If nothing else, I guess you can call it a matter of consistency. A week after the Pentagon brass cleared themselves of wrongdoing in the Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib/Rendition/torture scandals, Think Progress reports that the practice of internal investigation--followed by internal exoneration--is thriving on the private side too:
Blacked out of the redacted report was the fact that Halliburton may have bilked the U.S. military out of about $100 million. Also blacked out were statements critical of KBR like “KBR was unable to reconcile the proposed costs to its accounting records” and “KBR did not always provide accurate information.”
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Wondering why the extensive redactions blocked all of the negative findings, the crack researchers in Rep. Henry Waxman’s office looked into the matter. It turns out the White House gave Halliburton a copy of the negative audit and let the company scrub out all of the negative stuff itself before it was sent to the UN group. A letter from KBR dated 9/28/04 to the Army Corps of Engineers states “we have redacted the statements of DCAA that we believe are factually incorrect or misleading and could be used by a competitor to damage KBR’s ability to win and negotiate new work.”
"Iraq is goodplusdouble...I mean, gooddoubleplus...double...doubleplusgood."
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