Maybe, just maybe, it was that $34 million exit package that Cheney got when he left his CEO position at Halliburton to become an honorable public servant. Halliburton received around $40 billion in government contracts in the decade after 2003, many of those without bidding. Three years after the Iraqi invasion, its stock had risen by about 300 percent.
There was an estimated 31-60 billion dollars worth of contractor fraud and waste in Iraq war, and a large part of that came from Halliburton, now known as KBR. As Adam Weinstein reported for Mother Jones, KBR cost “at least $193 million in pay for unnecessary personnel, and maybe as much as $300 million,” which includes $100 million of government-furnished property that cannot be accounted for. KBR has also been blamed for the electrocution and death of 12 soldiers, because of poor wiring jobs at army bases.