Halliburton gets $30 per soldiers' meal...

(caller just cited on AAR)... so that's $90 per day per person. Geez... I hope they're serving them steak tartar, buttered lobster tails and champagne.

on edit: unable to find this citation online to confirm. Links on food cost overages and waste below, post #7

that it's hot dogs and mashed potatoes.

but unable to get cost per meal figure that caller cited.

http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-new2.cfm?doc_name=inv2

5) Halliburton served the troops food that had spoiled or passed its expiration date. Halliburton managers ordered employees to remove bullets from food in trucks that had come under attack, then saved the bullets as souvenirs while giving the food to unwitting soldiers and Marines. More…



6) Halliburton charged taxpayers for services that it never provided and tens of thousands of meals that it never served. More…


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12055

WASHINGTON - Halliburton Co. and the U.S. Army have resolved a lengthy billing dispute over meals served to U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, with the Pentagon ultimately refusing to reimburse $55 million worth of bills.

The Houston-based contractor and the Army Field Support Command have been wrestling since December 2003 over a fair way to reimburse Halliburton subsidiary KBR for dishing up food for troops, when the military could never say exactly how many soldiers might show up for a given meal.

At stake was $200 million in disputed costs incurred during the first nine months of the war and occupation, first in Kuwait and then in Iraq.

The deal announced Tuesday means the Army has agreed to reimburse the company for about $145 million of those disputed bills. Overall, the Army will pay KBR $1.18 billion for running the dining halls during the nine-month period.

saving money!

Buffet style, with lots left over.

I'm sure it's not as much as $30, but I'll ask you to keep in mind the military is not the most efficient bunch of guys to begin with.

I would be SURPRISED if traditional military meals if served in Iraq weren't much more expensive than what we all pay for meals HERE. If you include all related costs, I'm sure that would be a considerable amount as well.

The REAL problem I have with Halliburton is the lack of competition. If we're going to "order out" for this war, I think we should have more than one place to buy from.

A typical ration cycle is A-M-A, which means a prepared breakfast, MRE, prepared dinner. The breakfast and dinner go for about $4.50 per soldier and an MRE costs about $4. So, all told, you're looking at about $13 or so, per day, to feed a soldier.

They pick up rations from a centralized supply depot and prepare them at the forward location on a mobile kitchen trailer. It's really quite something watching them fold everything out. Most of the food is pre-prepared in sealed trays (commonly known as T-rations - T for 'tray'); I would imagine any of them that had bullet holes in them would have been discarded as unusable. T-rations are usually (but not always) supplemented with fresher produce obtained locally, more for morale reasons than for nutritional completeness (you'd probably not be surprised what the availability (or absence) of fresh fruit does for morale). Units would get meals like this one or two times a day, depending on operational considerations, with the balance being Meals, Ready-To-Eat (MRE's).

The neat thing about these kind of rations is that they're easily transported and stored, and have a VERY long shelf life under just about any storage conditions.

MRE's cost the Army about six or seven bucks a pop. Someone from the team, squad, or platoon usually pulls up a Hummer to the tent where the mess personnel are keeping them and loads them up by the case of 12 before going out on the day's mission. I would imagine the tray rations costing about the same per soldier, perhaps a bit less because the trays feed several soldiers as opposed to just one.

So yes, Halliburton is ripping off the taxpayers. Big time.

If so then the number might not be that bad. I guess I need more information.

Do you want private profit made on it at taxpayer expense or not?

you didn't answer that. If it does, there isn't as much profit there. So is Halliburton sending the food over there and is that cost included in the $30 a meal, or are they charging the $30 per meal *plus* charging to transport it, or is the US government sending the food over there?

Currently, food service is privatized, therefore someone is making a profit. If it were done by the government, what would the cost be? We'd have to compare both costs to see which one is better.

I swear they run all the cafeterias here in Delaware but they can usually put out some decent food. They can probably do 3 good meals for a total of $30 and STILL make a profit