See
Dick Loot
By Dahr Jamail
10 March, 2006
Iraq Dispatches
Halliburton
and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) have been making hay
in the burning Iraqi sun for years now. It is, of course, no coincidence
that the man sitting as vice president played a key role with his influence
in obtaining the lion's share of contracts in Iraq for the company he
was CEO of prior to his self-appointed position. Yet none of this is
news.
What is news, however, is
that the ties that bind Cheney to Halliburton also link him to groups
with even broader interests in the Middle East, which are causing civilians
on the ground there, as well as in the US, to pay the price.
Cheney had much more at stake
than pure altruism in making sure Halliburton/KBR obtained so many no-bid
contracts in occupied Iraq.
Despite his claims of not
having any financial ties to Halliburton, the fact is that in both 2001
and 2002 he earned twice as much from a deferred salary from his "old"
company as when he was CEO.
But that wasn't the beginning.
When Cheney was US Secretary of Defense in the early 1990's under Big
Bush, Halliburton was awarded the job of studying, then implementing,
the privatization of routine army functions such as cleaning and cooking
meals.
Following this study, when
Cheney was finished with his job at the Pentagon, he scored the job
as CEO of Halliburton, which he held until nominating himself for the
position of Little Bush's running mate in 2000. Remember, it was Cheney
who was given the task of finding a running mate for Bush. After searching
far and wide across the US, Cheney ended up generously offering his
own services for the job.
As if Cheney didn't already
have enough conflicts of interest, it is important to note that he assisted
in founding the neo-conservative think tank, the "Project for the
New American Century (PNAC) <http://www.newamericancentury.org/>,"
whose goal is to "promote American global leadership," which
entails acquiring Iraqi oil.
Complimenting this, Cheney was also part of the board of advisers to
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA
<http://www.jinsa.org/home/home.html>)
along with John Bolton, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz (all PNAC members)
before becoming vice president. JINSA, self-described as a "nonsectarian
educational organization," does things like nominate John Bolton
for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and works to "explain the role Israel
can ... play in bolstering ... the link between American defense policy
and the security of Israel."
Their Mission Statement adds,
"The inherent instability in the region [Middle East] caused primarily
by inter-Arab rivalries and the secular/religious split in many Muslim
societies leaves the future of the region in doubt. Israel, with its
technological capabilities and shared system of values, has a key role
to play as a US ally in the region," which happens to be quite
similar to the stated goals of the PNAC for the region, but I digress.
By the end of 2002, Cheney
owned at least 433,000 unexercised Halliburton stock options worth over
$10 million. And that was before the invasion of Iraq, when the games
really began.
In March 2003, the month
the invasion began, Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract worth
$7 billion from the Pentagon. The blatant awarding of this "reconstruction"
contract to Halliburton even led Representative Henry Waxman to comment,
"The administration's approach to the reconstruction of Iraq is
fundamentally flawed. It's a boondoggle that's enriching private contractors."
Of course the invasion and
occupation of Iraq aren't only about oil.
Remember, it was Cheney himself
who, at a VFW convention in August 2002, said "Many of us are convinced
that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon,
we cannot really gauge."
Cheney then, solely in the
interests of protecting the American and Iraqi people of course, made
sure the US would go into Iraq and take care of that nuclear trouble-maker
Saddam Hussein.
Just to be safe, Halliburton
was paid $40 million for providing housing and transportation for teams
searching for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. For
with each contract Halliburton is and was awarded, Cheney's bank account
grows.
The one place where there
were remnants of a nuclear program in Iraq, albeit over 20 years before
the 2003 US invasion, was the Osirak Nuclear Research Facility on the
outskirts of Baghdad. US-made Israeli warplanes bombed it back on June
7, 1981, and when I visited the place in January 2004, all I found were
empty warehouses which the American military wasn't concerned about
enough to prevent from being looted.
Villagers in nearby al-Tuwetha,
ignorant of radioactive waste stored in old drums, looted them in the
chaos following the invasion and had been using them as water containers
- thus irradiating the entire village
One example of what it looks
like on the ground in Iraq when Halliburton fails to fulfill its contractual
obligations is the life of Adel Mhomoud. The 44-year-old beekeeper in
al-Tuwetha told me, "I have cancer, and I know I'm dying. My white
blood cell count is 14,000, and I don't have enough red blood cells.
We are all sick; our joints ache, my hips are killing me, and my blood
is bad. But nobody will help us here."
Certainly not Halliburton.
Cheney, who received no less
than five military deferments during the Vietnam War despite being a
supporter of that war (Sound familiar?), had shamelessly told the veterans
at the VFW, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing
them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
So that was the door Cheney
took to bring Iraq his Halliburton.
And of course, once through
that door, Halliburton promptly went to work.
Aside from the aforementioned
awarding of no-bid contracts worth billions of US taxpayer dollars,
as early as December 2003, the US Army found out Halliburton was overcharging
the government $61 million for fuel transportation and $67 million for
food services in Iraq. I remember being in Baghdad when this occurred
- seeing the enormously long gas lines at petrol stations whilst knowing
Halliburton, not only failing to provide Iraqis with their own petrol,
was even charging the US taxpayer three dollars per gallon for fuel
that local companies could have imported for under one dollar.
But that was barely the beginning.
Let's take a brief glance
at some of the more recent Halliburton/KBR
rogueries:
* 27 February 2006 - US Army
decides to reimburse KBR nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41
billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair equipment in Iraq,
despite Pentagon auditors identifying over $250 million in charges as
"potentially" excessive.
* 17 February 2006 - KBR
executive hired to fly cargo into Iraq pleads guilty to inflating invoices
by $1.14 million to cover fraudulent "war risk surcharges."
* 6 February 2006 - KBR employee
in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity, says "We pay our locals
[in Iraq] $5 to $16 dollars a day and you can see where [KBR] put it
down [on the military requisition] as $60 a day <http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/labor2.html>."
Military requisitions reveal KBR to be paying between $5-$16 per day
in wages to third world laborers in Iraq whilst billing US taxpayers
between $50-$80 per day.
* 30 January 2006 - Bush
administration settles dispute between Pentagon and Halliburton by agreeing
to pay company $199 million in disputed gasoline charges in Iraq. To
date KBR has been awarded nearly $16 billion in total revenue from Iraq
contracts.
* 23 January 2006 - Halliburton
fails to alert American troops and civilian contractors at US base in
Ramadi that their water was contaminated. Despite allegations which
came from Halliburton's own water quality experts, the company denies
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/n/a/2006/01/22/national/w104644S60.DTL&type=printable>
there was a contamination problem.
* 27 December 2005 - KBR,
linked to human trafficking-related concerns via its work in Iraq (such
as forced prostitution and labor), Halliburton benefits from Defense
Department's refusal to adopt policy barring human trafficking.
* 1 December 2005 - UPI reports
KBR workers in Iraq ("third country" nationals) found to be
paid as little as 50 cents an hour.
* 5 November 2005 - UN auditing
board finds that US should repay Iraqi government $208 million from
Iraqi oil revenue for fraudulent contracting work.
Then there is how these "policies"
Halliburton is following in Iraq affect US soldiers and contractors,
including its own employees.
With contracts in Iraq now
worth up to $18 billion, there is nothing stopping Halliburton from
abusing the lack of oversight and obvious conflict of interest between
their free reign and their ties to the vice president.
An example of this is Jim
Spiri, who was hired by Halliburton/KBR in January 2004 to work as a
logistics coordinator. Sent to Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, he worked
the flight line handling passenger movements, as Spiri had 20 years
of aviation experience.
"During my time there,
I assisted nightly with medevac [medical evacuations] operations and
was highly respected among all military medical folks," he told
me this week. "I had a good name throughout the theatre."
But problems were immediately
apparent to him.
"I witnessed much alcohol
abuse, in an environment where alcohol is strictly prohibited. I made
note of this and reported it to my superiors, who actually were the
ones abusing the system. It was obvious that the fox was guarding the
hen house, so to speak."
He told me his entire flight
line operation was "run in a gang-like manner" and "the
work was never done in an efficient manner." Instead, according
to Spiri, the motto was, "Do as little as possible for as much
as you can, for as long as you can."
On February 5th of this year,
while working the night shift which he had for the last two years, Spiri
witnessed something that made the thought of continuing to work for
KBR intolerable.
After watching a fallen soldier
loaded onto a plane without the proper ceremony of honor, Spiri told
me he "wrote an account of what I experienced that night."
After this, "It was published, and ... all hell broke loose about
36 hours later."
Spiri was fired by KBR after
writing an article detailing the event and criticizing Halliburton's
policies in Iraq.
Now he wants to shine light
on how KBR operates in Iraq. "What they don't want to let out is
the type of workers they have over there, that it's the largest gravy
train operation, it's the largest welfare system I've ever seen in my
life. It's pathetic," Spiri said in a recent interview while adding
that over half the people KBR employed in Iraq were "grossly under-qualified
and highly over-paid."
His work entailed three people,
but by the time he left there were 10 people on his team, most of whom
"sat around listening to their iPod's and DVD players."
Yet firing an employee for
raising awareness about corruption and his questioning of policy is
minor compared to the treatment of Iraqis meted out by the company.
When I was in Amman last
May, I met Ahlam al-Hassan, a young Iraqi woman who had worked for KBR
in Diwaniyah.
Two gunshots by assailants
who attacked her for collaborating with occupation forces left her blind,
and her former employers would not return her calls or requests for
assistance.
For her three months of work
for KBR she was paid $475, having taken the job to support her family.
"My two bosses at KBR, Mr. Jeff and Mr. Mark, were very good and
gentle with me," she explained to me in Jordan, "They told
me it wasn't dangerous to work for them." But after spending months
in hospitals for what happened to her on her way to work, "After
this, they have made no attempts to contact me."
Note that on May 31, 2004,
an Army Corps of Engineers email revealed that Cheney's office "coordinated"
Halliburton's multi-billion dollar Iraq contract. Cheney, like most
common criminals, denied having anything to do with the no-bid contract.
More recently, on January
26th of this year, Halliburton announced that its 2005 profits were
the "Best in our 86-year history," as all six of its divisions
posted record results. Halliburton stock price doubled in the last year,
and Dick Cheney's tax returns indicate that he earned
$194,862 from his Halliburton stock in just the last year.
Loot Dick, Loot!
Is that clear enough?
All of this begs the question:
Do you approve of your tax dollars being used in this fashion?
If not, then what are you
willing to do about it?