Halliburton to Lose Iraq Oil Project WASHINGTON - Just weeks after Pentagon auditors said Halliburton may have overcharged taxpayers to import oil to Iraq, the Defense Department is removing the Army Corps of Engineers from its role in supervising the program. The Defense Energy Support Center, which buys fuel for the military throughout the world, will supervise the shipments and choose new contractors to replace Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company. "We're taking over the mission," the center's spokeswoman, Lynette Ebberts, said Tuesday Wow, some real accounability. This combined with the Ashcroft recusal relly puts thing in a different light for me.
That article doesn't say that Halliburton will be replaced. It says that Halliburton's overseers will be replaced, which may or may not lead to the company being tossed as well. The whole oil-overcharging issue has a long way to go before it's resolved since KBR is saying that the govt forced them to buy from the Kuwaitis at a higher per-gallon cost, which makes the issue a lot more than just laziness and greed. It's not a stretch to conclude that the DoD would line the pockets of the Kuwaiti Royal Family with a vastly inflated cost structure and then turn around and blame a contractor when the plan went public. In the end all we're doing is paying off another Middle Eastern despot while deposing a guy we propped up in the first place.
So, hypothetically, if the fault was the contracting officer or his representatives, do we think they will be fired? Let's say they lost half the amount of money spoken about due to their bad management. Something like 30million dollars. In private industry, they'd be looking for new work. My engineering company had a PM lose 700K on a job and we fired him, our COO and the head of accounting. Is accountability only good for contractors and not the government workers that oversee them? Where will the congressmen be now? They asked for the heads of the KBR management. Will they now ask for the heads of the ACE? They should but they won't. I spent too much time in my career dealing with the Feds to think there was some malicious intent on their part. I new from day one that this was a story about gross incompetence on the part of the government where both the government guys and the congressmen wanted to blame the contractor. The only thing you can say about KBR was that they were cynical enough to take a percentage of this money.
True, but we propped up Hussein out of spite for Iran. We continue to prop up the Kuaiti royal family out of mutual proactive interest.
This is where the idea of bringing democracy to the world is funny. We wouldn't want real freedoms for the people of Kuwait because they could elect someone with their interests first, not ours. Don't come back with, "You'd be the first to complain about $5 a gallon for gas," because I will pay whatever. Really. Maybe then, we would have a real conservation policy.
Isn't that the reason why the Army COE has been taken off the project? They've been "fired" as far as the provisional govt is concerned, but whether or not something happens internally is up to the Army. I doubt that anything will happen because the decision to make KBR buy Kuwaiti oil (if that's what happened) was likely a political -- read White House -- decision. That's a good point at the end there -- since KBR is working on cost-plus, they got the "plus" regardless of who told them to buy high-priced oil. That is money that should be refunded, but the govt official who set this thing up should be the one facing a Congressional hearing.
Propping up Saddam was not just about Iran (though it helped) -- his regime was stable in the 80s and supplied us oil, which is something that we couldn't guarantee if someone else took his place. It was just as mutually beneficial (and anti-democratic) as our relationship with Kuwait is now.
Oh I mean fired as in fired, looking for new employment, going down to the unemployment office type fired. I can guaren-frinken-tee you they will be getting their GS-15 government salaries next year. In fact, since these guys were probably considered their most compent people (who else would you put on your most important project?) they will probably get some step increases in salary between now and next year.
Saddam would have been just fine without us. This myth that we kept Saddam in power as long as it suited us is one of the biggest lies surrounding the Iraq conflict.
That makes sense considering when the US didn't support him, he stayed in power until removed by force. But, this is a result from the early support. You can create the monster, but it is not as easy to control it. I guess I am saying that you can unscrew a light bulb but not a pregnant woman.