what's a mere $39 Mill to Blackwater?
:sarcasm:
Army awards lucrative Iraq contract to KBR
By Kimberly Hefling and Richard Lardner - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Mar 2, 2010 13:22:45 EST
WASHINGTON — Defense giant KBR Inc. was awarded a contract potentially worth $2.8 billion for support work in Iraq as U.S. forces continue to leave the country, military authorities said Tuesday.
KBR was notified of the award Friday, a day after the company told shareholders it lost about $25 million in award fees because of flawed electrical work in Iraq.
The company was charged with maintaining the barracks where Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, a 24-year-old Green Beret, was electrocuted in 2008 while showering. The company has denied wrongdoing, and investigators said in August there was “insufficient evidence to prove or disprove” that anyone was criminally culpable in Maseth’s death.
The uproar over his death triggered a review of 17 other electrocution deaths in Iraq and widespread inspections and repairs of electrical work in Iraq, much of it performed by KBR.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/03/ap_kbr_contract_030210/KBR gets $35M contract despite electrocutions
By Kimberly Hefling - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Feb 7, 2009 17:03:23 EST
WASHINGTON — Defense contractor KBR Inc., which is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq, has been awarded a $35 million contract by the Pentagon to build an electrical distribution center and other projects there.
The announcement of the new KBR contract comes just months after the Pentagon, in strongly worded correspondence obtained by the Associated Press, rejected the company’s explanation of serious mistakes in Iraq and its proposed improvements. A senior Pentagon official, David J. Graff, cited the company’s “continuing quality deficiencies” and said KBR executives were “not sufficiently in touch with the urgency or realities of what was actually occurring on the ground.”
“Many within DoD have lost or are losing all remaining confidence in KBR’s ability to successfully and repeatedly perform the required electrical support services mission in Iraq,” wrote Graff, commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency, in a Sept. 30 letter.
Graff rejected the company’s claims that it wasn’t required to follow U.S. electrical codes for its work on U.S. military facilities in Iraq. KBR has said it would cost an extra $560 million to refurbish buildings in Iraq used by the U.S. military, including Saddam Hussein’s palaces, which among other problems are based on a 220-volt standard rather than the American 120-volt standard.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/02/ap_kbr_contract_020709/Memo: Halliburton failed to purify GIs’ water
Internal report says contamination could've caused 'mass sickness or death'
updated 7:28 a.m. ET, Thurs., March. 16, 2006
WASHINGTON - Halliburton Co. failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused “mass sickness or death,” an internal company report concluded.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the company failed to assemble and use its own water purification equipment, allowing contaminated water directly from the Euphrates River to be used for washing and laundry at Camp Ar Ramadi in Ramadi, Iraq.
The problems discovered last year at that site — poor training, miscommunication and lax record keeping — occurred at Halliburton’s other operations throughout Iraq, the report said.
“Countrywide, all camps suffer to some extent from all or some of the deficiencies noted,” Wil Granger, Theatre Water Quality Manager in the war zone for Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary, wrote in his May 2005 report.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11854311/Pentagon Dismisses KBR Contaminated Water: Troops Should ‘Just Drink Bottled Water’
On Sunday, the AP reported that contractor KBR has been providing “unmonitored and potentially unsafe” water to U.S. troops in Iraq. According to a Pentagon Inspector General’s report, dozens of soldiers fell sick, suffering “skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses” after using the “discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry.”
In a press briefing on Monday, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell dismissed KBR’s gross negligence. He responded by joking about how everyone knows the water in Iraq is unsafe, and advised everyone to avoid drinking it:
You know, we’ve all been to Iraq several times. Everywhere you go they make it perfectly clear that you don’t want to drink the water, so I’m a little surprised myself that this is an issue. As I understand it, the bottled water, which is what you’re supposed to be drinking in Iraq, had no issues whatsoever in the testing that was done. Evidently, there was some issue with some of the other water that was, I guess, primarily meant for washing. <...>
But I think our encouragement is always — for journalists and warfighters alike is read the signs and just drink the bottled water.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/kbr-water/KBR Dodges $500 Million In Social Security And Medicare Taxes In Cheney-Backed Scheme
No private contractor has financially profited from the Iraq war more than Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which until last year was a subsidiary of Halliburton. The firm currently has more than 21,000 employees in Iraq, and between 2004 and 2006, received more than $16 billion in government contracts — far more than any other corporation.
Yet KBR hasn’t been passing on these enormous profits to American taxpayers or even its own employees, thanks to a plan that Vice President Cheney helped establish. Today, the Boston Globe reports that KBR has avoided paying more than $500 million “in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies” based in the Cayman Islands. A look at the costs to KBR employees:
While KBR’s use of the shell companies saves workers their half of the taxes, it deprives them of future retirement benefits.
In addition, the practice enables KBR to avoid paying unemployment taxes in Texas, where the company is registered, amounting to between $20 and $559 per American employee per year, depending on the company’s rate of turnover.
As a result, workers hired through the Cayman Island companies cannot receive unemployment assistance should they lose their jobs.
KBR’s practices are extreme, even compared to its competitors. Other top Iraq war contractors — including Bechtel and Parsons — pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their employees.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/06/kbr-taxes-cheney/Pentagon Won't Probe KBR Rape Charges
DoD IG Says the Justice Dept. Is Still Investigating the Alleged Gang-Rape
By JUSTIN ROOD
Jan. 8, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4099514&page=1KBR Rape Case Settled for $3 Million after Arbitration Award
By Minara El-Rahman on November 23, 2009 2:16 PM | No TrackBacks
AP reports that a woman who claims that she was raped back in 2005 while she was working for the company KBR Inc. (which was a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. at the time) settled her case for nearly $3 million dollars this week after winning an arbitration award over the alleged rape.
http://blogs.findlaw.com/injured/2009/11/settlement-for-3-million-dollars-over-kbr-rape-case.htmlThe Army official who managed the Pentagon's largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted when he refused to approve more than $1 billion in questionable payments to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to U.S. troops.
Speaking out for the first time, Charles M. Smith said that he was forced out in 2004 after telling KBR officials the Army would impose escalating penalties if they failed to improve operations. "They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn't justify," he said. But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors approved most of the payments. Army officials denied Smith had been removed because of the dispute but confirmed reversing his decision.
http://www.startribune.com/world/19997404.html?location_refer=World
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