"Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales"

Nice way to start a new work week :

First we have "improper payments" to win contracts abroad.

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

Then we have them doing business with quite possibly the world's number one terrorist-sponsoring state.

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

Yes, you heard it right. The repugican party's number one donor and supporter is sneaking around US law in order to help the world's biggest terrorist state enrich itself.

Of course it's not the first time that top repugicans enriched themselves by enriching the world's number on terror state. Dick Cheney's Halliburton did the same thing.

The award for oddest geopolitical couple of 2005 goes to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Houston-based Halliburton.

You might not think that a charter member of President Bush's "axis of evil" could enlist the oil-services firm once run by Vice President Cheney to bolster its bargaining position with an international community intent on curbing its nuclear ambitions.

But that is apparently what happened last month.

What is it with repugicans and their desire to help terrorists states enrich themselves by doing a runaround US anti-terror laws? If the top Democratic party donor, and former VP, did this we'd never hear the end of it (and the VP would have been impeached).

I'm thinking there are going to be some serious Senate hearings about this. There had better.