Us, supposedly. This is why the Halliburton payout, which Cheney negotiated before he ran for vice president in 2000, has always been controversial. And it is why Cheney's dismissive attitude toward the appearance of a conflict of interest should have been taken more seriously back at the beginning - that is, before the word "Halliburton" became associated with the phrase "waste, fraud and abuse."

From the start, Cheney insisted that the Halliburton payments were an entitlement, earnings from his hard work as chief executive. And they are. But he also has misrepresented his continued financial ties to the company. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years," he said in September 2003.

But Cheney was being paid the deferred compensation every year, under an arrangement that guaranteed payment, with interest, even if Halliburton went bankrupt. He also has held stock options worth millions, and many of these were exercised by an independent agent in 2005, with the proceeds rolled over into charitable contributions. The special administrator Cheney established when he took office still controls Halliburton options currently worth about $1 million, according to Cheney's lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell.

The complicated deal executed last year meant the Cheneys received no gain from the exercise of the options, and owed no tax on the proceeds.

Fair enough? Not exactly.

The ethics laws that apply to executive branch personnel are intended to eliminate even the appearance that an official's policy decisions might be influenced by personal finances. "A public servant owes undivided loyalty to the government," according to a 2003 Congressional Research Service report on the Cheney situation. Any advice or recommendation the official makes must "not be tainted, even unintentionally, with influence from private or personal financial interests." The president and vice president are specifically excluded from the criminal sanctions that might apply to underlings. The risk of public opprobrium is supposed to work instead.

Would oilman Cheney, working with oilman George W. Bush, have made the same decisions favoring oil-industry giveaways and invading oil-rich Iraq had the vice president not kept getting money from Halliburton? Probably.

But at least taxpayers would not now suffer the affront of watching the vice president's benefactor gouging us - while simultaneously paying him.

The initial no-bid contract of $2.41 billion granted to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq was a debacle of cost overruns and billing irregularities. Pentagon auditors questioned $263 million of the bills as inflated or unsupported by documents. But the Army decided to pay almost all of the questionable costs, according to The New York Times. Meanwhile, a separate contract awarded through bidding also drew auditors' complaints that KBR had failed to bring its costs into line or report them accurately.

Through it all, Halliburton has been awarded profits as a percentage of its costs - including those costs questioned as excessive. It got separate government bonuses as well.

Cheney insists he hasn't been involved in any matters involving his old company. Nothing has emerged to directly contradict him. But surely the vice president knows of Halliburton's shoddy performance and its preying on the American taxpayer.

Another public official - perhaps someone as wealthy as Cheney - might have forfeited the Halliburton money. But not the vice president we have.

Is Maliki a "hateful sectarian"? You be the judge. He is, first of all, the No. 2 official in the terrorist Al Dawa party, the Shiite fundamentalist sect-party led by Jaafari. Far from being a figure that can unite Iraq's warring parties, Maliki is a militant Shiite partisan. Like many of the Shiite fundamentalists who now dominate Iraq, Maliki spent many years in exile in Iran, and he has close ties to the Iranian leadership. Maliki was a main author of Iraq's divisive constitution and he was a leader (along with Ahmed Chalabi, the neoconservatives' pet) of the viciously excessive purge of Baathists in Iraq after the war in 2003, a move now seen as having seriously exacerbated the current civil war.

Last year Maliki pushed for a law that would have imposed the death penalty not only for insurgents but even their sympathizers, including anyone found to "finance, propagate, cover up, support, or provide shelter for the terrorists, no matter how involved they are." He has bitterly condemned not only the Sunni-led resistance that opposes the U.S. occupation, but also the two moderate, secular parties that hold several dozen seats in Iraq's parliament, led, respectively, by Salah Mutlaq and Iyad Allawi, the former a secular Iraqi nationalist who claims to maintain a dialogue with elements of the resistance and the latter a secular Shiite who spent years on the CIA's payroll as an opponent of Saddam Hussein. "It should be recalled that some of the electoral lists contain elements that were possibly part of the machinery of the old regime, i.e. Baathists who are subject to the de-Baathification law [and] intelligence agents or those who got involved in the Iraqi Intelligence Service immediately before the collapse of the regime," warned Maliki.

He enthusiastically endorsed the wholesale purge of the police force and the Interior Ministry that was imposed by Bayan Jabr, the hard-line official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), saying, "Hateful elements have penetrated the security services and we must purge them." The result, of course, was the creation of a ministry whose commandos are heavily infiltrated by SCIRI death squads responsible for the murders of thousands of Iraqis.

In the deal that brought Maliki to power, the Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, deigned to make a deal with the two Kurdish warlord parties that control the Kurdish enclave in the north, and with the Sunni fundamentalist religious bloc, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood secret society. But pointedly they excluded both Mutlaq and Allawi. By including the Sunni fundamentalists, whose leaders got both a deputy president slot and speaker of the parliament, Maliki and the Shiites put their stamp of approval on the Lebanonization of Iraq. And by excluding the secular Mutlaq and Allawi, they made it clear that Iraq has no place for anyone who wants a united state with a strong central government.

How can Maliki approach any sort of deal to quell the Sunni resistance? He can't. In fact, Maliki has denounced the off-again, on-again U.S. dialogue with the resistance as a plot to restore the Baath party to power. So how can Maliki offer anything to the growing Sunni-led insurgency other than war?

How can Maliki move to amend Iraq's constitution in a way that can right its obvious wrongs? He can't. As its author, he is committed to the constitution's provisions for radical federalism (i.e., the breakup of Iraq) and for giving the bulk of Iraqi oil revenues to the Shiites and Kurds. He is also committed to the constitutional provisions that enshrine Islam at the heart of the Iraqi legal system.

How can Maliki move to assure Sunnis that he will put an end to the Shiite death squads in the SCIRI-run Interior Ministry? He can't. He is on record asserting that the way to build the police is to integrate Shiite and Kurdish militia into the police, thus guaranteeing that police commandos continue to be seen as the armed wing of the Shiite movement.

All of this means that the Maliki-led government of Iraq will have little or no effect outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Battle lines in the civil war are hardening, as exemplified by the unprecedented house-to-house street fighting last week in the north Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya. There, in a mostly Sunni part of town, local neighborhood militia fought pitched battles with Iraqi government forces, led by the notorious Shiite-dominated police. It was the first recorded battle in which an entire Baghdad Sunni enclave fought against government troops and against U.S. forces. Meanwhile, even as Maliki's name was being announced, dozens of bodies continued to turn up in Baghdad morgues-including seven in Adhamiya-all victims of death squads. And nine more U.S. troops were killed in Iraq over the weekend.

The Bush administration cannot stanch the bleeding in Iraq simply by tinkering with the leadership of Iraq. First, the U.S. pushed for elections before the fractured country was ready-and against the advice of experts-and then publicly challenged the chosen prime minister. The chaos now engulfing Iraq is a direct result of the Bush administration's policy of pushing democracy on the cheap and by the barrel of a gun. But it's American troops and Iraqi civilians who are paying the price.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues. He is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com

Didn't the Bush administration adopt a strategy produced by the right-wing think tank, Rand Corp. for exploiting the ideological and religious differences of the Iraqi people, even though Iraq has no history of sectarian violence?

So why are the American people so eager to accept the Pentagon-media analysis of the present conflict in Iraq? Every part of the narrative so far has been exposed as a lie. Are we to believe that the media has suddenly "seen the light" and decided to record the facts as objectively as possible?

Are we to believe that the Pentagon has decided to "be straight" with the public about the current state of affairs in Iraq?

Let us at least agree on the one basic axiom that underscores all corporate journalism; the media never tells the truth.

Sure, stories break that shed light on some area of government waste, fraud or abuse, but the really big stories (independent investigations of 9-11, the destruction of Falluja, the 2004 Ohio election fraud, the Downing Street memo, "Able Danger") simply disappear behind a wall of disinformation. The truth only leaches out through its corporate spigot as a way of lending credibility to the "prevailing lie" which animates every area of the corporate information-system.

This is THEIR system, not yours or mine; and it is their narrative that appears on the front page of the New York Times or the headline story on CNN. That storyline is always skewed in favor of those who have a vested interest in persuading the public that their perspective is correct, which takes us back to our original axiom; the media never tells the truth.

The civil war storyline is intended to divert attention from the bloody subjugation of the Iraqi people by a foreign military. This is the real story of the Iraqi conflict. The current malaise in Iraq is reducible to three bullet-points; occupation, occupation, and occupation. Any departure from this essential narrative is simply false.

American Intelligence services are involved in every area of the present hostilities. Author Max Fuller ("Crying Wolf: Media disinformation and Deaths squads in Occupied Iraq") has documented how CIA operatives have not only trained the Iraqi death squads operating in the Interior ministry, but created a high-tech facility with data banks of the names of potential targets for future attacks.

Does that sound like civil war or a pretty well-thought out scheme for plunging the country into chaos?

And how does one explain the fact that there have been three separate incidents where occupation forces have been either caught or connected to bombings in Iraq?

The first was the famous incident in Basra where two British paramilitaries were caught disguised as Arabs with a truck-full of explosives in their vehicle. Panicky British forces destroyed the Basra jail to release the two captured SAS soldiers clearly afraid that their involvement in setting off bombs would be exposed.

Another report that appeared in Reuters "American arrested with weapons in Iraq" confirmed that an American "security contractor working for a private company, possessed explosives which were found in his car." He was arrested by Iraqi security guards.

The bombing of the Golden-domed mosque also establishes links between the sporadic bombing in Iraq and American clandestine operatives. The AFP reported that the bombing "was the work of specialists" and the "placing of explosives must have taken at least 12 hours". The report continues:

"Construction Minister Jassem Mohammed Jaafar said, "Holes were dug into the mausoleum's four main pillars and packed with explosives. Then charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance."

Clearly the bombing was not carried out by rogue elements in the disparate Iraqi resistance but highly trained saboteurs executing a precision demolition to incite sectarian violence. The blast bears all the hallmarks of a covert Intelligence agency operation. Eyewitness accounts verify that American troops and Iraqi National Guard were active in the area throughout the night and that their cars could be heard running "the whole night until next morning". People living around the mosque were told "to stay in your shop and don't leave the area".

At 6:30 AM the American troops left, just 10 minutes before the bombs went off.

Since the bombing, the media has universally adopted the approach that the destruction of the mosque was the "catalyzing event" which put Iraq on the pat to civil war.

It is utter nonsense.

The story is just as bogus as the earlier fabrications about WMD or al Zarqawi. In fact, if it was the truth, we can be reasonably certain that it would not appear in the headlines, as per our original axiom that "the media never tells the truth".

The rationale leading up to the war was a lie. The justification for the ongoing occupation as a fight against terrorism (al Zarqawi) was a lie. The fairy tale about an Iraqi civil war is a lie. And, presumably, all the future stories diverting attention from America's bloody occupation will be lies.

Iraq is subsumed by a wave of violence which radiates directly from the White House. Don't blame the Iraqis. The world's most ancient civilization is being systematically obliterated to feed the insatiable greed of Washington warlords and their constituents in the corporate boardrooms across America.

Iraq is America's slaughterhouse; the Iraqi people have no part in this crime.

Don't call it civil war.

Although still in its early stages, the militia buildup "is something that definitely concerns us, and something that we are watching very carefully," said Col. David R. Gray, 48, of Herscher, Ill., commander of the 101st Airborne's 1st Brigade Combat Team, based in Kirkuk. "So far they haven't been that violent, but does it add to the tension, putting them into this maelstrom? Absolutely."

Pivotal and divisive issue
The fate of oil-rich Kirkuk -- Iraq's third-largest city with about a million residents and sizable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen communities -- has been a pivotal and divisive issue since long before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Iraq's constitution, endorsed in nationwide balloting in October, calls for a referendum on the future of the region by the end of 2007, but many key details are in dispute, such as who will be permitted to vote.

Kurdish leaders speak openly of their intention to use force if necessary to gain control of the city, which they consider the historical capital of a vast Kurdish nation also extending into Iran and Turkey. During the rule of President Saddam Hussein, Arabs brought in from elsewhere in Iraq displaced thousands of Kurds. As many as 300,000 Kurds who were pushed out have returned to the area, according to U.S. estimates, establishing vast settlements on the outskirts of the city and making them its largest ethnic community. Kurds also occupy most of the top provincial political and security jobs.

Many Iraqi Arabs, both Sunni and Shiite, are adamantly opposed to relinquishing Kirkuk, among them Sadr and his political followers.

Operating within and alongside Iraq's police and army, Shiite militias have grown politically more powerful and boosted their membership, despite being outlawed under Iraq's new constitution. U.S. officials have called on the Shiite-led government, whose leading parties are tied to Badr and the Mahdi Army, to rein them in, but few if any such steps have been taken.

Gray said the militias used the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, as a pretext for expanding into Kirkuk, ostensibly to protect their mosques and people. Shiite residents of Kirkuk, most of whose families were transferred here by Hussein decades ago, are believed to make up less than 5 percent of the local population.

For the most part, however, the militias have maintained a low profile, U.S. military officials said. Shortly after they arrived, an Iraqi police unit told them to stow their guns and promised that the mosques would be protected. The militias complied. They have held at least three large but peaceful street demonstrations, including two by Badr that attracted more than 2,000 people. Wise said Badr is less troubled by the prospect of Kurdish control of Kirkuk.

"We know they are here, but they are not patrolling in the streets publicly, not yet," said Brig. Gen. Sherko Shakir, the provincial police chief.

A few hundred Shiite militiamen would be no match for the tens of thousands of Kurdish fighters either serving in Iraqi army units in Kirkuk or stationed outside the city in Kurdish-controlled provinces.

Looming battle?
In a meeting here last week, Sadr's representative in the city, Abdul Karim Khalifa, told U.S. officials that more armed loyalists were on the way and that as many as 7,000 to 10,000 Shiite residents were prepared to fight alongside the Mahdi Army if called upon. Legions more Shiite militiamen would push north from Baghdad's Sadr City slum, he said, according to Wise.

"His message was essentially that any idea of Kirkuk going to the Kurds will mean a fight," Wise said. "He said that their policy here was different from in other places, that they are not going to attack coalition forces because their only enemy here is the Kurds."

U.S. officials said the Shiite armed groups had not disrupted security here, but local police and government officials, many of them Kurds, have accused them of a wave of crimes.

"We fear the expansion of the role of Shiite armed men in Kirkuk," said Yadgar Abdullah, commander of the police emergency operations center in Kirkuk and an official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which administers the Kurds' decades-old militia, the pesh merga . He said the number of kidnappings for ransom in Kirkuk has surged since the militias arrival.

Another Kurdish security official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said Shiite militias are thought to have conducted at least five killings of Kurds in Kirkuk and the surrounding area.

"We are dealing with anybody that carries weapons and stands against the Iraqi government to disturb security," Abdullah said. "They will be considered terrorists that must be fought and disarmed."

In a recent interview, Khalifa, the Sadr representative, said the Mahdi Army -- which battled U.S. troops across southern and central Iraq in 2004 -- was responding to a power play by Kurdish politicians, whom he accused of plotting "to marginalize us in the political process and trying to force the Shiite Arabs out" by seizing control of Kirkuk.

New challenge for U.S. troops
Despite intense competition among Iraqi factions for control of the city, U.S. forces here have been largely successful at limiting violence. But the influx of Shiite militias poses a new challenge for American troops, who have long considered the primary threat to be the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.

Last week about two dozen U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi SWAT team launched a midnight raid in search of 12 men accused of planting a deadly roadside bomb last month. They crammed into a dozen Humvees and, with helicopters buzzing overhead, swarmed a quiet neighborhood in central Kirkuk, kicking down doors and rummaging through a half-dozen houses.

The six suspects they detained, whose names were provided by local informants, were believed to be members of the Mahdi Army, accused by U.S. and British forces of recent attacks on coalition troops in Baghdad and several southern cities. Photographs of Sadr were plastered on virtually every wall of every raided home.

"I had never heard of these Mahdi guys being up here until tonight," said Lt. John Reynolds, 23, of Ararat, Va., a platoon leader, as he rifled a cabinet full of Shiite prayer flags, posters depicting Imam Ali, and portraits of the youthful Sadr and his white-bearded father.

In a courtyard outside, a woman in a head scarf clutched three weeping children to her chest. Two men arrested inside sat blindfolded and bound in plastic handcuffs, one a soldier in the Iraqi army, the other a local policeman.

"Just what we need in a place like this," Reynolds said, "something new to worry about."

Kurds boost ranks
In response to the Shiite buildup, the Kurdish pesh merga militia has boosted its already substantial presence in Kirkuk and in the city of Tuz, where nearly 100 Kurdish gunmen arrived in recent weeks, Wise, the State Department representative, and U.S. commanders said.

The Kurds have also increased to about 15,000 the number of private security workers guarding offices and government buildings in the Kirkuk region, according to a Western official here, who said they could be called upon to fight if ethnic conflict escalated.

Tuz, a city of about 200,000 south of Kirkuk, was considered so peaceful in January that U.S. forces transferred out almost all their soldiers, with about 40 remaining as advisers to the Iraqi troops remaining behind.

"Now you are seeing lots of attempts by the militias to intimidate Iraqi soldiers there," said Lt. Col. Bob Benjamin, 42, of Chicago, deputy commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. "We found bombs near some mosques. There is definitely the potential for increased violence, but the Iraqis so far have kept the lid on the pot."

U.S. officers here say a further cause for concern is that the arrival of the militias, who U.S. officials say receive training, arms and funding from Iran, has coincided with an influx of Iranian sniper rifles and roadside-bomb technology in the region. The latter includes highly lethal Iranian-designed "shape charges" that channel the blast to punch through armored vehicles. Such a device killed a U.S. soldier this month, the first U.S. fatality in the city of Kirkuk since the 101st Airborne returned to Iraq in November.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company