|
View previous topic :: View next topic
|
| Author |
Message |
Nofsdad
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7085
Location: Central CA
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 7:10 am Post subject: You just don't DO that to Halliburton
|
|
|
| Quote: |
WASHINGTON — The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web
The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.
Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. “They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” he said in an interview. “Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.” |
The Rest Of The Story
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
Major Appliance
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 1292
Location: Brand Central
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:01 pm Post subject:
|
|
|
*sigh*
it is precisely this sort of crap that makes the taxpayers mad at their government.
why is it so hard for a company providing services to adequately provide the correct billing information to their customer.... us?
unless KBR was providing services that were... um... unbillable in the open/audited process.... and therefore in everyone's best interests to be vague on.
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
Nofsdad
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7085
Location: Central CA
|
|
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:35 am Post subject:
|
|
|
This is that lost billion I keep referring to and there's a lot more to this than simply failing to provide adequate billing information to their customer. KBR, first as the front company for Halliburton and later as a supposedly independent entity, has been responsible for a huge number of the biggest "screwups" in the entire war from toilets that leak crap all over people in the rooms below them to electrified showers to food poisoning in the mess halls to 2000 fuel trucks sitting idle on the Kuwait border and drawing $2500 apiece for "standby" when large percentages of them don't run or in some cases are not even to be found and that's only the ones I can recollect offhand.
I placed the word "screwups" in quotes because in EVERY instance that has been exposed so far... and several have been exposed just by the IG of the DOD himself... and if we go with the generally accepted opinion that what you can see when it comes to corruption in government contracts is only the tip of the iceberg... KBR/Halliburton has deliberately deliverd inferior product in order to boost their bottom line. So far, not ONE of these accounting or billing "mistakes" has been in the government's favor.
This billion may be chump change in terms of the actual amount that has been pissed away in exactly this manner. I've read some estimates by various government officials that actual losses on these no bid, no oversight contracts run as high as 25-27 billion. Mr. Smith is not the only official to find himself suddenly unemployed for challenging the practices of KBR/Halliburton OR the practices employed by DOD in awarding these contracts.
If you don't accept that they're committing a deliberate ripoff, then you have to go with all these screwups being actual mistakes and any company that screws up that badly that many times should not be getting multi billion dollar blank checks from the taxpayers anyway.
The ONLY people I can think of who would support this kind of situation are those that somehow benefit personally from it.
|
|
|
Back to top
|
|
|
|