Preaching ethics

This intriguing report, from October 21, is revealing:

"A Republican congressman criticized the State Department on Friday for allowing a U.S. lobbying firm to work for Sudan while the Bush administration is trying to tighten sanctions on the African country over the bloody conflict in its Darfur region.

"Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia said he was "shocked" that the department granted a waiver from an order barring U.S. companies from doing business with Sudan. "This allows this guy to lobby for Sudan, which the Congress and the administration have said is complicit in genocide," he said."

Wolf should be shocked but it's nothing new. The Washington Post reported in 2001 that Halliburton, Dick Cheney's now former company, did business with Iran and Libya...and Iraq during the Saddam years:

"During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a 'firm policy' against trading with Iraq.

"'Iraq's different,' he said.

"According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company."

The US government preaches to the world about morality but if there is a buck to be made…