Halliburton, KBR, Cheney, Iraq, Blackwater, Bush - what? I don’t get it.

Well. Let me explain. Everything you read here has been well known for over 3 years. It’s a shame that we have done nothing about it.

Under the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, paid Brown & Root 8.5 million dollars to do a study on the privatization of military logistics operations. This study established the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, which gave its first general contract to -- itself, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, and Cheney worked with the pentagon to downsize the military. Cheney left the Department of Defense when the new democratic administration began under President Bill Clinton in January 1993. Cheney then served as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton where he earned at least 44 million dollars during his tenure at the oil and gas service company. He later left his position as CEO on July 25, 2000 to pursue the position of the Vice President of America. During the 1995-2000 period, one dollar of every seven spent by the Pentagon, passed through what is now Kellogg Brown & Root, also known as KBR.

Vice President Dick Cheney claims he has severed all ties with Halliburton, however he continues to collect deferred compensation worth approximately $150,000 a year and he retains stock options worth more then 18 million dollars. Both Cheney and Halliburton have insisted that he had no part in the government’s decision about the Iraq contracts however, the largest contractor KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was in Iraq 6 months before the United States decided to go to Iraq. KBR was in Iraq creating an infrastructure to provide help to the American army with tasks such as serving meals to delivering fuel, washing laundry and delivering mail, duties that used to be handled by the Army itself as well as preparing for major construction of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants.

On March 31, 2004 four Blackwater contractors in the Sunni city of Falluja were burned and dragged through the streets and were hung from a bridge. It was the first time Americans learned what private security contractors were and how many of them they were in Iraq. The military at this time was not considering such a drastic show of American might had it not been for this single incident. The military was planning to take over the city of Falluja more diplomatically, and this created frustration between true American soldiers and paid contractors. After an investigation it was found that KBR had hired Blackwater for transportation services in Falluja even though their contract specifically stated that they would be supported only by American troops. Under a congressional hearing Tina Ballard, the Army’s head contracting officer, announced that the Army would recoup 20 million dollars from KBR as it was clear that under several layers of subcontracts Blackwater was hired by KBR. This is not just a matter of secretive markups, tacked on through the subcontracting maze and passed on to the taxpayers. KBR may have knowingly violated military policy, which effectively bans its contractors from engaging any security other than official US forces.

According to the latest census estimates there are 163,000 private contractors in Iraq and 54,000 are from KBR, and although the use of private contractors is not a new concept having over 100,000+ private contractors is a far cry from the estimated 9,200 contractors that worked during the Gulf War. Besides the simple fraud issues between Cheney, Haliburton, KBR & Bush there is more to the story here. Private security contractors like DynCorp International, and Blackwater do not report to anybody. They are immune from Iraqi Law, and they are not punishable by a military tribune since they are not part of the military. These security contractors literally have a license to kill and it frustrates not only our own troops, but Iraqi citizens and insurgents. The entire basis for our country, the United States of America, was founded on the belief that absolute power will inevitably result in absolute corruption, yet we continue to hire private security companies that have absolutely no repercussions. Now just add the jealousy from our troops as private soldiers can earn $400 - $1000 dollars per day, and incredible amount more then a soldier’s salary, and we can see that this is turning into a real problem. We need to get our soldiers, and our private contractors out of Iraq, however just in case you were wondering, KBR is still hiring.