Mary Beth Cahill, the former aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy who is now manager for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, just sent out this email to supporters:

Dear Friend,

Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, was awarded a no-bid contract worth over $7 billion to help rebuild Iraq. The process for awarding this rare and lucrative contract was coordinated by Dick Cheney's own office in the White House. [Time, 5/30/04] Dick Cheney still receives deferred compensation from Halliburton, showing a lingering financial interest in the company. [Washington Post, 9/26/03; Richard B. Cheney Personal Financial Disclosure, May 15, 2002]

Despite the Cheney favoritism, Halliburton has shown little regard for American taxpayers -- from overcharging the military for gas to not delivering meals to troops. Halliburton is a symptom of a wider problem: a House committee found that at least $1 billion has been wasted in Iraq because of a lack of planning and poor oversight.

Today we're asking you to get out the facts about Dick Cheney and Halliburton's wasteful use of our tax dollars in Iraq. Join the thousands of existing members of our Media Corps by writing a letter to the editor, calling in to a radio talk show, or reaching out to the public through some other media channel.

Some facts about Cheney and Halliburton she left out:

* Cheney walked away from a multi-million dollar compensation plan - including at least $1.2 million in annual salary - to go to Washington, D.C. for $200,000 a year , a constant security threat and non-stop, ad hominum attacks by the left;

* The no-bid contract Cahill mentions was an emergency, war-time contract to do very specialized work in a nasty part of a war-torn country. Some of the fringe benefits of the cushy relationship, she failed to note, included being murdered in cold blood, mutilated and defiled on international television;

* Cahill accuses Cheney of having a "lingering" financial relationship to Halliburton. However, she doesn't say whether the Kerry family - a one-time investor in the company that pocketed a profit in their ownership stake - has any "lingering" relationship with Halliburton. Unlike Cheney, who has made his and his wife's personal finances public and transparent, Kerry's wife, Teresa, is refusing to release her entire tax returns for the past several years.

Perhaps the Kerry campaign will start to talk about the Bush Administration's links to big oil, next.