This day in indictments - Cheney ... and Assange??

Darth Vader himself has been indicted, charged that is, in relation to an allegedly $180 billion of bribery by Halliburton in Nigeria.

What would be a fitting punishment?

Ahh, yes ... boiling him in a barrel of Nigerian oil heated over a flame built on paper copies of old Halliburton stock options that Cheney has.

Or, having somebody "accidentally" shoot him with a shotgun.

Or ... the best of all ... waterboard him with hot Nigerian crude oil!

Meanwhile, the Monitor speculates as to the possibility that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has perhaps been indicted under seal by the United States.

Given George Barack Obama outdoing his predecessor on gutting civil liberties, this wouldn't surprise me. And, I don't know about Sweden, but, I'm betting British Prime Minister David Cameron (with Assange in the UK right now) on an issue like this would be about as much Obama's lapdog as Tony Blair was for George W. Bush.

KBR pleads guilty to foreign bribery

Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was peddling influence inside Texas more than 60 years ago (that’s YOU, “Landslide Lyndon”) has pled guilty to violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

by bribing Nigerian officials.

Instead of fines, I suggest, to properly punish this Halliburton spinoff, we get some of Halliburton’s electrocution-prone showers from Iraq and invite KBR officials to scrub up.

I’d pay good money for Uncle Fester on the witness stand (aka Cheney)

And the guilty plea, to foreign bribery charges, of former KBR CEO Jack Stanley provides at least a glimmer of hope to the possibility of me having to put a crowbar in the wallet.

Can you imagine the bailiff?

“Sorry, Mr. Cheney, but you can NOT bring that shotgun in the courtroom!”

(Beyond that, something like bribery is probably too soft and subtle for Uncle Fester.)

More seriously, Stanley pled guilty last week to resorting to bribes, kickbacks and high-level corruption to secure deals in Nigeria.

And, remember, KBR was at this time a subunit of Halliburton.

And, “this time” was before midsummer 2000.

Making Jack Stanley’s boss one … Richard B. Cheney.

And, the FBI is investigating this, not the SEC or white-collar folks inside Justice.

Cheney’s office said he would “cooperate fully,” or similar.

BUT!

But… that was before Stanley’s plea, when he was still refusing to cooperate.

Now that he’s singing like a canary in an oil well….

The Veep’s office, not wanting to influence ongoing litigation, refused to comment.

No wonder Pentagon sees no Iraq fraud

It’s happening on the inside:

Richard T. Race, the Pentagon inspector general's chief investigator of procurement fraud and official misconduct, quit his job and pleaded guilty last month to violating U.S. banking laws.

The previously unpublicized case was filed Feb. 26 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to court papers. Race, 61, admitted he made cash deposits at the Pentagon's credit union on three straight days in March 2007 that were designed to evade laws that track large currency transactions. The government seized the total of $20,000 in deposits as part of the plea deal.

It appears Race was trying to avoid some IRS reporting, as well.

So, he’s the perfect person to oversee Halliburton and its dodging, filching and mismanagement on government contracts, all while surely taking IRS write-offs for all of this mismanagement, or even possible downright fraud.