Tag: Halliburton

 

President Obama has inherited a U.S. military different from the one Defense War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described in 2004 as “the army you have-not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Unlike at the start of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. military is now almost completely dependent on private contractors for nearly everything but fighting.

Pratap Chatterjee, author and journalist, asks What will Obama do with KBR?

Obama needs to ask his Pentagon commanders this: Can the U.S. military he has now inherited do anything without KBR?

And the answer will certainly be a resounding no.

KBR Inc. may have supplied U.S. troops fighting in Iraq with tainted water according to a Pentagon inspector general’s report that was released today: Audit of Potable and Nonpotable Water in Iraq (PDF). KBR is a private contractor that, at the time they were supplying American bases in Iraq with polluted water, was owned by Halliburton.

According to the AP, Water makes U.S. troops in Iraq sick.

Soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.

During work today I caught the following on NPR’s Here and Now which comes out of Boston, and while it was a real nice, and comfortable, bright sunny day, My Freaking Rage Level Hit Sky High!!!

IRAQI WAR CONTRACTORS:

The Boston Globe reports today that the largest war contractor in Iraq is skirting hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxes by setting up shell companies in the Cayman Islands. The Globe found that Texas-based Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) may have avoided half a billion dollars in payroll taxes by hiring employees through foreign subsidiaries. But those subsidiaries are nothing more than an address, with no phone, fax or offices. The Boston Globe’s Foreign Affairs correspondent, Farrah Stockman, went to the Cayman Islands to investigate.

You can click here to bring up the audio of the show in Real Player. This is the whole hour show, but the report above is the first report and only takes the first 10min. or so.

In the discussion Ms Stockman states they Estimated the loss of payment at some $500million a year!

According to those in the corporate world, the fighting and the lack of security in Iraq is no longer a major obstacle to getting at Iraq’s oil. The real problem now is the lack of a favorable hydrocarbon law.

Meet Michael Wareing. He is Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s business emissary to Iraq. His job is to bring international investors to Iraq to help stimulate economic growth.

Wareing is head of a well-connected auditing firm and was appointed head of a new Basra Development Commission. The Basra region has 70 percent of Iraq’s proven oil reserves and according to The Observer, Oil giants are poised to move into Basra. Wareing thinks security is no longer an issue for investors in Iraq.

‘If you look at many other economies in the world, particularly the oil-rich economies, many of these places are quite challenging countries in which to do business,’ he said. ‘Frankly, if you can successfully operate in the Niger Delta, that is a very different benchmark from imagining that Basra needs to be like London or Paris.’

Iraq’s parliament has yet to pass a hydrocarbon law setting out the terms oil companies will operate on and how profits will be split. ‘My sense is that many of the oil companies are very eager to come in now, and actually what they’re waiting for is the hydrocarbon law to be passed and various projects to be signed off. That is what is causing them to pause, rather than the security position,’ he said.