‘Contractors’ Archives
Troop Surge could Reach 48,000 in Theater
And the Number of Contractors?
The Hill beat Army Times on this by a few hours: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the White House push to pump up troops in Iraq by another 21,000 will require an even larger troop deployment in the region as support to those troops. President Bush forgot to mention that in his State of the Union message when he first unveiled [...]
Perfect Storm: Kodak Moments for News Media
Any reporter or editor monitoring contracting in Iraq has got tofollow this thread: (more…)
Strange Business Behind U.S. Embassy Contract in Baghdad
Jan. 21. 2007 -- A fog of secrecy has shrouded the $592 million contract for building the US embassy ever since it was quietly awarded in Summer 2005 to a Kuwaiti contractor. That, in itself, is odd. Framaco of New York, claims to have been the least expensive bid. One company source told me Framaco was $60 milion to $70 million less than [...]
Marching Back to the Future: The Department of Peace
Max Boot parades his bright ideas about the use of civilians in wartime environments in The Los Angeles Times: How Bush can ensure no more Iraqs The U.S. is only a few bright ideas away from being the nation builder it needs to be. In the opening graph, Boot claims that one of the "most intriguing elements" of President Bush's State of the Union [...]
Contractor Deaths in Iraq Nearing 800
Things are getting even rougher for workers laboring in Iraq under US-funded military and reconstruction contracts. In the last three months of 2006, 124 were killed. That brought the total contractor casualties to 301 for the year. U.S. military deaths totaled 818 during the year, according to reporters David Ivanovich and Brett Clanton of The [...]
KBR’s ‘Blanket Insurance Waiver’ for Sub-Contractors
by David Phinney Jan 26, 2007 -- I finally received an official comment from the Department of Labor regarding KBR’s “blanket insurance waiver” after more than a month of requests. The spokesman, David James, said DOL has never seen the document and “I cannot comment on another company’s internal memorandum.” In other words, [...]
KBR Hands Out Medals to Contract Workers with “Quit Claim” to Liabilities
by David Phinney Jan. 26, 2007 -- Perhaps medals in defense of freedom aren't free, at least when it comes to KBR. At a Houston awards ceremony next month, KBR will be handing out Pentagon medals to its workers from Iraq who were injured in Iraq and elsewhere. All were supporting the military through the company's $16-billion-and-counting [...]
Civilian Reserve Corps: Private Army?
Jeremy Scahill opines in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about President Bush's proposal for a Cvilian Reserve Corps on Tuesday night: A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage [...]
Kiss, Kiss from KBR to its “Employees” — Just Don’t Sue!
by David Phinney Jan. 25, 2007 -- The invitation goes something like this: Kellogg Brown and Root requests the pleasure of your company at an awards ceremony in honor of KBR employees to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom on Friday, the ninth of February at nine o'clock. Ballroom C, Hilton Post [...]
Bush’s State of the Union: Volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps?
I am a little curious about his idea for designing and establishing a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Sounds like a move to institutionalize the use of contractors on the battlefield: Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to [...]
