Halliburton's Iraqi Scam (sucking sound)

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/191/nation/Halliburton_unit_expands_war_repair_role+.shtml

BAGHDAD -- They travel like foreign dignitaries, their SUVs escorted by two US Army Humvees and a security detail led by a master sergeant. No Iraqi official is too busy to meet them and when it comes to Iraq's most precious resource, oil, they are granted total and instant access.

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It took Waxman's investigation to uncover key details of the KBR contract, which was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of a secret process by US government agencies charged with rebuilding postwar Iraq. Several of the companies involved in the closed-door bidding, allowed in times of a national crisis under federal procurement laws, have close ties to the White House or were major contributors to the Bush presidential campaign.

In addition to KBR, the winning bidders included San Francisco-based Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, which was awarded a $780 million contract to supervise Iraqi reconstruction. Bechtel, together with Halliburton, donated more than $2 million in campaign contributions, primarily to Republican candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. From 1995 to 2000, Halliburton was headed by now-Vice President Dick Cheney.

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That's not how many Iraqis see it. They say KBR's preponderant role in postwar reconstruction reinforces local suspicion that the invasion of Iraq was more about promoting American corporate interests than removing Saddam Hussein. At a time when US officials in Iraq have been criticized for employing American companies to do what Iraqis are capable of doing on their own, KBR manages laundry services and a hair salon at US occupation headquarters.

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KBR has also been tasked to arrange overland shipments of gasoline to ease fuel shortages following waves of postwar looting that crippled Iraqi oil production. Thousands of tanker trucks are entering Iraq each week from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan, nearly all of which are fixed by KBR agents. It is a business with which the Iraqis have years of experience; since the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq provided Jordan with discounted oil in return for Amman's support of Baghdad's invasion of Kuwait. Those shipments ended with the coalition assault in March, and Iraqi truckers have been out of work since then. KBR agents have hired foreign truckers, not Iraqi ones, say Iraqi transport companies.

''We have enough trucks to do this ourselves,'' says Shahab Ahmed Hamid, a member of a local truckers' union. ''We were promised subcontracts from the Americans, but no Iraqi trucks have been employed.''
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(sucking sound)
isn't it fun watching criminals at work - like a movie