RUSH: Two of my favorite words: Halliburton and Dubai. (Laughing.) Folks, does it get any better than this? Halliburton is going to move their headquarters to Dubai. We can’t have Dubai run our ports, but Dubai can have Halliburton. They’re going to shift their corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, and the chief executive, Dave Lesar, is going to move there. “Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston,’ said Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Mann. “The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE.’ Now, of course everybody knows that Halliburton was headed up by Dick Cheney. Halliburton is one of the footballs kicked around the by the mad, insane left. Of course, if you go to these kook fringe Democrat websites today, what you’ll learn is that Halliburton is moving out of the country and taking all of their documents with them so they can’t be subpoenaed.
That’s right. They know they’re guilty of ‘war profiteering’ and they know they have a secret deal with Bush and Cheney and they’re getting out before the Democrats start subpoenaing. That is impossibly false. There is no way that that is the truth. They are still subject to US laws. They’re going to have an office here. The real reason they’re moving is that Halliburton is an oil services company. They don’t drill for oil. They don’t do any of that. They manufacture equipment and perform services for companies that do — all kinds of companies, not just Big Oil, but companies — related to all kinds of business practices in the oil industry. The fact of the matter is there’s not much for them to do here in the United States. We can’t drill anywhere! We can’t drill in the Gulf. We can’t drill in ANWR. We can’t drill off the West Coast of California. We can’t drill anywhere. There’s really nothing for them to do here in the primary area of their business, and that’s why they are moving over there.
Now, the Democrats are very suspicious about this, which is even more hilarious. “Halliburton Co., currently the largest military contractor in Iraq with billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts, announced Sunday that it was planning to move its CEO and corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The move could eventually save the firm a fortune in U.S. taxes, but it is raising serious questions about its priorities and prompting at least one possible congressional hearing.” Now, you gotta keep in mind how the Democrats have demonized this company — not just the kook fringe, not just these wackos on the blogs and the Internet sites. This whole party has demonized Halliburton from day one only because Dick Cheney was once its CEO. They have as much run this company out of the country as any world circumstances have. Now, they’re all upset that Halliburton is leaving. Here’s Chuck Schumer yesterday after his appearance on CBS.
SCHUMER: For one of the largest contractors with the United States government to move its headquarters overseas just doesn’t look good; doesn’t sound good; doesn’t smell good.
RUSH: Wait a minute. What about all this global economy stuff we keep hearing about. It doesn’t look good, doesn’t sound good, doesn’t smell good? Why in the world would any company that’s the target of an entire political party want to stay in this country and put up with it? Their first priority is their business concerns, and they are a global company. There are very few companies — maybe France has a company that does what Halliburton does, but nobody’s as large, and nobody is as sought after. ‘Outrage over that possibility had Halliburton scrambling Sunday to explain it had no plans to incorporate abroad.’ It’s still going to stay incorporated in the United States. It will still be subject to US laws, subject to US congressional subpoenas. They’re not escaping anything. ‘Still, the Democrats are suspicious. The move may raise serious national security questions too, as happened last year with the canceled port security contract with another U.A.E.-based company, Dubai Ports World. Congressional outrage scuttled that deal; Halliburton will now have some explaining to do to avoid similar scrutiny. …
‘At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., noted that a government audit had indicated that Halliburton was responsible for ‘$2.7 billion in suspect billings.” At any rate, it’s a simple business move, but you just have to laugh at the Democrats’ hypocrisy here. They’re all upset over what Halliburton’s doing and their associations with Cheney, the possible conspiracy to grab hold of all the Iraqi oil to enrich Bush and Cheney and their oil buddies. Now they’re leaving, and the Democrats think it looks bad, smells bad, and seems bad.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the ways that Halliburton was always accused of war profiteering was with its Kellogg Brown & Root division, KBR. They do a lot of things. In Afghanistan they run the chow lines. They run the restaurants, the food and all that, and I think KBR was spun off by Halliburton some time ago, months, less than a year. It was a losing business. They weren’t turning a profit on that at all, and this is the primary area of the war profiteering charge leveled by the Democrats. There’s another reason, folks. Businesses are businesses, and costs are costs. Most of the oil business that Halliburton has is in Asia and in the Middle East.
I’ve told you that I’ve been to Dubai. One of the reasons I was not opposed to the Dubai Ports Deal (three of my favorite words, by the way) is because I’ve been there. I’ve seen how Americanized the place is, and the whole thing, to me, was an embarrassment: the way members of Congress in both parties tried to get in line to see who could be the first to “protect the country,” it was just absurd. At any rate, Dubai has a huge, huge airport, and the United Arab Emirates airline is becoming a major player, and it’s quicker and cheaper to get to all the places Halliburton does business over there from Dubai than it is from Houston.