U.S. Army paid bonuses to KBR despite questions

[ejames01]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army paid "tens of millions of dollars in bonuses" to KBR Inc, its biggest contractor in Iraq, even after it concluded the firm's electrical work had put U.S. soldiers at risk, according to a source close to a U.S. congressional investigation.
The Senate Democratic Policy Committee plans to hold a hearing on Wednesday to examine KBR's operations in Iraq, and question why the Army rewarded the Houston-based company.
The panel says KBR has been linked to at least two, and as many as five, electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers and contractors in Iraq due to "shoddy work."
Investigators believe hundreds of other soldiers may have received electrical shocks, the source added. The Army is investigating.
The company denies responsibility for any of the electrocutions, saying it is proud of its work and that its employees make great sacrifices to get the job done.
KBR was part of Halliburton Co until two years ago. Former Vice President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton's chief executive from 1995 to 2000, when he became George Bush's running mate.
During the Bush administration, some critics claimed Cheney's deferred compensation from the company represented a conflict of interest and questioned Halliburton's winning of lucrative government contracts in Iraq.
Military reports have criticized KBR's work in Iraq in recent years. Yet afterward, the company received "tens of millions of dollars in bonuses," said the source, who declined to be identified.
"We want to know why," the source said.
The military was invited to send a witness to testify at Wednesday's hearing, but the committee agreed to let it submit a written statement instead, the source said. Witnesses who are expected to attend include a former KBR electrician.
On Tuesday, the Army had no immediate comment when asked about the bonuses.


THREAT OF FIRE
A September 30, 2008, letter to KBR from an officer in the Defense Department's Defense Contract Management Agency had harsh words for the company.
"We cannot overemphasize the significance of the lack of sustained electrical support services being provided by KBR in Iraq to maintain the minimum life, health and safety standards in support of our warfighters," wrote Captain David Graff, an agency commander.
A February 2007 report by the agency also raised concerns about KBR and its subcontractors in Iraq -- while acknowledging the difficulty of working in a war environment.
"Primary safety threat, theater wide, is fire due to the inferior 220 electrical fixtures found throughout Iraq," it said. "Improper installation, substandard equipment purchases (such as light fixtures) and heavy usage appears to be the three primary causes of these fires."
U.S. lawmakers have raised concerns about the U.S. military's increased use of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and have said KBR and other companies should be held accountable.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said, "KBR remains proud of the work it performs in Iraq."
"We remain committed to engaging in a transparent and more importantly, a fact-based dialogue on this issue while pledging continued full cooperation and support to the military."
The Senate Democratic Policy Committee is the research arm of the Senate Democratic leadership and often conducts investigations of its own.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090520/pl_nm/us_iraq_army_kbr_1

[Lorax]

This certainly isn't news, we knew it when repugnicans were in charge.

KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) former subsidiary of middle-east based Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, etc, are nothing more than repugnican sanctioned war profiteers, who in better times would have been forced into bankruptcy, and their CEO's jailed for life, or publicly executed for treason.

War profiteering is a crime, has been, and the Tush justice department saw to it that no recriminations against any of these firms would take place on their watch.

That's because they were instrumental in indemnifying these firms, and others, since they were part of the war-profiteering cabal of Bush Crime Family syndicates.

Harry Truman indicted George Tush's grandfather Prescott Tush for war profiteering after the second world war for his refusal as a director of Brown Brothers Harriman to stop trading with Nazi Germany.

This is just another example of inborn criminality by the Bush Crime Family, and was a perfect opportunity to steal from the treasury of the United States.

What I would like to know is what happened to the 9 billion in cash that Tush/Cheney shipped in an airplane on pallets to Iraq, had packaged in football-sized shrinkwrapped bundles?

Good authority has it that the cash was used to pay off muslim extremist war-lords to stop shooting at our soliders long enough to make Tush's "surge" look like a success to score political points with the American voters. Then of course, the money was used to buy illegal arms, which the warlords then used against our own soldiers.

Could there be any bigger example of criminal activity? And this is just one instance of the many crimes committed by the Bush Crime Syndicate.

[oladub]

The answer is to prosecute anyone who did anything illegal. That might include Cheney, Rumsfield, Bush, and other Republicans and Democrats. Not doing so would amount to complicity. So when is Attorney General Holder going to get rolling on any of these crimes?

None of these contracts would have even been possible if there hadn't been a congressionally undeclared, hence unconstitutional, war. The enablers, then, are those who voted to transfer congressional decision making powers to the President and those who voted to continue to fund the war. The same goes for the Afghanistan war. Any such enablers should, at the very least, be voted out of office. Not doing so is a bit like going after the users of marijuana while leaving the drug cartels alone.

[rb336]

The answer is to prosecute anyone who did anything illegal. That might include Cheney, Rumsfield, Bush, and other Republicans and Democrats. Not doing so would amount to complicity. So when is Attorney General Holder going to get rolling on any of these crimes


throw em all in the slammer

[ejames01]

Unfortunately, nothing is going to happen to any of these people. It is almost like the whole darn world is greedy and corrupt.


throw em all in the slammer

[ccbatson]

An illustration of how the absence of market forces can go awry.