DNC: Halliburton Hurt Our Troops—At a Cost of $1.4 Billion

[bigtree]

April 23, 2007 at 05:49 PM
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Last Thursday, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the cost of the Iraq war, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) spoke about his ongoing investigation of Halliburton, the corporation under contract with the Pentagon to handle Iraq war logistics like feeding our soldiers and supplying them with drinking water.

His testimony was a scathing indictment of how the Bush administration has hurt our troops by awarding "no-bid" contracts worth billions to Halliburton--and how Halliburton has put our troops at risk. For example:

"Halliburton allowed our troops in Iraq to shower, bathe, and sometimes brush their teeth with water that was tested positive for E. coli and Coliform Bacteria, and was more contaminated than raw water from the highly polluted Euphrates River."

A high number of bacterial infections among soldiers were later traced back to the contaminated water provided by Halliburton.

Halliburton also served the troops food that had spoiled or passed its expiration date. When convoys carrying food came under attack, Halliburton managers ordered employees to remove bullets from the food, and then served the food to unwitting soldiers and Marines.

Sen. Dorgan cited 19 other abuses, describing how Halliburton "charged taxpayers for services it never provided and tens of thousands of meals that it never served," and "sent unarmed truck drivers into a known combat zone without warning them of the danger, resulting in the deaths of six truck drivers and two soldiers."

Halliburton employees were ordered to burn brand-new $85,000 trucks on the side of the road, far from any hostilities, because they didn’t have the right wrench to change a tire--and because the trucks could be replaced on a profitable "cost-plus" basis at taxpayer expense. Halliburton charged taxpayers triple the price of hand towels, while having the Halliburton logo embroidered on each one.

Taxpayers have been charged $45 for a case for soda and $100 for a bag of laundry. Meanwhile, our troops are sent into battle without the armor and equipment they need.

According to auditors at the Defense Contract Audit Agency, as of June 2005, Halliburton had billed taxpayers $1.4 billion in questionable and undocumented charges under various Iraq contracts.

Don’t forget that Vice-President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton--before he left to join George Bush on the Republican ticket in 2000. Cheney’s "retirement" package from Halliburton was worth more than $33.7 million.


http://www.democrats.org/a/2007/04/halliburton_hur.php


http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree

[Karenina]

1. Is there a word for this?

:freak:

[Horse with no Name]

2. Treason?

That is the first on MY list.

[EVDebs]

7. You nailed it !

[bigtree]

3. barbaric

criminal

[CrispyQ]

4. War profiteering.

"Support the Troops" means nothing to these people.

[Karenina]

12. All of the above PLUS

INTOLERABLE!!!!

[EFerrari]

14. I can't decide between "vampirism" or "felony" n/t

[partylessinOhio]

5. Set the table.

[EVDebs]

6. Where's the missing $2.3 TRILLION ?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

""According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service. "



...Personally, I'd be happy with a small refund on that $8,000

[Booster]

8. Having just paid $5900 in taxes - I'm retired and on a fixed income -

I can't begin to tell you how pissed this makes me. Where the Hell is the outrage from all those conservatives who just hate big government? I have never seen so many incompetent people in one place in my entire life.

[EVDebs]

10. The Attorney-gate scandal is the key

"It's all part of a growing ongoing investigation into corruption in defense and intelligence contracts, which already has sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to prison and, legal sources say, may threaten others in Congress and the CIA. "

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12634250/

Since the end of WWII, the CIA has been corrupting congressmen using this drug money skim as mentioned in the Alfred McCoy book The Politics of Heroin: CIA complicity in the global drug trade, and DOD's lack of congressional oversight, as in Tim Weiner's book Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget.

With Congress out of the loop and bought off, you get a skim that Meyer Lanksky wouldn't even approve of ! Lansky always kept skims to under 15% in order to avoid notoriety and investigations. The shere volume of this military madness has invited what I call "the mother of all scandals" to emerge. It can't be avoided now; and the GOP is behind most of these front companies (MZM Inc etc) it looks to me, as with the Abramoff K St project. Greed and no oversight lead us to this place in time.

[Morgana LaFey]

9. So many of these companies, I think, are just fronts for

organized crime. I don't mean THE organized crime (aka: mafia), but a new breed of organized criminals. They run companies as covers for their crimes, whether it be theft from the stockholders and pensioners and others, ala Enron and so many others, or theft via price gouging (e.g., the oil companies), or various pollution scams and so forth and so on.

It's shocking.

[EVDebs]

11. Get it offshore, like this !

Global Information Group, Ltd

Bahamas Firm Screens Personal Data To Assess Risk
Operation Avoids U.S. Privacy Rules
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36853-2004Oct15.html

Note the connection to Total Information Awareness and 'former' CIA. How many more fronts are out there ? And now Halliburton is making a run for it to Dubai.

[cooolandrew]

13. Exactly in a genuine war, Haliburton wouldn't be bloodsucking troops of resources.

[OneBlueSky]

15. and every dollar helped enrich Cheney, who is still receiving compensation from Halliburton . . .

there MUST be something illegal about this . . . and it's damn sure unethical and immoral . . .