Monday, June 14, 2004
Halliburton: Living off the fat of the land in Iraq
Who knew? Thanks heavens Cheney isn't associated with this in any way! I'm sure he would be the first to condemn this sort of behavior!
What's interesting here is that the whistleblowers take their courage in both hands and allow themselves to be named—unlike the Beltway-types the media whores service. The whistleblowers are willing to be named here, just as they were in the Abu Ghraib stories. They are heroes!
Those former employees contend that the politically connected firm:
-Lodged 100 workers at a five-star hotel in Kuwait for a total of $10,000 a day while the Pentagon wanted them to stay in tents, like soldiers, at $139 a night.
-Abandoned $85,000 trucks because of flat tires and minor problems.
-Paid $100 to have a 15-pound bag of laundry cleaned as part of a million-dollar laundry contract in peaceful Kuwait. The price for cleaning the same amount of laundry in war-torn Iraq was $28.
-Spent $1.50 a can to buy 37,200 cans of soda in Kuwait, about 24 times higher than the contract price.
-Knowingly paid subcontractors twice for the same bill.
Halliburton is already under fire for allegations of overcharging the Pentagon for fuel and soldiers' meals. The latest accusations center on whether Halliburton properly keeps track of its bills from smaller subcontractors, Pentagon auditors said in a month-old report released Monday by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
The 36-page report by the Defense Contract Audit Agency said that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had a billing system that was "inadequate," had numerous deficiencies and billing misstatements and that KBR didn't follow laws and regulations relating to spending and recordkeeping. Its contracting practices are so bad, the auditors said, that KBR shouldn't be allowed to bill the Pentagon directly without the government poring over every detail in advance.
Statements by the whistleblowers - five of whom were identified - and the government's audit report "portray a company and a contracting environment that has run amok," Waxman wrote in a letter to Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., on Monday.
(via the San JoseMercury News)
What's interesting here is that the whistleblowers take their courage in both hands and allow themselves to be named—unlike the Beltway-types the media whores service. The whistleblowers are willing to be named here, just as they were in the Abu Ghraib stories. They are heroes!
