Despite efforts by the right-wing to tamp dissent and brand those who oppose this war as traitorous and anti-american, evidential signs continue to spill forth from the conflict, revealing the breathtaking incompetence demonstrated throughout this entire war.
This morning, on the cover of the Old Gray Lady, is a heartwearming story documenting YET ANOTHER abject failure to perform services on the part of Halliburton. Forget overbilling, forget inflated charges on invoices, this latest revelation catches the contractor in a purposeful burn of $75.7 million in funds allocated to a oil pipeline repair in the face of evidence that the project would not succeed.
$100,000 a day for crews on standby:
The project, called the Fatah pipeline crossing, had been a critical element of a $2.4 billion no-bid reconstruction contract that a Halliburton subsidiary had won from the Army in 2003. The spot where about 15 pipelines crossed the Tigris had been the main link between Iraq's rich northern oil fields and the export terminals and refineries that could generate much-needed gasoline, heating fuel and revenue for Iraqis.
For all those reasons, the project's demise would seriously damage the American-led effort to restore Iraq's oil system and enable the country to pay for its own reconstruction. Exactly what portion of Iraq's lost oil revenue can be attributed to one failed project, no matter how critical, is impossible to calculate. But the pipeline at Al Fatah has a wider significance as a metaphor for the entire $45 billion rebuilding effort in Iraq. Although the failures of that effort are routinely attributed to insurgent attacks, an examination of this project shows that troubled decision-making and execution have played equally important roles.
The Fatah project went ahead despite warnings from experts that it could not succeed because the underground terrain was shattered and unstable.
It continued chewing up astonishing amounts of cash when the predicted problems bogged the work down, with a contract that allowed crews to charge as much as $100,000 a day as they waited on standby.
The company in charge engaged in what some American officials saw as a self-serving attempt to limit communications with the government until all the money was gone.
Halliburton again confirms that subservience to the mighty bottom line is their first and only order of business. A product of no-bid contracts and politically incestuous associations that go all the way up to the VP, we have before us one more example of systematic abuse of public funds. But beyond the scope of abuse, there lies an even more alarming revelation: that this administration was made aware of an investigation into this project and, despite the knowledge of abuse and fraud, felt that a "slap on the wrist" was the most appropriate way to mete out justice:
An independent United States office, The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, began an investigation of the project and issued a report earlier this year. It sharply criticized KBR for not relaying the problems, and concluded that "the geological complexities that caused the project to fail were not only foreseeable but predicted."
The company received a slap on the wrist when it got only about 4 percent of its potential bonus fees on the job order that contained the contract; there was no other financial penalty.
In interviews, two of the top Army Corps commanders who have had involvement at Al Fatah were reluctant to criticize the work done by KBR in Iraq. That was also the case in February when the Army Corps agreed to pay Halliburton most of its fees on a large fuel supply contract in Iraq, even though Pentagon auditors had found more than $200 million of the charges were questionable.
As some of you knwow, I wrote an earlier diary on the subject of the Custer Battles whistleblower trail. Apart from the astonishing degree of fraud evidenced in the case, the most startling aspect, delivered in a stunning presentation by Alan Grayson to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, was that the administration was aware of the fraud, aware of the abuse of the system, but chose to do nothing. Think of the example that sends to every other contractor, not only working in Iraq, but also working on government-funded contracts at home.
We have an administration that has taken the position that any public excoriation of a contractor would only further undermine their mission - something that has moved beyond winning the war and has now eroded simply into winning the war on suppression.
The systemic corruption and fraud pervading the Iraqi reconstruction campaign I think confirms that profiteering was a primary motivation for going into Iraq in the first place. What better reason than war to demonstrate the necessity of appropriating $300 billion dollars of treasury money to your political supporters?
When will our legislators wake-up to the fact that we've been had? Does the administration's unwillingness to value blood and money justify abrogation of duty by those who seek to feed at the public trough during wartime?
Recalling the time Dick Cheeny was so irked by Pat Leahy's accusations of Halliburton's war-time profteering that he told the senator to "go f--- yourself"* on the senate floor, I am wondering what further evidence will be required by Leahy's colleagues before they finally feel emboldened enough to tell Cheney that he too, can "go f*ck himself"?