KBR: That'll Do Nicely

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Iraq Still For Sale

When I first met Ben Carter by telephone in January of 2006, he was somewhat of a lone voice shouting into an empty stadium. He had been working for KBR -- a Halliburton subsidiary that had billions of dollars worth of government contracts in Iraq -- as a water contamination specialist. I was working with Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films on a documentary film (Iraq For Sale) about war profiteering companies who used the war as a way to line their pockets with gads of tax-payer cash for such things a bag of washed laundry at $100 a pop, or $45 for a six pack of Coke.

The war had been outsourced, privatized, and the likes of Kellog Brown and Root were not so privately robbing the country blind with cost-plus contracts. Based on this bright idea, the more a company spent, say, on that Hummer for the boss running the ice cream concession for the troops on leave in Kuwait, the more that company made. Or rather, and looked at from the publicus side of the ledger, the more the taxpayer paid. more