In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Trucks made to drive without cargo in dangerous areas of Iraq
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs.
Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel."
Defense Department records show that Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, has been paid $327 million for "theater transportation" of war materiel and supplies for U.S. forces in Iraq and is earmarked to be paid $230 million more. The convoys are a lifeline for U.S. troops in Iraq hauling tires for Humvees, Army boots, filing cabinets, tools, engine parts and even an unmanned Predator reconnaissance plane.
KBR's contract with the Defense Department allows the company to pass on the cost of the transportation and add 1 percent to 3 percent for profit, but neither KBR nor the U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., which oversees the contract, was able to provide cost estimates for the empty trucks. Trucking experts estimate that each round trip costs taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Well this might sound like war profiteering at its worst, but these guys go way back with Cheney, so they're all right by me, and besides the republicans purposefully eliminated any punishments for war profiteering from the $87 billion appropriations bill for Iraq, because, you know.... um, because, um.... Well you know, war profiteers tend to suppurt the GOP so that portion of the bill was obviously just 'politics at its worst' and that we didn't have time for that because 'we are at war.'
WASHINGTON (Friday, Oct. 31) – The final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan is missing provisions the Senate had passed to penalize war profiteers who defraud American taxpayers. House negotiators on the package refused to accept the Senate provisions.
This is the MBA President's War, he was going to run the nation like a business. Why have a war without profit?
- rob 12:35 PM - [PermaLink] -
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