“Guardsmen Took ‘Rent’ From Iraqi Businesses,” headlines today’s LAT.
“California Army National Guard troops sought unauthorized, off-the-books ‘rent’ from Iraqi-owned businesses inside Baghdad’s Green Zone to raise money for a ‘soldiers fund’,” says the military about its wide-ranging investigation into the Modesto battalion.
But, let’s face it, “the war on Iraq is ‘largely a matter of loot,’ as Kasper Gutman so aptly described the Crusades in that seminal treatise on human nature, The Maltese Falcon,” reflects Chris Floyd at his blog, Empire Burlesque.
And, what the Guardsmen took is chump change compared to what Halliburton has ripped off via the war:
Yes, it’s once more into the breach with Halliburton, the gargantuan government contractor that still pays Cheney, its former CEO, enormous annual sums in “deferred compensation” and stock options – even while, as “the most powerful vice president in American history,” he presides over a White House war council that has steered more than $10 billion in no-bid Iraqi war contracts back to his corporate paymaster. This is rainmaking of monsoon proportions. Indeed, the company’s military servicing wing announced a second-quarter profit spike of 284 percent last week – a feast of blood and gravy that will send Cheney’s stock options soaring into the stratosphere.
The bastards at Halliburton had the fucking nerve to order employees “to serve spoiled and rotten food to soldiers – day in and day out.” MORE BELOW:
Chris Floyd’s litany of Halliburton thievery continues:
One tale is particularly instructive: Halliburton’s strenuous efforts to prevent a company hired by the Iraqis, Lloyd-Owen International, from delivering gasoline into the conquered land from Kuwait for 18 cents a gallon. Why? Because LOI’s cost-efficient operation undercuts Halliburton’s highway-robbery price of $1.30 a gallon for the exact same service.
But how is Halliburton able to interfere with the sacred process of free enterprise? Well, it seems that Cheney’s firm, a private company, has control over the U.S. military checkpoint on the volatile Iraq-Kuwait border, and also has the authority to grant – or withhold – the Pentagon ID cards that are indispensable for contractors operating in Iraq. (Even contractors who, like LOI, are working for the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government.) Halliburton used these powers to block LOI’s access to the military crossing – which provides quick, safe delivery of the fuel – for months. Then the game got rougher.
In June, Cheney’s boys blackmailed LOI into delivering some construction materials to a Halliburton project in the friendly confines of Fallujah: no delivery, no “golden ticket” Pentagon card, said Halliburton. They neglected to tell LOI that convoys on the route had been repeatedly hit by insurgents in recent days. And sure enough, LOI’s delivery trucks were ripped to shreds just outside a Halliburton-operated military base: three men were killed and seven wounded. But that’s not all. An email obtained by investigators revealed that Halliburton brass expressly prohibited company employees from offering any assistance to the shattered convoy.
Halliburton extended this milk of human kindness to its food services as well. The firm had to bring in Turkish and Filipino guest workers to feed American soldiers, because the happily liberated Iraqis couldn’t be trusted not to blow up their benefactors. The Cheneymen treated these coolies as befitted their lowly station: they packed them into tents with sand floors and no beds, and literally fed them scraps from the garbage. When the peons complained, Halliburton sacked the subcontractor, who had been buying bargain produce and meat from the locals, and hired an American crony to ship in food all the way from Philadelphia.
U.S. soldiers weren’t treated much better. Employees testified that Halliburton brass ordered them to serve spoiled and rotten food to soldiers – day in and day out. Meanwhile, Halliburton brass were reserving choice cuts for the big beer-soaked barbecues they threw for themselves two or three times a week. They also billed the taxpayer for 10,000 “ghost meals” a day at a single base: the food was phantom, but the rake-off was real. Meanwhile, any employee who made noises about exposing the fraud to auditors was threatened with transfer to a red-hot fire zone, like Fallujah or Saddam’s hometown, Tikrit.
All of this criminal katzenjammer – and much, much more – was authorized at the highest levels, as top procurement brass and Pentagon officials confirmed. Cheney’s office kept tabs on Halliburton’s bids while Pentagon warlord Don Rumsfeld “violated federal law,” the committee noted, by directly intervening in the procurement process to eliminate all possible rivals and make sure Cheney’s employer got the guaranteed-profit gig. Rumsfeld’s office also removed oversight procedures for the dirty deals, and has ignored repeated warnings from Pentagon auditors about Halliburton’s blatant, persistent, pervasive fraud. Instead, the money keeps rolling in: just last month, Don and Dick ladled another $1.75 billion dollop of pork gravy into Halliburton’s bowl. …
Floyd’s Moscow TImes column concludes:
The House Committee on Government Reform’s report, includes a Waxman article titled: “Administration Withheld Halliburton Overcharges from International Auditors“. (Site has an interactive redaction feature here.
They have been disabused of the notion they may choose what to redact.
I’m not intimate with this issue. Do you mean that they cannot any longer redact what they wish? And, by they, are we talking about the administration or Halliburton, or both?
It’s terrible too how the Iraqis are getting screwed out of contracts. God, who was it … I forget .. talked about a laundry service run by Iraqis for U.S. contractors at the Baghdad airport. The laundry service worked very well, and their customers were very pleased with them. Then along came a U.S. company that underbid the Iraqis, who then lost their business.
According to the CRS report (on the Gov Reform site) KBR chose what to redact. The government auditors told them it wasn’t their choice.
Underbids: rapacious, amoral, foraging capitalist swine.
A comment I read earlier was an “ah-ha!” moment: a lament that, three-plus years into this debacle the troops still don’t have adequate armor and armored vehicles.
And I thought, “That’s because the money isn’t there to buy them. It’s all gone to Halliburton.”
I suspect that if someone were to follow the money very closely, that’s just what they would find, despite BushCo obfuscations.
But all this corruption did save at least one life. (I’ve posted a version of this earlier, and the story comes from the soldier’s father, via a friend). At the time of the Mosul mess-tent bombing that killed a number of Maine National Guard troops some weeks back, one young man had been feeling sick because of the dreadful “food” and not eating.
However, because they were getting only one meal a day (!!!), he decided to take a lunch plate, after all, but took it outside to decide whether to eat it. Then the bomb went off.
He’s home now, and I wonder whether that nice, old-style Republican family is going to continue to support Bush’s war?
ohhh what I would give to cure this problem we have,
I cannot say it in public, but if ever one of them would be close enough…………….
Now you’ve got me curious!
you do not want to know…forget that curiosity ; )
Better to use lawyers and accountants. They don’t like it when you take their money. They believe it confers power. Take their power.
valid point, but not near as satisfying…LOL
Thanks very much for this, Susan. Chris Floyd ROCKS and so do you!