[mburbank]

Halliburton faces criminal probe

From Jamie McIntyre
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon's investigation into allegations a Halliburton subsidiary may have overcharged for gasoline delivered to Iraq last year is now a criminal probe, the Pentagon said Monday.

"The Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the criminal investigative arm of the Inspector General's office, is investigating allegations of fraud on the part of Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), including the potential overpricing of fuel delivered to Baghdad by a KBR subcontractor," a Pentagon statement said.


They got the contract without bidding AND they'll never get fired no matter what they do. Why? There's no other company that provids the same services they do.

So... Doesn't that rule out the whole argument for privatizing all the services the Military used to do? Wasn't the whole idea of Privitization Laissez faire, that if we privatize government services, industry will compete and drive costs down and efficiency up? Since Halliburton as it now exists was crafted by Chenney who was coincidentally one of the main architechts of privitization of the military, isn't it more like he gave a government function to his friends? And now these guys know they could screw your grandma of the tarmac at Iraq airport, cut her head off and make stew for the troops in full view of CNN because what are we gonna do, fire them?

Wait. If this current investigation has any success, we'll see Halliburton starting to threaten that their operations in Iraq are starting to represent too risky a business venture and they may have to think about dropping out.