Making a Killing
(oh, and in the "this isn't really news department", Blogger is acting like shit-- again).
Rising Hegemon points out this Houston Chronicle article--war can pay quite handsomely, as long as you've got connections:

WASHINGTON - Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there — quick. So the Houston-based contractor charged the Pentagon $27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel.

In the latest revelation about the company's oft-criticized performance in Iraq, a Pentagon audit report disclosed Monday showed Halliburton subsidiary KBR spent $82,100 to buy liquefied petroleum gas, better-known as LPG, in Kuwait and then 335 times that number to transport the fuel into violence-ridden Iraq.

Pentagon auditors combing through the company's books were mystified by this charge.

"It is illogical that it would cost $27,514,833 to deliver $82,100 in LPG fuel," officials from the Defense Contract Audit Agency noted in the report.

The portions of the audit report released Monday did not specify exactly how much fuel was involved in this billing.

Halliburton's response? "Hey, we're shocked, shocked by the violence--there's a war going on:"

"The implication is definitely misleading," [spokesperson Wendy] Hall said. "Transporting fuel into Iraq was a mission fraught with danger, which increased the prices that firms were willing to offer for transportation."

Gee, Ms. Hall--no shit there's a war going on. Sometimes you hear about it or read about it in the news. But the idea behind contracting out missions like resupply, mess services, and the like, was that YOU folks could do faster, cheaper, better, etc.

Mark ups on the order of 335 times the cost don't exactly meet the definition of "cheaper." Faster? Not really:

But efforts to truck in fuel were hampered by repeated attacks on fuel convoys, delays organizing military escorts, supply route closures and changing delivery points, company officials said. Security was so dicey, in fact, that tanker trucks were lucky to make two round trips per month.

Better? Two words: Sailboat fuel:

Empty flatbed trucks crisscrossed Iraq more than 100 times as their drivers and the soldiers who guarded them dodged bullets, bricks and homemade bombs.

Twelve current and former truckers who regularly made the 300-mile re-supply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad told Knight Ridder that they risked their lives driving empty trucks while their employer, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., billed the government for hauling what they derisively called "sailboat fuel."

Ms. Hall implies that the logistics of battle make things difficult--duh. Perhaps she should get a first hand look in-country, instead of hiding behind a desk. War IS an ugly business, not a fantasy world.

If it were up to me, I'd take ALL the top brass at this piece-of-shit company (and it subsidiaries), and drop em into Baghdad. Let's see if all that money they stole means anything when they're caught up in the chaos that their sugar daddies Bush and Cheney created.