KBR // Current

Feds: No True Count of Iraq Contractors

"KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq, is pulling out of that country so slowly that it... more

rodstradamus
added this
12 days ago
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0 comments

Republican senators approve of rape

Hold the rapists and their allies accountable.

patomalley
added this
1 month ago
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0 comments

Stewart Takes On 30 Republicans Who Voted Against Rape Amendment

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her Halliburton/KBR co-workers while... more

atomiclegion
added this
1 month ago
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66 comments

Judge Blocks Public from Blackwater Hearings

"A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of pretrial hearings in the prosecution of five U.S. security contractors accused of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a 2007 shooting.

The hearings, which are expected to last through Friday, will examine whether the government improperly used immunized statements by the Blackwater Worldwide security guards in its investigation. The guards gave the statements to the State Department shortly after the controversial shooting Sept. 16, 2007, in a busy Baghdad square.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said Wednesday that he was closing the hearings because he wanted to shield witnesses and potential jurors from pretrial publicity. He also cited concerns about the disclosure of grand jury material. Urbina said he wanted to ensure the guards received a fair trial.

The five guards -- Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Donald Ball -- are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding 20 others. The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against the others.

Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

The proceedings underway in the District's federal court, known as Kastigar hearings, will probe how well investigators gathered evidence without being tainted by those immunized statements. If the judge finds the government's case is tainted, he might be forced to throw out the indictment."

Fair trial? Throw out the indictment?

Contractors are mercenaries under a contract, hence the name, and part of the contract is that they cannot be prosecuted for crimes that the average American soldier would be under United States and International Law. Essentially, the have immunity.

So, when Blackwater, Xe, Executive Outcomes, Halliburton, KBR, BAE Systems have their mercenaries shoot up villages and revel in the plunder of heroin and prostitutes, American soldiers get hit with the retaliation, and in the case of Afghanistan, they're about to hit back real hard. Think Vietnam was bad? Wait til he Taliban start their "Tet Offensive."

These "peacekeepers" are now patrolling the streets of the US as part of an international police force. Google 'G20 police pittsburgh' and click on images. Remember, contractor=mercenary and they have no allegiance to the United States or the Constitution. They work under a different contract and they get private trials."A federal judge Wednesday blocked the public from attending a critical set of... more

rodstradamus
added this
1 month ago
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0 comments

Senate Passes Franken Amendment, Aiding Sexual Assault Victims

Jamie Leigh Jones is one of countless women drugged, viciously raped and held prisoner... more

knews121
added this
1 month ago
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2 comments

Senate Passes Amendment To Prevent KBR/Halliburton From Covering Up Raping Employees (Literally)

Today the Senate "debated" the Department of Defense appropriations bill passed by the... more

WakeUpPeople
added this
1 month ago
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43 comments

Karl Rove Blasts Obama for 'Outsourcing Afghanistan'

Now this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein laboratory where the cuckoos on the right wing cook up their witches brew of batshit crazy allegations to levy against Barack Obama. There are scores upon scores of issues where Obama should be rightly taken to task for continuing Bush-era “war on terror” policies, preemptively immunizing torturers, refusing to fight for Single Payer health care, hiring a team of hawks and neoliberal crooks to manage foreign policy and the economy, among many many others. At the same time, there are racist astroturf loons that appear to have recently landed on earth from planet Fiction and are navigating their way through the country, speaking in tongues, led by snakeoil salesmen like Glenn Beck.

But the headline in today’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by former senior White House advisor Karl Rove is in a category all its own: “Obama Can’t Outsource Afghanistan.” The article is ostensibly about how Obama is delegating decision making on everything from Afghanistan to the CIA/torture investigation to others:

Mr. Obama’s hands-off approach to the war seems to fit his governing style. Over the past year, he outsourced writing the stimulus package to House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, washed his hands of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to reinvestigate CIA interrogators, and hasn’t offered a detailed health-care plan.
Um, excuse me Karl, how about outsourcing an entire war to politically connected war companies? Remember those eight years? While Rove may be using the term “outsource” in a general way, let’s remember this fact: never, ever in US history have more government and military activities been outsourced to private corporations than they were the day Bush and Rove left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Obama moved in. For Rove—or any Bush-era official—to have the audacity to blast anyone for outsourcing anything is like a bigger-scale version of Republican Senator David Vitter lecturing the losers exiting Scores “gentlemen’s club” about the moral evils of prostitution.

The real article that should come below a headline “Obama Can’t Outsource Afghanistan” would never be written by Rove. Such an article would denounce the actual scandal of Obama’s continuation of the Bush-Cheney-Rove policy of radically outsourcing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to corporate criminals like Armor Group, DynCorp, Blackwater, KBR, Triple Canopy, Lockheed Martin and many, many others.

By Jeremy ScahillNow this just simply could not be made up in that Frankenstein laboratory where the... more

Future_America
added this
1 month ago
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2 comments

Is The War Against ACORN Unconstitutional?

Any misuse or abuse of taxpayer money should be thoroughly investigated, but ACORN does not even make the top 1000 list of organizations that should be subjected to immediate and swift review. Shame on those Democrats who have engaged in this witch-hunt against a 400,000 member organization that has helped millions of poor and working class people while simultaneously continuing to vote for billions and billions of dollars in funding to proven corrupt organizations that operate above the law and above any effective oversight.

In any case, this legislative hunt against ACORN may be a moot point.

Earlier this week, the Congressional Research Service’s legislative department completed a report looking at the question of the constitutionality of the Defund ACORN Act. The CRS report raises the question of whether this legislation is punitive in nature and if it will “violate the prohibition on bills of attainder found in Article I, § 9, cl. 3 of the Constitution.” In other words, as Constitutional law expert Glenn Greenwald points out, “an act aimed at punishing a single party without a trial.” From the CRS report:

The two main criteria which the courts would likely look to in order to determine whether legislation is a bill of attainder are (1) whether “specific” individuals or entities are affected by the statute, and (2) whether the legislation inflicts a “punishment” on those individuals. Under the instant bills, the fact that ACORN and its affiliates are named in the legislation for differential treatment would appear to meet a per se criteria for specificity.

[…]

While the regulatory purpose of ensuring that federal funds are properly spent is a legitimate one, it is not clear that imposing a permanent government-wide ban on contracting with or providing grants to ACORN fits that purpose, at least when the ban is applied to ACORN and its affiliates jointly and severally. In theory, under the House bill, the behavior of a single employee from a single affiliate could affect not only ACORN but all of its 361 affiliates. Thus, there may be issues raised by characterizing this legislation as purely regulatory in nature. While the Supreme Court has noted that the courts will generally defer to Congress as to the regulatory purpose of a statute absent clear proof of punitive intent, there appear to be potential issues raised with attempting to find a rational non-punitive regulatory purpose for this legislation. Thus, it appears that a court may have a sufficient basis to overcome the presumption of constitutionality, and find that it violates the prohibition against bills of attainder.

More @ linkAny misuse or abuse of taxpayer money should be thoroughly investigated, but ACORN... more

Future_America
added this
1 month ago
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3 comments

The KBR/Halliburton Iraq Rape Case Goes Forward

A former Halliburton/KBR worker who claims she was gang-raped in her bedroom by... more

spacemikey
added this
1 month ago
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1 comment

KBR: Cheney and Halliburton's Dirty Little Secret

Why is KBR rarely discussed by the media?

JaminDime
added this
2 months ago
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0 comments

No criminal charges in KBR electrocution death

No criminal charges will be filed against military contractor KBR Inc. in connection... more

Future_America
added this
3 months ago
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0 comments

KBR electrocutes soldier in shower, but Army turncoats and finds 'insufficent evidence'

KBR, an offshoot of Haliburton, installed the water pump that killed Army Ranger and Green Beret Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth. What is astonishing is that The U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division (CID) changed the original investigation status from “accidental” to “negligent homicide.” Maseth was killed in an act of unbelievable negligence and carelessness by KBR in a shower where he was electrocuted. After months of controversy and criticism, the Army finally acknowledged that the company “failed to ensure that work was being done by qualified electricians and plumbers, and to inspect the work that was being conducted.” The investigator blames KBR, the largest U.S. contractor in Iraq, and two KBR supervisors for the incident, saying there is "credible information ... they failed to ensure that work was being done by qualified electricians and plumbers, and to inspect the work that was being conducted."

KBR investigated itself after the incident, and denied responsibility in lawsuits filed against the company. The original report addresses KBR specifically, finding that the company installed the water pump in question in early June 2006. This report states that KBR did not properly ground the equipment during its installation or report improperly grounded equipment during routine maintenance. Defense Contract Management Agency found more than 230 incidents of reported electric shocks in KBR-maintained facilities across Iraq from September 2006 through July 2008. The inspector general found that KBR personnel at Radwaniyah had inadequate electrical training and expertise, and that facility maintenance records were incomplete and lacked specificity, precluding the identification and correction of systemic problems. Other problems noted were a lack of standard operating procedures for the technical inspection of facilities and a failure to bring inconsistent contract specifications to the attention of the administrative contracting officer.

Back in July of 2008, according to the Pentagon, 16 soldiers had died from electric shock:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-07-25-iraq-contractors_N.htm

ON AUGUST 7th, 2009, the Army back-tracked and released its official findings of "insufficient evidence to establish criminal culpability of any person or entity in the death of Staff Sgt. Maseth."

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=12876

business as usualKBR, an offshoot of Haliburton, installed the water pump that killed Army Ranger and... more

Incredulous
added this
3 months ago
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15 comments

Senators Push to Take Back Bonuses From KBR For Shoddy Work

KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton, who has received the most contracts in Iraq... more

JaminDime
added this
4 months ago
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0 comments

KBR (Once owned by Halliburton) profits jump 40% on acquisition, government contracts

KBR said profit jumped 40 percent in the second quarter on contributions from a newly acquired construction company, an increase in work on several global oil and gas projects and better returns from government contracting work in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Houston-based engineering and construction firm and government contractor said net income rose to $67 million, 42 cents per share, from $48 million, 28 cents per share, in the second quarter of 2008. Revenue climbed 17 percent to $3.1 billion, up from $2.7 billion in the April-June period a year ago.

Wall Street analysts had predicted profit of 41 cents a share and revenue of $2.9 billion.

KBR shares rose 86 cents to $20.45 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“Overall, I'm pleased with KBR's second quarter results,” said Chairman and CEO Bill Utt, in a conference call this morning to discuss the company's second-quarter results.

But the Houston-based company warned that its U.S. troop support work in Afghanistan will begin to wind down in coming months as other contractors take over and will also decline in Iraq amid planned American troop withdrawls.

The company, spun off from oil field services giant Halliburton in 2007, has been the exclusive provider of nonmilitary services to the U.S. Army in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan since 2001. In that role, it has served meals, done laundry, built lodging camps, delivered fuel and done many other tasks for American troops.

Under a new Pentagon contract, known as known as Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (Logcap) IV, KBR is competing for the same troop-support work with two other companies, Irving-based Fluor Corp. and Falls Church, Va.-based DynCorp International.

Recently, two major contracts in Afghanistan were awarded to the other contractors. Utt said today that KBR will not challenge the Army's decision on the contracts, but after being briefed by the Pentagon, believes the awards went to other companies because the government feels pressure to divide the work among several companies rather than giving it to a single provider.KBR said profit jumped 40 percent in the second quarter on contributions from a newly... more