It's flat out time to call you Motherfuckers out.

[Woodrow]

LOL! There's a source we can trust! Osama Bin Laden!  

You ever considered that Haliburton was the best company to complete the job?


"There has been a series of allegations and innuendos recently to the effect that government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan are being awarded in an atmosphere redolent with the "stench of political favoritism and cronyism," to use the description in a report put out by the Center for Public Integrity on campaign contributions by companies doing work in those two countries.

One would be hard-pressed to discover anyone with a working knowledge of how federal contracts are awarded -- whether a career civil servant working on procurement or an independent academic expert -- who doesn't regard these allegations as being somewhere between highly improbable and utterly absurd.

The premise of the accusations is completely contrary to the way government contracting works, both in theory and in practice. Most contract award decisions are made by career civil servants, with no involvement by political appointees or elected officials. In some agencies, the "source selection official" (final decision-maker) on large contracts may be a political appointee, but such decisions are preceded by such a torrent of evaluation and other backup material prepared by career civil servants that it would be difficult to change a decision from the one indicated by the career employees' evaluation.

Having served as a senior procurement policymaker in the Clinton administration, I found these charges (for which no direct evidence has been provided) implausible. To assure myself I wasn't being naive, I asked two colleagues, each with 25 years-plus experience as career civil servants in contracting (and both now out of government), whether they ever ran into situations where a political appointee tried to get work awarded to a political supporter or crony. "Never did any senior official put pressure on me to give a contract to a particular firm," answered one. The other said: "This did happen to me once in the early '70s. The net effect, as could be expected, was that this 'friend' lost any chance of winning fair and square. In other words, the system recoiled and prevented this firm from even being considered." Certainly government sometimes makes poor contracting decisions, but they're generally because of sloppiness or other human failings, not political interference.

Many people are also under the impression that contractors take the government to the cleaners. In fact, government keeps a watchful eye on contractor profits -- and government work has low profit margins compared with the commercial work the same companies perform. Look at the annual reports of information technology companies with extensive government and nongovernment business, such as EDS Corp. or Computer Sciences Corp. You will see that margins for their government customers are regularly below those for commercial ones. As for the much-maligned Halliburton, a few days ago the company disclosed, as part of its third-quarter earnings report, operating income from its Iraq contracts of $34 million on revenue of $900 million -- a return on sales of 3.7 percent, hardly the stuff of plunder.

It is legitimate to ask why these contractors gave money to political campaigns if not to influence contract awards. First, of course, companies have interests in numerous political battles whose outcomes are determined by elected officials, battles involving tax, trade and regulatory and economic policy -- and having nothing to do with contract awards. Even if General Electric (the largest contributor on the Center for Public Integrity's list) had no government contracts -- and in fact, government work is only a small fraction of GE's business -- it would have ample reason to influence congressional or presidential decisions.

Second, though campaign contributions have no effect on decisions about who gets a contract, decisions about whether to appropriate money to one project as opposed to another are made by elected officials and influenced by political appointees, and these can affect the prospects of companies that already hold contracts or are well-positioned to win them, in areas that the appropriations fund. So contractors working for the U.S. Education Department's direct-loan program for college students indeed lobby against the program's being eliminated, and contractors working on the Joint Strike Fighter lobby to seek more funds for that plane.

The whiff of scandal manufactured around contracting for Iraq obviously has been part of the political battle against the administration's policies there (by the way, I count myself as rather unsympathetic to these policies). But this political campaign has created extensive collateral damage. It undermines public trust in public institutions, for reasons that have no basis in fact. It insults the career civil servants who run our procurement system.

Perhaps most tragically, it could cause mismanagement of the procurement system. Over the past decade we have tried to make procurement more oriented toward delivering mission results for agencies and taxpayers, rather than focusing on compliance with detailed bureaucratic process requirements. The charges of Iraq cronyism encourage the system to revert to wasting time, energy and people on redundant, unnecessary rules to document the nonexistence of a nonproblem.

If Iraqi contracting fails, it will be because of poorly structured contracts or lack of good contract management -- not because of cronyism in the awarding process. By taking the attention of the procurement system away from necessary attention to the structuring and management of contracts, the current exercise in barking up the wrong tree threatens the wise expenditure of taxpayer dollars the critics state they seek to promote."

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/2003/kelman_cronyism_iraq_wp_11003.htm

[nibs]

Krayze-Eyez Killah:
LOL! There's a source we can trust! Osama Bin Laden!  

the guy's a terrorist.  the guy's a murderer.  however, osama bin laden has always explained why he hates america...etc.  
he's upset how the us [tricked the saudi's] and stationed troops in saudi arabia in order to attack iraq in gulf war 1, and has maintained their bases in saudi arabia when they claimed they would not not.  he doesn't like "infidels desecrating the holy land".

whether you agree with that reasoning or not, it's pretty clear that if the u.s. had not stationed troops in saudi arabia (and not always support israel's every action) there would have never been a 9/11.  

now, they're singling out halliburton and the corruption in the bush administration.  it's foolish to act as if america's hands are clean and the terrorists beef with the u.s. is irrational.  we're talking about people who feel america have wronged them and are striking back.  surely it's worthwhile to take a look at the situation and see if the u.s. government has done dirt and if their grievances have any legitimacy.

You ever considered that Haliburton was the best company to complete the job?

halliburton only became significant during the first bush administration, back when dick cheney was secretary of defense, when they were awarded some contracts with the army corps of engineers.  the relationship between halliburton and u.s. military contracts was forged while dick cheney was secretary of defense under bush regime 1.  

after bush lost his reelection and cheney entered the private sector, cheney became the ceo of halliburton (in 1995).

halliburton was largely irrelevant before this.  they had small military contracts before this, but nothing compared to the expansion they experienced with thier relationship with dick cheney.  so when you ask the question, "was halliburton the best company for the job?" you need to take into account that the corruption isn't just beginning in 2003, the corruption goes back over a decade.  cheney built up halliburton, later made in excess of 50 million off of halliburton (during the period when he was ceo), and the profits continue to roll in.

Many people are also under the impression that contractors take the government to the cleaners. In fact, government keeps a watchful eye on contractor profits -- and government work has low profit margins compared with the commercial work the same companies perform.

funny you should mention that.  halliburton tried to take the government to the cleaners and lost one of their contracts as a result:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3359601.stm

apparently they were overcharging for gasoline, but it isn't clear where that money went.  it isn't clear who was profitting in their overpayment for the gasoline.  

this isn't the first time apparently:
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=2471

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.

let me summarize that with one quote:

"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.

they have been taking the government to the cleaners.
keep in mind that kellogg, brown & root is a halliburton subsidiary.  

As for the much-maligned Halliburton, a few days ago the company disclosed, as part of its third-quarter earnings report, operating income from its Iraq contracts of $34 million on revenue of $900 million -- a return on sales of 3.7 percent, hardly the stuff of plunder.

it's much more than just iraq.  they have contracts in afghanistan as well, and elsewhere.  mostly negotiated by dick cheney.  also, they're only recently bringing iraqi oil back online.  the capacity is currently nowhere near where it should be.  the true benefits from the contracts halliburton holds in iraq will be bore out over the next several years, this is not a situation where they can immediately turn a profit by flipping  switch.  the value in these contracts is not in the immediate returns but in the long term yeilds.  and this is what has been reflected in the stock prices.

from that same article:

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.

But this political campaign has created extensive collateral damage. It undermines public trust in public institutions, for reasons that have no basis in fact. It insults the career civil servants who run our procurement system.

the public should not trust halliburton.  the public should be skeptical of the military ties that cheney has developed with haliburton.  why should the public trust a company that has been accused of defrauding the govt (during the period when cheney was ceo no less) and settled out of court in order to retain their ability to secure additional govt contracts?

surely this is a system and relationship that needs to be invesigated thoroughly and viewed with great scrutiny.

[Rain]

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?

im new so just out of curiosty what do u think america went to war for? i mean by ur justification that they didnt go for oil theres no fuckin way they went concerning weapons of mass destruction. so what do u reckon they went to war for?