Big Oil vs The World TV - Ben Carter - The New York Times online - 9/11 Ripple Effect - Ben Carter - US News Report - Shane Ratliff - Whistleblower - Rory Bremner - Noam Chomsky - Dan Rather TV - Michael Moore 2004 - Jonathan Turley - Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers 2006 - Panorama TV - Seconds from Disaster TV -
Vice President Dick Cheney had previously headed Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil-service operations. Big Oil vs the World, BBC 2022
Why do they need a H2 Hummer? Why do they have Cadillac Escalades in Iraq for Halliburton managers? What is the purpose? Ben Carter, former water purification specialist
Even as a Halliburton subsidiary was absorbing harsh criticism of its costs on a 2003 no-bid contract for work in Iraq, the government officials overseeing a second contract wrote that the company was running up exorbitant new expenses on similar work, according to a report issued yesterday by the staff for the Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee.
The report, prepared for a frequent critic of Halliburton, Representative Henry A Waxman of California, was based on previously undisclosed correspondence and performance evaluations from 2004 and 2005.
The documents show that the government's contracting officers became increasingly frustrated as they tried to penetrate what they considered to be inaccurate or misleading progress reports and expense vouchers filed by the subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root.
In August 2004, one of the officers wrote to the company that ‘you have universally failed to provide adequate cost information as required’.
A few months later, after the company was served with a ‘cure notice’, in which the government threatened to terminate the contract if performance was not improved, or ‘cured’, another officer said he was writing ‘in sheer frustration with the consistent lack of accurate data’.
Kellogg Brown & Root’s second contract, awarded in January 2004 for rebuilding oil infrastructure in southern Iraq, has a maximum value of $1.2 billion. A company spokeswoman, Melissa Norcross, said that the report was ‘as devoid of context as it is new information’ and that many of the issues raised by the contracting officers had been resolved. The New York Times online article James Glanz 29th March 2006, ‘Report Adds to Criticism of Halliburton’s Iraq Role’
Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers. The New York Times online article Rachel L Swarns 4th February 2006, cited Alex Jones, Police State IV: The Rise of FEMA, 2010
82 Gallons Liquid Propane Fuel. Kuwait to Baghdad: distance 300 miles. Cost: $3,000. Contractor: $10,000. Halliburton: $27.5m no-bid contract. 9/11 Ripple Effect, producers Lewis & vonKleist, 2007
My name’s Ben Carter and within the first week of being in Iraq I knew that that wasn’t going to be the company I wanted to be with. Halliburton was hired to provide clean, safe, cooking, cleaning, shower water for the military. One of Halliburton’s employees saw something wiggling in the water in his toilet bowl. So I went and tested the water in our water-storage tanks: there was no chlorine in them. None. The water we showered in every single day was extremely contaminated. And when I talk about contaminated water I’m saying malaria, typhus, giardia, crypto-sporidium. The list is really really long. Ben Carter, televised interview
So when the motor blows what do you do? Buy a new truck and bill the government. ibid.
Pentagon auditors found that a Halliburton contract to provide food and housing for American troops had a staggering $1.8 billion in unsupported costs. US News Report
It was all a scam. Halliburton was charging $45 for a six-pack can of Pepsi that they give us and the military free in the mess hall ... Halliburton charged the government $100 for every bag of clothes they washed. Shane Ratliff, KBR Halliburton former truck driver
One invoice I saw was for about $7,000 for one month for a SUV lease ... that was a three-year contract. Whistleblower male employee, KBR Halliburton former procurement specialist
Henry Waxman, a Democrat and minority member of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform – at his request Congress investigators, the Government Accountability Office (or GAO) investigated several contracts with American firms. Not least Halliburton, whose Head Office is in Houston Texas, George Bush’s old stomping ground ... In the first nine months of the occupation KBR billed for three-million meals that American troops in Iraq never had. The company sent the 101st Airborne Division motor-homes then charged it twice what it would cost to build a new barracks. KBR also handled American military transport: first, it bought fleets of Mercedes Benz trucks costing $85,000 dollars each; then sent them travelling up and down Iraq’s highways accompanied by armed military escorts. If there were no goods to transport, no problem. KBR dispatched empty lorries anyway and billed accordingly. Rory Bremner, Between Iraq and a Hard Place, Channel 4 2003
Halliburton: the biggest recipient of Iraqi funds. Noam Chomsky, Failed States audio
Halliburton is accused of hundreds of millions of dollars in improper charges. Dan Rather, Inside Story, cited Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Brave New Films, 2006
In 1997 while George W Bush was governor of Texas a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian sea. Who got a Caspian sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney. Halliburton ... and who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush’s number one campaign contributor, Kenneth Lay, and the good people of Enron. Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004
In the middle of the war Microsoft, DHL and other corporations invited Halliburton to a conference to figure out how much money could be made in Iraq. ibid.
The new military-industrial complex is fuelled by a conveniently ambiguous and unseen enemy: the terrorist. Former President George W Bush and his aides insisted on calling counter-terrorism efforts a war. This concerted effort by leaders like former Vice President Dick Cheney (himself the former CEO of defense-contractor Halliburton) was not some empty rhetorical exercise. Not only would a war maximise the inherent powers of the president, but it would maximise the budgets for military and homeland agencies.
This new coalition of companies, agencies, and lobbyists dwarfs the system known by Eisenhower when he warned Americans to ‘guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence … by the military-industrial complex’. Ironically, it has had some of its best days under President Barack Obama who has radically expanded drone attacks and claimed that he alone determines what a war is for the purposes of consulting Congress. Professor Jonathan Turley, article ‘Big Money Behind War: The Military Industrial Complex’
Halliburton is accused of hundreds of millions of dollars in improper charges. Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, Dan Rather, Inside Story, 2006
This isn’t a film about war. This isn’t a film about Iraq. It’s a film about money. $23 billion wasted, stolen, embezzled or just lost down the back of a very big sofa in the desert … Will the whole truth about the profits of war ever come out? Panorama: Daylight Robbery, BBC 2008
Billions of dollars were being stacked on pallets and then flown to Iraq. ibid.
Iraq was a get-rich-quick opportunity that attracted some real chancers. ibid.
‘They are the essential war-profiteers. They make money out of chaos.’ ibid.
A war in which private contractors ended up outnumbering soldiers. ibid.
In Iraq most contracts were cost-plus. ibid.
There was of course something special about Halliburton, something controversial – Dick Cheney. ibid.
It’s the corporate excesses in Iraq that have angered those who expected better. ibid.
Pentagon audits found that Halliburton overcharged by $108 million for supplying and trucking fuel. ibid.
April 20th 2010 5 p.m.: The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig: An explosion rips through an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The survivors can’t stop the blowout and flee. 2 hours earlier a test showed the oil well was safe. Seconds from Disaster s5e5: The Deepwater Horizon
Crude oil and gas continue to surge from the well feeding the flames and explosions. The emergency disconnect has not worked. Most workers escape using the rig’s lifeboats. ibid.
The drill crew missing an early opportunity to realise the well could blow out. ibid.
Nitrogen foam: Halliburton do not expressly alert BP to the result … The cement foam is seriously unstable. ibid.