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2003-03-31 - 7:23 a.m.

Mothering Sunday and Vita is visiting her cousin in Plymouth at the University and James is still in Rome. We walked over the hill along the Pilgrims Way to the Watts Gallery for brunch in the sun. It was a delight.

I wrote a lot more on the 1960s

Call me paranoid bui I can�t get into www.kwase-kwaza.org to update the site this morning. So here�s a cracker I would have posted if I could from Newsweek:

�Vice President Dick Cheney Is Still Receiving Annual Compensation From Halliburton

NEW YORK, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Vice President Dick Cheney hasn't entirely severed his financial ties to Halliburton, the Houston oil-services company, report Detroit Bureau Chief Keith Naughton and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh in the April 7 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 31). Even while Halliburton is scoring Army contracts that could top $2 billion, Cheney is still receiving annual compensation from the company he led from 1995 to August 2000, Newsweek reports. When Cheney stepped down as CEO of Halliburton to run for vice president, he sold his company stock and gave profits from his stock options to charity. But Naughton and Hirsh report that he still had more compensation coming. Rather than taking it in a lump-sum payment of about $800,000, Cheney opted for "deferred compensation," Wendy Hall of Halliburton tells Newsweek. Cheney chose annual payments of "less than $180,000" from 2001 to 2005, says Hall, which offers a tax benefit. Cheney, through spokeswoman Cathie Martin, contends he has no financial ties to Halliburton because of an insurance policy he took out for the value of his deferred compensation, which means he'll get paid even if the company goes under. "He has no financial interest in the success of the company," says Martin, who adds that Cheney has no say in awarding defense contracts. Indeed Newsweek learned last week that Halliburton is not a finalist for a $600 million reconstruction contract in Iraq.

But some Washington players are questioning the vice president's ethics. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, complained to the Army last week about the contract Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root unit received in early March to fight Iraqi oil fires. The Army secretly awarded Halliburton the contract, which analysts say could be worth up to $1 billion, without receiving other bids. Waxman told Newsweek that Cheney's ties to Halliburton "raise a red flag."

Waxman�s five questions on the contract are up on the KK news section (if you can get in). The exclusion from the $600m came after the first contract was let and then exposed � it was a defensive move after they realised they�d been caught with their hands in the till.

Here�s another good bit from a Washington site about over-enthusiasm � this week�s big story.

�Cheney may prove to be right, the White House says, but in the second week of the war there is a recognition that the enthusiasm of the hawks got out of control. ��There were very high expectations about the conduct of the war and enormous confidence in the military forces; we�ve all had drummed into us how superior they are,�� said former Representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, a Democrat who headed the House International Relations Committee. ��Then you run into difficulties. And that creates a reaction all over town.�� On Friday morning, Democratic critics of the White House were circulating e-mail containing the most optimistic prewar quotes from prominent hawks. So it was not surprising that when Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, appeared in the press room, he was armed and ready for a barrage of critical questions.�

If you can get in to KK news you can read Ari ducking and weaving. Even James thinks he�s hot.

The line from the White House is that the President is unphased but Alexi Sayle has a really good article about Bush and anger management, Other stories say that he�s hopping mad about how he has been led into a very awkward position.

There are also some stories around that say that Blair has realised that the relationship isn�t going anywhere and has decided that his next move has to be back towards the Europeans. He may be sincerely committed to the war but he's not daft and probably realises his got most he can out of it - heightened world and leadership status plus a honourable place for the British Army. The British Army has spent a century securing honourable niches in bigger mishaps - my grandad was in the Retreat from Mons - a classic case.

The higher level point is that if you spend a bit of time on it you can use the search engines to get to some stories about the same time as the mainstream journos. You don�t have to go to the press conferences because they�re posted and some of the are on Five Live. All the main political players post stuff on the next especially the congressmen. A couple of hours everyday searching on the net everyday for a fortnight and you can get quite close to the edge of the wave.

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