The Halliburton canard, again

Funny you bring up Halliburton, today of all days:

KBR, the Army’s largest contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan, is linked to “the vast majority” of suspected combat-zone fraud cases that have been referred to investigators, as well as a majority of the $13 billion in “questioned” or “unsupported” costs, the Pentagon’s top auditor said yesterday.

In testimony before the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, April G. Stephenson, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, said investigators have sent to the inspector general a total of 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other violations since 2004.

“I don’t think we’re aware of a program, contract or contractor that has had this number of suspensions or referrals,” Stephenson said. KBR’s work accounts for 43 percent of the Pentagon’s audited Iraq contracting dollars, according to the agency’s data.
The Defense Contract Audit Agency must really hate freedom and America!!

AJB on May 5, 2009 at 11:51 AM

Good. Lets get to this right now! I’m tired of these charges and have been railing against them for years on this website now.

The large majority of the overcharges and fraud were conducted, as the article you linked implies, by subcontractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. That means local contractors (Iraqis and Afghans) who are corrupt and try to cheat the system, or foreign companies subcontracted to KBR (i.e. Pakistanis, South Africans, Indians, etc……) who are also products of a corrupt culture.

I’m not saying Americans weren’t part of this. But what I am saying is that KBR is the entity which found these discrepancies, identified them to DCAA, and then rooted out the fraudulent invoices and turned them over to the Corps of Engineers auditors. For the last 6 yrs, these same Corps auditors have been saying KBR defrauded the government when they know full well that KBR brought this to their attention, fessed up about their mistakes, and fixed these charges.

However, the early charges, which the Corps initially said were fraudulent, were for food and gas to be brought into Iraq from the south and brought all the way up to Northern Iraq, in the midst of insurgent attacks and with significant danger and casualties to KBR drivers. Eventually, subcontracts were cut for fuel thru Turkey, eliminating the long trip, but raising the price of fuel anyway since the fuel had to come from Kuwait or elsewhere in the Middle East, go thru the Suez canal and then be offloaded in Turkey and brough by truck to Iraq and into insurgent territory. Many of all these shipments were lost or damaged due to terrorist attacks and IEDs. So the local contractors and sources of gasoline began charging exorbitant amounts to drive these shipments across Iraq under attack. All while our forces desperately needed these supplies and the MNF Commands insisted they be brought up as soon as possible. And now we want to nitpick over the cost! How many American and Iraqi lives was this food and gas worth compared to the dollars spent?

And the Corps of Engineers has the audacity to accuse KBR of less than good faith efforts to find corruption, all while dealing with local contractors who are corrupt, and under pressure to get our boys food and gas to fight the enemy? Anyone who buys this KBR is a liar and a cheat story has never met an incompetent Corps of Engineers auditor.

I worked with Corps auditors before the war ever started. They are not the sharpest knife in the drawer. As a contractor, I was forced…frequently, … to explain over and over again how the contract worked, and to quote the contract itself to Corps civilian administrators over and over again. The government always wants their stuff for free, and says my charges are too much. But you can go to the contract and point to exact paragraphs and passages that justify these charges, and that lead these auditors to admit they have no case against the vast majority of these fraud charges.

If there was any meat here, the folks who lied and defrauded the government would be in jail already. And many of them already are. Several KBR and Army personnel have already been charged, convicted and jailed or fined for these offenses, some involving millions of dollars. But they were all identifed by KBR in the first place. Again, I met incompetent auditors and competent ones. The Corps’ military and engineering arm is a strong organization full of talented people. But government pencilnecks, whose only job is to cut money and budget to make a name for themselves and to justify their own jobs are a dime a dozen. Anything they can do to say no and get their names recognized, they will do, even at the expense of saving American military lives. Because that isn’t their job. Counting beans is.

The DCAA auditors couldn’t find their ass with both hands if KBR didn’t point the way first.

Subsunk

Subsunk on May 5, 2009 at 5:41 PM

Did anyone notice the drop off of “Halliburton” round the start of 2007?

I wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

I mean it couldn’t possibly be just cuz Soros bought 1.9 million shares of Halliburton stock in the fourth quarter of 2006, after spending $20 plus million’s to “527″ organizations to blast Halliburton 2004 thru 2006 (3rd quarter).

Things that make ya go hummmm

DSchoen on May 5, 2009 at 5:24 PM

Personally, I think Soros blasted all these companies to lower their value for takeovers, and “manufactured” the credit crisis through currency manipulations, and then bought journalists to hype the “worst recession since the Great Depression” to get his malleable Manchurian candidate elected, and then begin manipulating the US economy to make ever more money on his hedge funds and currency trades.

If there ever was a hidden hand behind the power, he is it. If he isn’t a power manipulating our economy and our politics, then he sure as Hell is taking great advantage of the crisis to make sh*tloads of money for himself at our expense. I guess that makes him an evil money grubbing capitalist after all.

Just my humble opinion. But then, I would cross the street to avoid having to piss on him in he was on fire in the gutter.

Subsunk

Subsunk on May 5, 2009 at 6:32 PM