SOUTH and disgusting political flyers and mailers?

A nasty flyer has turned up in Tennesse politics which depicts a handicapped athlete running on a track with George Bush's face pasted on.

The text reads:

Voting for Bush is Like Running in the Special Olympics -- Even if You Win, You're Still Retarded.

The Traditional Values Coalition and other right wing operations in the South jumped on this fast alleging that Tennessee Democrat Craig Fitzhugh's office, which shares space with the Kerry/Edwards Campaign, was distributing this flyer...

The 45-minute claim was false

After two years, one war and at least 16,000 deaths, the Government finally admits it

By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent

13 October 2004

Tony Blair's claim that Iraq was within 45 minutes of launching weapons of mass destruction ­ a central plank of his case for war ­ fell apart yesterday as the Foreign Secretary formally withdrew the infamous claim and revealed MI6 had abandoned its source for the bogus intelligence.

In a humiliating climbdown, Jack Straw told MPs in a special Commons statement that MI6 has severed ties with the sources for both the 45-minute claim and intelligence that Saddam Hussein had produced a biological weapons agent in 2000.

The decision to lay to rest the most notorious intelligence claim in the case for war increased pressure from Labour and opposition MPs for the Prime Minister to make a full personal apology for the decision to invade Iraq "on a false premise"....