PARTY HOUSE, PROSTITUTES, PROFITEERING IN IRAQ: CHENEY TIES?

Who is KBR and what do they do in Iraq? And what was Vice President Dick Cheney's role in KBR and the contracts they landed for work in Iraq?

KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) NYSE: KBR is an American engineering and construction company, formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton, based in Houston. After Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries in 1998, Dresser's engineering subsidiary, The M. W. Kellogg Co., was merged with Halliburton's construction subsidiary, Brown & Root, to form Kellogg Brown & Root. KBR and its predecessors have won many contracts with the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as during World War II and the Vietnam War.

KBR is the largest [1] non-union construction company in the United States.

KBR employs more American private contractors and holds a larger contract with the U.S. government than does any other firm in Iraq. The company's roughly 14,000 U.S. employees in Iraq provide logistical support to the U.S. armed forces. [5]

The United States Army hired KBR to provide housing for approximately 100,000 soldiers in Iraq in a contract worth $200 million, based on a long-term contract signed in December 2001 under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). Other LOGCAP orders have included a pre-invasion order to repair oil facilities in Iraq; $28.2 million to build POW camps; and $40.8 million to accommodate the Iraqi Survey Group, which was deployed after the invasion to find weapons of mass destruction.

The Army's actions came under fire from California Congressman Henry Waxman, who, along with Michigan Congressman John Dingell, asked the General Accounting Office to investigate whether the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pentagon were circumventing government contracting procedures and favoring companies with ties to the Bush administration.

They also accused KBR of inflating prices for importing gasoline into Iraq.[6][7] In June 2003, the Army announced that it would replace KBR's oil-infrastructure contract with two public-bid contracts worth a maximum total of $1 billion, to be awarded in October. However, the Army announced in October it would expand the contract ceiling to $2 billion and the solicitation period to December.

As of October 16, 2003, KBR had performed nearly $1.6 billion worth of work. In the meantime, KBR has subcontracted with two companies to work on the project: Boots & Coots, an oil field emergency response firm that Halliburton works in partnership with (CEO Jerry L. Winchester was a former Halliburton manager) and Wild Well Control. Both firms are based in Texas.[8]

By Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE, http://corksphere.blogspot.com/ a blog dedicated to bringing readers behind-the-scenes dealings and the latest unreported war news from Iraq and Afghanistan.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY'S TIES TO KBR

Following the end of the first Gulf War, the Pentagon, led by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones.[4]

Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. He has been accused of supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq and providing work to KBR under contingency contracts to financially benefit himself and his business associates.

KBR'S INVOLVEMENT WITH PROSTITUTES AND PROFITEERING IN IRAQ

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/party-house-pro.html

Stories of waste, fraud and abuse related to U.S. military contracts in Iraq are so "old news" that it takes something really awful to being shocking these days. Newly released court records related to the subcontractors operating under the KBR LOGCAP contract, provide just such shocking details. "On Wednesday, a federal judge in Rock Island sentenced the Army official, Chief Warrant Officer Peleti "Pete" Peleti Jr., to 28 months in prison for taking bribes," the Chicago Tribune reports. "One Middle Eastern subcontractor treated him to a trip to the 2006 Super Bowl, a defense investigator said."

Like all bribes, the payoffs ranged from the paltry to the outrageous:

In October 2002, five months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, [Tamimi operations director Shabbir] Khan threw a birthday party for Seamans at a Tamimi "party house" near the Kuwait base known as Camp Arifjan. Khan "provided Seamans with a prostitute as a present," Rock Island prosecutors wrote in court papers. Driving Seamans back to his quarters, Khan offered kickbacks that would total $130,000.

Some of the dirty dealing got downright dirty:

The Army LOGCAP contract required KBR to medically screen the thousands of kitchen workers that subcontractors like Tamimi imported from impoverished villages in Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

But when Pentagon officials asked for medical records in March 2004, Khan presented "bogus" files for 550 Tamimi workers, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeffrey Lang said in a court hearing last year.

KBR retested those 550 workers at a Kuwait City clinic and found 172 positive for exposure to hepatitis A, Lang told the judge. Khan tried to suppress those findings, warning the clinic director that Tamimi would do no more business with his medical office if he "told KBR about these results," Lang said in court. The infectious virus can cause fatigue and other symptoms that arise weeks after contact.

And the list goes on ...

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