Young reports: "Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday. The No. 1 recipient? Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc., which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co., in 2007."
Dick Cheney's Halliburton made billions of dollars from the Iraq war. (photo: Getty Images)
Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War
20 March 13
he accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.
Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.
Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.
The No. 1 recipient?
Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.
The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.
Who were Nos. 2 and 3?
Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.
As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.
According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies.
Even without the graft, the costs of paying for these services are higher than paying governement employees or soldiers to do them because of the profit motive involved. No-bid contracting - when companies get to name their price with no competing bid - didn't lower legitimate expenses. (Despite promises by President Barack Obama to reel in this habit, the trend toward granting favored companies federal contracts without considering competing bids continued to grow, by 9 percent last year, according to the Washington Post.)
Even though the military has largely pulled out of Iraq, private contractors remain on the ground and continue to reap U.S. government contracts. For example, the U.S. State Department estimates that taxpayers will dole out $3 billion to private guards for the government's sprawling embassy in Baghdad.
The costs of paying private and publicly listed war profiteers seem miniscule in light of the total bill for the war.
Last week, the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University said the war in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars, not including the $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans of the war and the lifetime benefits that will be owed to them or their next of kin.
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Comments
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In a nutshell, since it was created, the pro-big business wing of both parties -- but especially the GOP -- have *always* been intent on destroying S/S, and they used the Iraq war to take a big chunk out of it.
Cheney should be in jail. period.
Don't be too sure. I think he's on record of telling the senate committee that he wasn't going to give up his Halliburton stock. I can't see him donating all the profit he made off that war to charity. Someone evil enough to start it under false pretenses and make sure his company got tons of money via no-bid contracts, further fattening the bottom line by hiring unskilled labor, resulting in deaths to our soldiers, (uncompensated deaths due to immunity from lawsuits) isn't going to be concerned about the less fortunate. He's part of the reason they ARE the less fortunate.
You don't understand what charity is for the RICH. Mostly it is a scheme to keep from paying taxes. It is *a racket.* I would guess he pocketed most of the earnings from his profits far below what he would have had to pay in capital gains if he had not "donated to charity."
Look it up.
I think it more likely that they had intel which showed it was about to happen, so they sent all our interceptors out of the country for a "training exercise." It would be hard to execute 9/11 without word getting out, but ignoring it would be a lot easier. And remember them saying who could have expected an attack by commercial aircraft even though they had been warned of exactly that which led to Bush staying on a yacht instead of the hotel they were scheduled to stay in for the summit.
Who would possibly *run* such a Project ? This Congress and this President ?
This President who keeps promising "Transparency" from inside his opaque and secretive Administration ? This Justice Dept. that finds legal rationale to kill Americans on American soil without due process ?
This article, while presenting little that was not already known, is an absolute jewel in helping people to understand that this War was a GRAND excuse for the Bushies to raid the U.S. Treasury, run up debt with China, and spread all that wealth around among the 1% Type War Profiteers. It was a "giveaway" to the war-for-profit crowd. Yup, the benefits of "Privatization" .
And how strange is it that the Bush Admin was so top-heavy with Oil Execs ? You know ..... Cheney from Halliburton, Condi "Mushroom Cloud" Rice from Chevron, G.W. Bush from two ruined Oil Companies...... . ?
"Shocking ....... shocking, I say...."
I, for one, would be extremely pissed if I was a soldier in a war zone making the pittance that they make, working alongside a private contractor making big bucks.
NOBODY should profit like this from a war.
You have certainly called *that* one correctly !
Shame ? To these people shame is a concept appropriate only to children and weak-kneed adults.
In business there is a saying about people who cannot keep
an eye on the "bottom line", consequences be damned :
" If you can't 'swim with the Sharks, you had better get out of the water."
If you can't eat everything in front of you with cold-eyed efficiency, then you need to find a job in another field.
Just like the "Young Turks" at Enron during the glory days who not only ripped people off charging them for electrical power that people were not getting, but who were gleeful to imagine that they were "stealing from retired little old Grandmas". This is what they were *proud of* ! They considered that proof of being a "real" Shark.
To this crowd, compassion, shame - basically all human traits in general - are considered grievous weaknesses, and are viewed with sneering derision and contempt. And, of course, Wall Street *invented* this business "ethos", and it spread through Corporate Culture like wildfire. Considering cut-throat greed, corruption, and rigged competition as virtues.
This is why the Enron "Turks" were proud to call themselves "The brightest boys in the room" ! Yeah.... all game, no shame indeed ! You have nailed it.
I'm afraid it may already be too late for us, the American people. Our government has pissed off and terrified so many in the world that eventually we may be attacked with biological weapons or some other assymetrical type of weapon that we haven't even conceived of yet and the rest of the world will stand back and laugh and say,"serves them right" right before they suffer the same fate as us.
Yes, we can beat any type of conventional military threat, but do we really think that anyone else in the world is going to shed a tear for the late, great USofA if such a fate were to befall us? Foreigners I've met seem to like Americans as individuals, but they see our government as a mad dog that needs to be put down for "the good of the neighborhood." Will our enemies be as discriminating?
Sleep? SLEEP? They DON'T "sleep", they hang by their claws, upside-down from the ceiling of their caves!
"I've repeated almost to the point of being a bore on RSN and other publications, that the concept of the "Green Zone" -biggest US embassy in the world and it's compound which can be seen from space, didn't just pop up out of nowhere but must have been conceived, designed, planned, final designed and approved by a vast network of US high-ups well before construction started.
I'm an Architect (or was when there was work) with extensive overseas experienced, although NOT in the Middle East admittedly, and know how long the progression of different phases takes here, never mind the wheedling, bribery and corruption, covert "Joint-Venture/ Technology Transfer" partnerships required in almost any other country no matter what the motive.
This and the "Non-Bid" KBR and Haliburton contractual nepotism re Cheney may even account for the "Missing Iraqui Billions" never found (and much the appallingly shoddy, short-cut work resulting in the deaths of some troops).
I've asked pundit after pundit on talk shows and paper this question and have yet to receive a clear, rational response, which may serve to prove by that very fact that there is a substantial amount of truth to it.
Sorry to be so repetitive but it makes me nuts that nobody has looked at this and it's implications in the cronyism of the administration of the time,
Mostly 'cause the owner-media chose to ignore or not report what was going on under their noses and that includes PBS, whose head at the time was Michael Powell, Colin's son and who tried to dismantle it.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.
"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime," says Suskind. "Day one, these things were laid and sealed. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml
I like the term "Bad person"! But then he was OUR "Bad person" for long enough during and after the Iran/Iraq war until he had the effrontery to go on his own and keep some of the oil profits for his own country (including himself), brutal sanctions notwithstanding , which did S.H. no harm at all but the 500,000 dead children were "worth the price" according to Madeline Allbright! A bit like Iran's Mohammed Mossadegu in 1953 -so he had to go!
Now if you want to talk about "Bad persons" start at Dimwits and work down through the appalling administration he stuck the US with after his "selection".
I wish I could get substantially profitable work and funding with a resumé showing that I'd screwed up everything I'd even attempted in my whole, miserably protected frat-boy and incurious life.
But no -I really don't.
For a while there I was thinking that maybe The Iraq War was wasted. Sure glad another politician was doing their job . . . .
Now where do you suppose the other 2 or 3 Hundred Billion was spent?
and if you take 10 dollars per person
I am sure you will collect 20 billions
easily.
Then give them to Iraq with a big sorry
from the rest of the world.
Quoting indian weaver:
No takers please! Halliburton earned money on the war and now you (indian weawer) also. Don´t disappoint us.
ALL money to the Iraquiens they have deserved them.
The five architects of the war Bush,Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rove
will of course not die at the same time,
so the idea could be expanded to five
different collections, one each time one of these bastards go to hell.
It wouldn´t either be much of a heavy lifting to open a bank account where the
only access would be a notary public and
not any private person.
I could do it and I will think about it!
Sad to say, I imagine a few are employed as the Dick's and Dubya's personal bodyguards via Blackwater or some such. You know, can't trust those Secret Service Agents. They are, after all, civil servants and therefore suspect!
Furthermore, giving some money to charity only appeases the corrupt mind, but GOD is not into bribery; Cheney's date with God's court will straighten Cheney out about whose in charge.
The sadder part of the Iraq War is that both Bush and Cheney admits to authorizing torture and we know that the torture led to murder in a number of cases and this nation has done nothing about it; and republicans are worried that “In God We Trust” will disappear from this nation’s money???? Now we know what’s wrong with the nation!!!!!!!!
Nobody else could bid on the contracts, so there was NO COMPETITION.
The American taxpayers were forced to pay what these vultures, merchants of death were demanding....We are STILL paying for it. And many service people paid with their lives, when they were electrocuted in the showers, because of the incompetent work of these companies.
The water they were contracted to provide was often bad quality, and made our service people seriously ill.
They have a lot on their conscience. But I don't think they give a damn.
Call your congress people DAILY and make sure they get behind Bernie Sanders' bill to have a new amendment that overturns the Supremes' 2010 decision to allow "SUPER PACS" etc. And threaten these elected officials with your gang will make sure he/she is not re-elected.
It's a start. I live in an area with GOP/TP representatives to the House (although both my Senators are DEMS - Boxer/Feinstein ) -- and I (and my Dem friends) call my TP/GOP rep about 3x / week.
Any better ideas?
That was the last time there was any similar news, evidence that Dickie didn't want us to know how his company was moving money from the American taxpayer to the wealthy.
Yes you are right, and Bush cut their medical benefits and I believe also other benefits, he was ALWAYS using the military as a backdrop while giving speeches, and he loved telling us that he was a WAR PRESIDENT.
Before he was even running for president, he mentioned to some friends that if you wanted to be considered a great president, you had to be a WAR PRESIDENT.
Let's see MR. Bush, how's that working for ya??? It sure did NOT work for the country or for us, the citizens We all have to pay with blood of our sons,daughters, mothers and fathers,.... and a horrible amount of treasure.
Our children and grandchildren will be seriously affected by Mr. Bush's hubris.
mikenovember
San Antonio
So Democrats support every single war, or initiate it, for the the Military/Securi ty Complex and the central bankers.
Obama's FBI is locking up peace movement leaders throughout the USA. Three million displaced Iraqi women and children translates into hundreds of millions of acts of prostitution so they can eat.
Cheney two weeks ago was gushing over Obama's death drone policy on the Sunday morning talk shows.
I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job as someone suggested, but I do believe it could have been prevented. Richard Clark tried desperately to tell Condoleeza Rice or anyone in that administration of Al Queda's danger, but they were so convinced that Clinton was a terrible president, that they refused to even see him. When I remember Rice talking about the mushroom cloud, or Bush, in his state of the union speech referring to the Iraqis as having been to Nigeria to buy nuclear grade uranium, after that had been accepted by that administration, as a false rumor, I get ill. Why is it so many can tell egregious lies with enormous consequences and get away with it, I don't understand.
How fortunate for Darth Cheney that the war just coincidentally happened, huh?
Where is a Truman now that one is so desparately needed?
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/iraq-wars-10th-anniversary-occupation-and-insurgency/100476/
Killing innocent people for profit.... Heroic isn't it?
Sadam Husain is dead. He threatened our oil supply and the petro $; our Mideast hegemony survives. Shame on us.
The USA is no longer ours. A military/ industrial complex and the banksters own it now. We sold it for "security" and 30 pieces of silver. We will lose both now.
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