It's May 26, 2024, 06:44:40 PM
Independent agencies are still skeptical. For example a February 1997 study by the GAO showed that an operation that was estimated at $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996 had ballooned to $461 and a half million a year later. Examples of overspending included flying in plywood from the United States at a cost of $85.98 per sheet (the cost in the United states was $14.06) and billing the Army to pay its employees income taxes in Hungary.A subsequent GAO report, issued in September 2000, noted that army commanders in the Balkans were unable to keep track of contracts as they were typically rotated out after six months, erasing institutional memory. For example the GAO pointed out that many of the Kellogg, Brown & Root contract employees were idle most of the time despite the fact that offices were being cleaned four times a day. The GAO also faulted Kellogg, Brown & Root in its over-zealous purchase of power generators at great expense and employing far more firefighters than necessary.In February this year Kellogg, Brown & Root paid out $2 million to settle a lawsuit with the Justice Department, which alleged that the company defrauded the government during the closure of the Fort Ord military base in Monterey, California in the mid-1990s.The allegations in the case first surfaced several years ago when Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager for Kellogg, Brown & Root, turned whistle-blower and charged that between 1994 and 1998 the company fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities, quality and types of materials required for 224 projects. Campbell said that the company submitted a detailed "contractors pricing proposal" from an Army manual containing fixed prices for some 30,000 line items.
"Whether you characterize it as fraud or sharp business practices, the bottom line is the same, the government was not getting what it paid for, " explained Michael Hirst, who litigated the case for United States Attorney's office in Sacramento. "We alleged that they exploited the contracting process and increased their profits at the government's expense," Hirst added.
Last year Kellogg, Brown & Root took in $13 billion in revenues, according to its latest annual report. Currently Kellogg, Brown & Root estimates it has $740 million in existing United States government contracts, approximately 37% of their global business, most of which are in addition to the LOGCAP deal.
Everyone of you bitches who said "We're invading Iraq for oil", come in here, and apologize to George Bush for your bullshit. Oil Prices in America are higher than they've ever been, and much of it is because of the war. Who's man enough to be first, and admit they're a fucking liar?