Army agrees to pay Halliburton $2 billion for imaginary work

GNN | February 10 2005

The U.S. Army agreed to pay Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary nearly $2 billion for work that nobody can prove ever took place. The work was allegedly performed in Iraq and Kuwait under the Army’s LOGCAP contract, awarded to KBR in 2001 via competitive bidding.

Under LOGCAP, KBR is responsible for military logistics, which includes feeding the troops, transporting military supplies, constructing military housing and offices, and maintaining laundry facilities. KBR is reimbursed by the Pentagon for its costs, then paid a fee of one to three percent of those costs. So far, KBR has received $6.4 billion for work under LOGCAP.

Army auditors determined last year that 43 percent of the $4.5 billion requested by Halliburton under LOGCAP could not be verified under normal accounting procedures. In August, during the hotly-contested presidential campaign, the Army decided to withhold 15 percent of future reimbursements until KBR verifies when, how and to whom the suspicious expenses were paid. However, a few hours later the decision was abruptly reversed and the Army announced it would give Halliburton “more time” to explain itself. No reason was given for the abrupt reversal, except that the Army claimed it did not want to harm the troops in the field by withholding payments to KBR. The Army had given the company three deadline extensions to explain the suspicious expenses, but the deadlines quickly passed with no explanation that satisfied Pentagon auditors. The Army rejected claims by Democrats that the Bush administration had provided favorable treatment to KBR because of Vice President Dick Cheney’s past association with Halliburton.

Last fall, the Pentagon’s Army Matériel Command and the Defense Contract Audit Agency recommended withholding 15 percent of KBR payments. Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Management Agency praised the company for its “effective and efficient” accounting system. And finally, on Feb. 3, after months of internal Pentagon wrangling and three months after the presidential election, the Army made its final decision and rejected calls to withhold 15 percent of payments. In what the Washington Post called “a departure from normal policy,” the Army decided to ignore its own auditors and pay KBR for all costs, plus the standard one to three percent fee, without any explanation that could justify the company’s suspicious bills. The 15 percent withholding penalty could have cost KBR $60 million a month.

“This is indeed great news for KBR,” said Andy Lane, chief operating officer of Halliburton, in a news release. “The Army and KBR have agreed to continue working closely together to resolve any remaining billing issues.”

“This action is incomprehensible,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said in a prepared statement. “Once again, the Bush administration is putting Halliburton’s interests above those of the taxpayers,” he said.

U.S. Weapons Poison Europe [Halliburton linked to DU]
 

Ironically, AWE was taken over three years ago by Halliburton, which at first refused to release key data as required by law to Busby.

An international expert on low-level radiation, Busby serves as an official advisor on several British government committees. He recently co-authored an independent report on low-level radiation with 45 scientists with the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) for the European Parliament.

Busby was eventually able to get Aldermaston's air monitoring data from Halliburton by filing a freedom of information request using a new British law that became effective Jan. 1, 2005. Critical data from 2003 was missing, however, so he had to obtain the information from the Defence Procurement Agency.

Aldermaston is one of many nuclear facilities throughout Europe that regularly monitor atmospheric radiation levels transported by sand, dust storms and air currents from radiation sources in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

After the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq in 2003, very fine particles of depleted uranium were captured along with larger sand and dust particles in filters in Britain. These particles traveled in seven to nine days from Iraqi battlefields as far away as 2,400 miles.

The radiation measured in the atmosphere quadrupled within a few weeks after the beginning of the 2003 campaign, and at one of the five monitoring locations, the levels twice required an official alert to the British Environment Agency.

In addition, according to Busby, the Aldermaston air monitoring data provided a continuous record of depleted uranium levels in Britain from other recent wars.

Extensive video news footage of the 2003 Iraq war, including Fallujah in 2004, provided evidence that the United States has illegally used depleted uranium munitions on civilian populations. These military actions are in direct violation of not only international conventions but also violate U.S. military law because the United States is a signatory to The Hague and Geneva conventions and the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol.

Depleted uranium weaponry meets the definition of a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) in two out of three  categories under U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 40 Sec. 2302. After action mandates have also been violated such as U.S. Army Regulation AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278, which requires treatment of radiation poisoning for all casualties, including enemy soldiers and civilians.

In the mainstream press, British officials have attempted to counter the study by blaming the elevated uranium levels on "local sources." Anonymous statements by government scientists used by the media thus far, however, have been contradicted by evidence disclosed in the report.

Naturally occurring uranium in the crust of the Earth is only 2.4 parts per million and could not become concentrated to the high levels measured in Britain. As far as nuclear power plants are concerned, the lowest levels of uranium measured at monitoring stations around Aldermaston were actually taken at the facility, which designs and tests nuclear weapons-meaning this could not possibly be a source.

Atomic weapons facilities would be more likely to produce plutonium contamination, which was not reported as a contaminant. This wasn't the first time a noted scientist has discussed global pollution from the use of DU.

Dr. Keith Baverstock, an expert on radiation, exposed a World Health Organization (WHO) cover-up on depleted uranium. Baverstock leaked an official WHO report that he had written for the organization but was never published. He warned in the report about the environmental contamination from tiny DU particles formed from U.S. munitions.

In addition, Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, a Japanese physicist at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, estimated that the atomic equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs has been released into the global atmosphere since 1991 from the use of DU munitions.

He said it is mixed in the atmosphere in one year.

DU PROFITS

As if Busby's report is not bad enough, a new book by a leading scientist notes who is making billions from nightmare armaments.

Dr. Jay Gould revealed in his book The Enemy Within that the British royal family privately owns investments in uranium holdings worth over $6 billion through Rio Tinto Mines in Australia. The mining company was formed for the British royal family in the late 1950s by Roland Walter "Tiny" Rowland, who was known as the queen's banker and the master financial manipulator behind billionaire Robert Maxwell's fortune.*

The Rothschilds are also profiting enormously from their control of the price and supply of uranium globally.

The ubiquitous Halliburton just recently finished construction of a 1,000-mile railway from the mining area to a port on the north coast of Australia to transport the ore.

The queen's favorite American buccaneers, Dick Cheney and the Bush family, are tied to her through uranium mining and the shared use of DU munitions in the Middle East, Central Asia and Kosovo.

The role that such diverse groups and individuals as the Carlyle Group,George H.W. Bush, former Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci, Los Alamos and Livermore labs, and U.S. and international pension fund investments have played in proliferating depleted uranium weapons is not well known. God save the queen from her complicity in turning planet Earth into a death star. Leuren Moret is an international expert on the environmental effects of depleted uranium and has worked at two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

Halliburton won the "greased pig" special Golden Piggy award today (an annual Victoria celebration)  for ripping off the US taxpayer.

Some of the highlights:

*no-bid contracts courtesy of ex-CEO,still on the payroll, Cheney.
*selling gasoline at $5 a gallon

*soft drinks at $45 a case

*oil filters for $85,000

*abandoning vehicles if they got a flat and charging for a new 

 vehicle..
*charging the taxpayers for 240,000 30-can CASES of soda instead of
 the 240,000 CANS they actually delivered

*$100 to do a 15 lb bag of Laundry:

The ultimate insult was Halliburton was caught with $1.4 billion in
"unexplained" billings.   Then the DoD gave Halliburton an
"performance bonus" of, you guessed it $1.4 billion, sort of a tip for
helping screw the taxpayer.
 

• Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug

• Halliburton announces 284 percent increase in war profits

Why Did Halliburton Buy An Oil Cleanup Company 8 Days Before The Oil Spill? - June 17/10
 

Goldman Sachs Sold $250 Million of BP Stock Before Spill -The Raw Story, June 2/10

The brokerage firm that’s faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.

BP chief Tony Hayward sold shares weeks before oil spill - June 05/10

The chief executive of BP sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused its value to collapse.

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