Cheney riled by the H-word

CLEVELAND, Ohio, Oct 5 (AFP) - Tensions visibly mounted in the vice presidential debate between Democrat John Edwards and Republican Dick Cheney when Edwards mentioned Halliburton.
It took 27 minutes for the Democratic senator to first raise the topic of the controversial oil services giant that Cheney ran before teaming up with President George W. Bush in 2000.
Cheney's eyes rose, he turned to debate moderator Gwen Ifill and smiled but did not rise to the bait.
Thirteen minutes later Edwards tried again.
"When he was CEO of Halliburton, they paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on their company, just like Enron," said Edwards.
"They did business with Libya and Iran, sworn enemies of the United States.
"They are now under investigation for having bribed foreign officials during that period of time. Not only that, they got a 7.5 billion dollar no-bid contract in Iraq.
"And instead of part of their money being withheld, which is the way it is normally done because they're under investigation, they've continued to get their money," Edwards said pursuing the attack.
Cheney was riled by the new reference to the H-word. "I can respond, Gwen, but it will take more than 30 seconds."
He did not get any extra time, but still got the chance to accuse Edwards and his presidential running mate John Kerry of "trying to throw up a smoke screen" with continual references to his former company.
Cheny said the public should look at factcheck.com, a website sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, to get details on Halliburton payments.
"It's an effort that they made repeatedly to try to confuse the voters and to raise questions. But there's no substance of the charges," Cheney said.
The vice president then used time allocated for a question about Israel to go back to the Halliburton controversy.
He said Edwards and Kerry attacked Halliburton "because they want to obscure their own record."
Cheney then went on to attack Edwards attendance record in Senate, saying he had missed 33 out of 36 meetings of the intelligence committee.
"You've missed a lot of key votes on tax policy, on energy, on medicare reform. Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you Senator Gone. You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate."
He went on: "In my capacity as vice president I am the president's presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."