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The two apparently got into a tussle April 6 on ABC's "This Week"  over the role Halliburton played during the Iraqi War and whether Halliburton did in fact overcharge and defraud the American government of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Huffington claimed that KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, which has had a role in the BP oil spill, did just that.
Liz Cheney, whose husband was Halliburton's CEO before becoming George Bush's vice president, was also part of the round-table discussion that day.
She declared that Huffington was" living on another planet and that her assertion had "no relationship to the facts."Â Huffington responded, "I'm so glad "PolitiFact" is going to be checking this."
For those who do not follow" Politifact", it is the Pulitizer-Prize-winning online arm of the St. Petersburg Times,  which rates political statements as "True", "Half true", or " False"  with its special designation, "Pants on Fire" for those that are so false they are into the realm of ridiiculous.
"Politifact" did indeed review the remarks of Huffington but not those of Cheney. It found her statement to be " mostly true" but held back from declaring it "True" because of her use of the word "defrauded." They chose instead to label it "Half true." Interestingly, they failed even to address Ms. Cheney's remark.Â
"Politifact" noted that KBR, a former subsidiary of Haliburton, held one of the largest contracts during the Iraqi and AFghanistan Wars, worth about 31 billion. The report also stated that a government investigation had revealed that KBR had overcharged the government some 31 million for gasoline it supplied.
It went on to state that a government audit had revealed that KBR had also overcharged the taxpayers 4.5 million for meals it provided.Â
The report added that KBR had also refused to turn over to the government auditors documents in their native format, stamping them "proprietary" and "secret" when, in reality, according to the auditors, they normally would be considered public information. Â
The investigators at "Politifact" added:
Over the course of several years, the Defense Contract Audit Agency found that $553 million in payments should be disallowed to KBR, according to 2009 testimony by agency director April Stephenson before the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Commissioner Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore Law School, said that amount represents a small portion of everything that auditors examined as potentially questionable.
Finally "Politifact" concluded by stating that its investigators had also uncovered the fact that the Justice Department is currently suing KBR for "knowingly including impermissable costs" in its bill to the federal government which the Defense Contractor Audit Agency (DFAA) has estimated could run upwards of $99 million.
After outlining all this, "Politifact" then stated:
"We find much in the public record to support her statement, most notably the Justice Department lawsuit. Certainly there have been hundreds of millions of dollars that Halliburton's KBR attempted to charge the government that have been denied."
In spite of everything, however, Polificact added :
Some of the overbilling in Iraq appears to have been done from haste or inefficiency, or even in a desire to please military officials in the field without regard for cost. Whether the waste in contracting constitutes fraud is still being examined.
 That incensed Huffington, who fired back on "The Huff" that "Politifact" was trying to take the "middle ground," the very thing that it had avowed as an independent evaluator NOT to do.
It also lead David Corn, a columnist for "Politics Daily" to decide that perhaps the "evaluator" might need "evaluating".
I agree with Corn on this.  I'm a fan of both the Huffington Post and "Politifact",  but the latter missed the mark on this one for several reasons:
1. The authors interjected their "personal opinions" in their concluding remarks disregarding the very facts they had just presented.
2. They failed even to address Cheney's statement that Huffington did not know what she was talking about and that her statement had "no relationship to the facts."
3. Perhaps "fraud" has not yet been proven, but it is past the state of being "examined" as the report stated. When the Justice Department files fraud charges, that's a bit beyond "examination." The auditors had already reached that conclusion.
4. Their statement that "some of these charges appear to have been done from haste or inefficiency, or even in a desire to please military officials in the field without regard for cost" is nothing but pure speculation and should not be part of a fact-finding report. It is also in direct opposition to the auditors' findings.
"Politifact" is better than this. I'm going to have to rate this report in the "Pants on Fire" category. I don't blame Huffington for being upset with them.
To learn more about this issue, go to: https://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/12/huffington-vs-politifact-and-liz-cheney-escapes/
