Hunting for the Halliburton contract

In the spirit of The Smoking Gun, I went looking for the Halliburton contract that was announced this week. What I found answered a few of the wilder conspiracy claims floating around, but still raises additional questions about disclosure and future business prospects for Halliburton. (Why are we interested in Halliburton? Remember, it’s all about the Harken-Halliburton Presidency.)

Summary:

  1. The “contract” that was let this week is a task order under Halliburton’s existing indefinite delivery contract vehicle, contract DAAA09-02-D-0007.
  2. The scope of this task order is the development of a contingency plan to extinguish the oil well fires in Iraq; execution of that plan will be under another contract.
  3. The value of the contingency plan task order is almost certainly less than $5 million, probably less than $100,000.
  4. The real value will be in the follow-on work to this award.

Details, including a discussion of how I found this data, are here.

Has Blogdex been spammed?

Of the posts in Blogdex’s top ten today, #1 is an ad for the Columbia House DVD Club; #3 is a tie between six stock listings on Netster and something called NAQ; and #13 is a 34-way tie (probably more, but I couldn’t bring myself to click Next) between different discounthotels*.net listings.

I smell some changes coming to the authentication process at Blogdex.

In a nutshell…

A little long to print on an index card for easy reference, as someone suggested, but worth reading anyway: A warmonger explains war to a peacenik. My favorite part:

WM: The main point is that we are invading Iraq because resolution 1441 threatened “severe consequences.” If we do not act, the security council will become an irrelevant debating society.

PN: So the main point is to uphold the rulings of the security council?

WM: Absolutely. …unless it rules against us.

The sad, the bad, and the funny

Sad: Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan Dead at 76. It may come as a surprise to casual readers (and as no surprise to a few close friends) that I don’t follow the machinery of government closely. I tend to kneejerk very handily in favor or disapprobation of whatever crosses my radar screen, but it wasn’t until I spent time talking with Lisa about her former career as a Congressional staffer and public policy maven that I understood how pivotal Moynihan had been in shaping intelligent, humane public policies during his career. His like will not come again for a long time, I’m afraid.

Bad: Use a firewall, go to jail. Ed Felten points to legislation pending before Massachusetts and Texas (among other states, including Georgia) that would extend the DMCA to criminalize the “possession, sale, or use of technologies that ‘conceal from a communication service provider … the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication.’” Firewalls, anyone? Encrypted email? NAT (such as is performed by a wireless hub)? Not if you value your liberty, ironically. Call your state representatives and let them know they’re being idiots…

Funny: The Index of Evil at Warblogger.com. A brilliant application of Weblogs.com, this one uses the hourly changes feed and scans all the newly updated websites for four keywords—“bin Laden,” “Ashcroft,” “Hussein,” and “Poindexter.” While their methodology may be suspect (surely Saddam is more commonly used?) their intent is sterling. And the Index may be syndicated. If I have time, look for an Ashcroft ticker to appear on this blog soon…

If I didn’t blog…

…I would have gone nuts by now. Honestly. I was thinking today about how crazy I was living by myself in the summer of 2001 during my internship, and how starting the blog got me through many of those dark nights (and occasionally on a road to self-discovery, though not often enough).

I also thought today about how I use this blog. Some of it is as an outboard memory, a commonplace book of things I find useful. Some of it is about things I have to say, or ideas that grab me and don’t let go until I write them down.

And some of it, honestly, is what I do to fill in the corners when I’m uncomfortable and feel myself slipping back into depression. I don’t write about the depression, I just write. It’s activity, and it consumes less thought and is more productive than the alternatives. But it doesn’t face or solve the problem of the depression, it just gets me past it.

I’m going to try to alter my writing patterns to: write fifteen minutes in the morning before work, for half an hour during lunch, and then anything else after dinner. I think if I can keep myself from compulsively blogging every time I feel a little depressed, I can both improve the content of this site (you win) and be more motivated to face depressive episodes head on and manage constructively through them (I win).

Continuing blog problems

Posts are going to my blog but then disappearing from the home page. This is problematic because Weblogs.com gets pinged anyway (though the RSS feed doesn’t update). Anyone seen this on a Manila site before?

Also, the server that runs the editorial part seems to be falling over regularly, and losing many of my changes with it.

Morning foliage, almost

I took a bunch of photos of our back yard this morning, with the full intention of posting them, until I remembered that Lisa has the USB cable for the camera with her at her conference. (Mental note: buy another A:B cable, cheapskate.)

It’s the kind of grey humid morning, just after a rainfall, that was so rare in Virginia… heh. Not here…

Salam Pax: dark days in Baghdad

The Iraqi blogger’s website is pretty slow, but it looks like the PyGoogle folks are taking pity on his excessive bandwidth usage. He’s giving some amazing insight on how the war is being felt in Baghdad:

While buying groceries the woman who sells the vegetables was talking to another about the approach of American armies to Najaf city and about what is happening at Um Qasar and Basra. If Um Qasar is so difficult to control what will happen when they get to Baghdad? It will turn uglier and this is very worrying. People (and I bet “allied forces”) were expecting things to be mush easier. There are no waving masses of people welcoming the Americans nor are they surrendering by the thousands. People are oing what all of us are, sitting in their homes hoping that a bomb doesn’t fall on them and keeping their doors shut.
The smoke columns have now encircled Baghdad, well almost. The wids blow generally to the east which leaves the western side of Baghdad clear. But when it comes in the way of the sun it covers it totally, it is a very thick cloud. We are going to have some very dark days, literally.

To Tony, with love, from Buk

A note before I start this: sometime, someday, I will have to dig up, re-key, and post the poem I wrote that was at least partly about the death of Charles Bukowski. (Re-key because the Jaz drive that I saved a lot of my UVA files to is a piece of crap.)

Tony is sounding a little down on his blog tonight. So I channeled Bukowski at him in a comment, which I reprint here in its entirety. Read it, then go give him some love:

I’m not sure that Bukowski never whined. You could, if you were feeling uncharitable, interpret his works as one long cry for help. Or you could do what I think it is you do, and interpret them as a celebration of where he was, and the joy of being able to write, and the perplexity that the rest of life wasn’t that simple. It’s like he says, “you get so alone at times that it just makes sense.”

A toast to Bukowski, who would have known exactly what to do about this war: switch the radio to Mahler, open another bottle of wine or three, and go screw some broad.

And with that, I’m off to sleep.

Washington State in the spotlight

New York Times: “Pacific Northwest keeps watch on many vulnerable points.” In which it is pointed out that a state with 2400 miles of shorefront and a long, forested international border might have a lot to worry about from terrorism, even were it not in the midst of a massive economic crisis that makes adequate staffing of security posts impossible.

Makes me wonder whether the two healthy businesses in town—Microsoft and Starbucks—could find a way to step up and help the private sector.

Keep on marchin’

From the weekend, lots of protest notes around the blogosphere:

  • Esta notes that the riot police had to be called out in Richmond (“Richmond has riot police?”)
  • George notes that the protests in San Francisco didn’t necessarily convince people on the fence (“Graffiti, destruction of public and private property, disruption of traffic, and destroying police cars do not exactly bring me around to their cause.  In addition, it alienates more peaceful protestors who might actually be able to intellectually articulate their point of view”)
  • Tony posts a brilliant photo essay that bridges the Oscars and the pro- and anti-war protests in LA.
  • Jessamyn talks about the disconnect between protestors’ rhetoric (“shut down the town”) and reality (“my electricity and water were still running safely, as was my network connectivity and phone. There were no holes in the walls of my house and my life was in no danger. My family and friends were likewise fairly safe. Food was readily available and inexpensive. I could take a bus to within about eight blocks of my final destination and I like to walk. I had no shopping to do, or businesses to visit, and I feel comfortable among teeming throngs of activists. Shut down? Not to me.”)

Now, a confession. I still haven’t been to a protest. This is probably creeping suburbanism at its worst, but I have this funny feeling. It says I shouldn’t go to a protest unless I’m so sure of my convictions I’m willing to get arrested. And I’m not there yet. But God bless those who are.