After five years, 408 billion dollars, 3100 American soldier deaths and thousands more wounded and maimed, 600,000 Iraqi deaths and a civil war out of control, at last a victory can be claimed. Who is the victor? No, it's not bumbling America whose generals are more interested in sexual orientations than strategy. No, it's not the Sunnis or Shiites or Kurds in Iraq who still don't have security, electricity, jobs, or a country. No, it's not the Iranians or the Syrians or the Saudis who are all stirring the pot but careful not to stick a finger in. No, it's the small nation of Dubai. Dubai has won a major victory.

Dubai is one of the tiny emirates along the Persian Gulf coast with a little over a million inhabitants crammed into about 1500 square miles. Unlike its neighbors, Dubai makes its money not from oil but from its posture of slavish welcome to large corporations and to its immigrant and alleged slave labor force. Its latest victory is Halliburton.

That's right. The no-bid under-the-table wheeler-dealer corporation that Dick Cheney guided to the government trough has abandoned America for less regulation and oversight in the "anything goes" economy of Dubai. The company to which Dick Cheney outsourced most of the support functions of the military is now a foreign company. This is the same company whose subsidiaries lost over a billion dollars in unaccounted reconstruction money in Iraq. This is the same company that hired the guards for the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. This is the same company that supplied our troops with dirty drinking water and stale food, and which still holds monopolistic contracts worth billions from the Pentagon. Halliburton is now an Arab company in the bosom of the Islamic Middle East.

But it's not like they are being unpatriotic. They are still loyal to the same flag to which they have always pledged their allegiance--oil, not America. CEO David J. Lesar claimed in his public statements that "the move was part of a strategy announced in mid-2006 to concentrate our efforts in the Middle East and surrounding areas, where state-owned oil companies represent a growing source of business." He said that he will run their entire worldwide operations from the new headquarters. Lesar is chairman, chief executive and president of the conglomerate whose shady deals reflect the personality of its former chairman, Dick Cheney.

According to the New York Times, "The Dubai announcement, which Halliburton made at a regional energy conference in Bahrain [another Arab emirate and US Navy base], comes at a time when the company is being investigated by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations of improper dealings in Iraq, Kuwait and Nigeria." It is widely suspected that the move is an attempt to shield the corporation's huge assets from American litigation and taxation. No doubt Halliburton has already built a private slip in Dubai for the yacht of another discredited corporate robber baron, Enron's Ken Lay. Oh right. He died. No autopsy or funeral. Uh-huh!

The Halliburton move is the latest victory in a string of corporate assets that the emirate has acquired since Bush took office. You know the war is going sour when even the war profiteers abandon ship.