by David Phinney
Monday February 17th 2025

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Rearview Mirror: The War for Insurance Coverage

Hundreds of injured civilians who worked in Iraq and Afghanistan take the war home with them as they battle for insurance coverage they are owed. (more…)

Contractors Secretly Honored, Others Celebrate their Camaraderie

Halliburton/KBR and the US Army teamed up last Friday in Houston to hand out one of the highest honors there is for civilian contractors working in Iraq and Afghanistan: The Defense of Freedom medal. The Pentagon first awarded the medal bearing the words "On Behalf of a Grateful Nation"after the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. The honor is [...]

‘This Hearing Saved the Government 20 Million Dollars’

‘This Hearing Saved the Government 20 Million Dollars’

by David Phinney Feb. 7, 2007 -- From the time four U.S. security contractors were killed in streets of Fallujah on March 31, 2004 until yesterday, the U.S. Army couldn't determine if, in fact, Halliburton/KBR had broken its multibillion-dollar contract agreement by commissioning the private security company, Blackwater, to guard a [...]

Squandering Iraqi Money

Squandering Iraqi Money

Feb. 6, 2007 -- Almost $12 billion in Iraqi assets disappeared while under control of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority -- much of it arrived in $100 bills on pallets straight from the Federal Reserve in New York. In the past, government auditors said the Coalition Provisional Authority lost track of $8.8 billion in seized and frozen [...]

Blackwater’s Christmas Mystery

When Rep. Henry Waxman bangs the gavel and opens hearings on Blackwater's security operations in Iraq Wednesday, let's hope the California Democratic chairman of the House Government Reform Committee asks about the rumor of a murder in the Green Zone on Christmas Eve: The rumor began this way via email: "On eve (2006) here in the Green Zone a [...]

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

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 [...]

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