Big-O wrote:
And the fact that the only major Asbestos lawsuits recently in the works are against a subsidiary of Haliburton, resulting from practices that were adopted while Cheney headed that benighted firm...
Not quite. Cheney, as the head of Haliburton, acquired a firm with a large potential liability for asbestos cases against it; thus buying into those claims on behalf of his firm. Hey, he's a crony capitalist; no one ever honestly accused him of being a good businessman. So, in proper crony capitalist fashion, he got the President to mention asbestos; in hope that this can help sucker the marks into magically thinking that asbestos cases are bad.
Still and all, Halliburton never actually did the work with asbestos which engendered all of these liability claims; this one time, they're being blamed for something someone else did. The fact that they deliberately and legally accepted the blame merely makes them very stupid, or very sure that Cheney could somehow pervert the law in their favor again.