The Art of Dick Cheney
"Jesus, Hunter, you gotta remember, these are genteel people." He nodded solemnly. "And this is their turf. Dean Rusk is a goddamn national hero down here. What are his friends supposed to think when the senator comes down from Washington to deliver the eulogy and the unveiling of Rusk's portrait, and he brings some guy with him who starts asking people why the artist didn't paint any blood on the hands?"
- Hunter Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt
From HalliburtonWatch:
Halliburton announced on Friday that its KBR division, responsible for carrying out Pentagon contracts, experienced a 284 percent increase in operating profits during the second quarter of this year.And Dick Durbin's bill to reconvene the Truman WWII Committee on War Profiteering will pass when hell freezes over.
The increase in profits was primarily due to the Pentagon's payment of "award fees" for what military officials call "good" or "very good" work done by KBR in the Middle East for America's taxpayers and the troops.
Despite the scandals that plague KBR's military contracts, the Pentagon awarded $70 million in "award" fees to the company, along with four ratings of "excellent" and two ratings of "very good" for the troop logistics work under the Army's LOGCAP contract....
Audits conducted by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency determined that KBR had $1 billion in "questioned" expenses (i.e. expenses which military auditors consider "unreasonable") and $442 million in "unsupported" expenses (i.e. expenses which military auditors have determined contain no receipt or any explanation on how the expenses were disbursed).
But the top Pentagon brass ignored these audits and rewarded KBR's work anyway.
The Theater of the Absurd has been rendered irrelevant.
(Via Alternate Brain)
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 7/29/2005 08:10:00 PM
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