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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 13th, 2006 - U.S. Army
Restructures Contract with Halliburton |
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Army Plans to End Contentious Halliburton
Logistics Pact and Split Work Among Companies New
York Times By
James Glanz July
13, 2006 Baghdad, Iraq, July 12 - The Army plans to
terminate and restructure a lucrative and enormously contentious logistics contract
that has paid a single company, Halliburton, more than $15 billion to do jobs
like deliver food and fuel and construct housing for American troops around
the world since late 2001. The changes, described in draft contracting
documents on Army Web sites, await final Pentagon approval, said Linda K.
Theis, a spokeswoman for the Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill.,
which oversees the contract. But they have already received extensive review
and are moving through the upper echelons of the Army, she said. If the plans are carried through, Halliburton’s
contract will end, and the tasks it does will be divided among as many as
four companies. One company will be an umbrella for planning and oversight,
and the others will compete for the actual job orders — things like building
camps and delivering fuel in war zones. The Army said it hoped this approach would foster
competition and lower the risks of having one large contractor in charge of
critical military programs. Critics of the exclusive, no-bid contract,
including Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat, say it has
allowed Halliburton to charge unreasonably high costs for some work. They
have often pointed to the deal with Halliburton, which was led by Dick Cheney
before he quit to become vice president, as an example of cronyism by the
Bush administration in awarding lucrative contracts. Halliburton has dismissed those criticisms, and
the Army has largely upheld its claimed costs for its work. Much of the
criticism has been over work and billing by KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary
once known as Kellogg Brown & Root.The Washington Post reported Wednesday
that Halliburton’s contract would be ended. Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman,
called the proposed changes “neither unusual nor unexpected,” because earlier
versions of the logistics contract had gone through the same process. The
Halliburton contract could have run for 10 years, but the Army has the option
of ending it after an annual review. Ms. Theis said that when Halliburton’s logistics
contract was awarded, the Army expected that it would be worth around $100
million over 10 years. But that was before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
scattered the American military, with its vast logistical requirements,
around the world. When asked what role the widespread criticism of
Halliburton’s work had played in generating the proposed changes, the Army
replied, “None.” The shift was driven only by the surging logistics needs of the
American military, the Army said. But Frederick D. Barton, co-director of the
postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said he doubted that the waves of criticism could have
been missed in the Army’s reviews. Because so much work went to one company
for so long, the Army might have a hard time finding others with the capacity
to carry the load now, he said. “There are not competitors with warehouses full of
talent sitting around waiting for this assignment,” Mr. Barton said. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company External link:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20A1FFE35540C708DDDAE0894DE404482 |