WASHINGTON - The Army's primary support contractor in Iraq is being warned by Pentagon auditors to cut its work force there or face nearly $200 million in penalties for keeping thousands too many on the payroll.
The Houston-based KBR Inc., responsible for everything from mail and laundry to housing and meals, has increased employee levels while U.S. troops steadily leave the country after more than six years of war, the audit says. As a result, the U.S. government is paying far more in labor costs in Iraq than it should as military resources are shifted to Afghanistan.
The Department of Defense has confirmed that the US Army Criminal
Investigation Command has launched a formal investigation into the electrocution
death of 25-year-old Adam Hermanson,
a US Air Force veteran-turned private security contractor who died in a
shower at the compound of his employer, Triple Canopy, at Camp Olympia
inside Baghdad's Green Zone on September 1, 2009. The State Department's
Regional Security Office is also investigating.
The nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight and Reform recently
revealed that the top 100 government contractors made nearly $300
billion from federal contracts in 2007 alone. Since 1995 these same
contractors have been involved with 676 cases of "misconduct" and were
paid $26 billion in fines to settle cases stemming from fraud, waste or
abuse. Fines and other penalties, it seems, are simply the stunningly
small price of doing government business.
The American public and—to some extent—lawmakers snapped to belated attention in September of 2007 when a small force of private military contractors opened fire on a busy Baghdad traffic square, killing at least 14 civilians and wounding 20 more.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has taken a bit of abuse for being one of only seven senators to vote against defunding the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN.
Last month, both houses of Congress quickly voted to deny federal funding to the community group after the now-infamous videos by young right-wing activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. The pair posed as a pimp and a prostitute and, with a hidden camera, went to a number of ACORN's tax preparation offices seeking tax and business advice.
Now this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein
laboratory where the cuckoos on the right wing cook up their witches
brew of batshit crazy allegations to levy against Barack Obama. There
are scores upon scores of issues where Obama should be rightly taken to
task for continuing Bush-era "war on terror" policies, preemptively
immunizing torturers, refusing to fight for Single Payer health care,
hiring a team of hawks and neoliberal crooks to manage foreign policy
and the economy, among many many others.
Last spring, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq got a makeover,replacing the scandal-plagued Blackwater private security company with a firm named Triple Canopy.
The new $1 billion contract cemented Triple Canopy's status as the pre-eminent provider of private security services in Iraq, with its heavily armed employees appearing side by side with senior State Department diplomats.
Two years ago on September 16, 2007, on a steamy hot Baghdad day with
temperatures reaching 100 degrees, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy
entered a congested intersection at Nisour Square in the Mansour
district of the Iraqi capital. The once-upscale section of Baghdad was
still lined with boutiques, cafes and art galleries dating back to
better days. The ominous caravan consisted of four large armored
vehicles with machine guns mounted on top.
On September 11, the US appeals court for the District of Columbia announced in a 2-1 decision that it was throwing out
a lawsuit against CACI International and L-3 Communications Titan unit,
which are being sued by Iraqi civilians for their alleged role in the
torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. The companies provided
interrogators at the prison at the height of the abuses there. The suit
alleges that employees of the companies conspired with U.S.
A federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday against CACI International that accused the firm's employees of taking part in the torture and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In a 2 to 1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit dismissed the case on the grounds that CACI should be
immune from prosecution because the company's employees were under U.S.
military authority.
