Call it a qualified victory.

On July 1, the Pentagon agreed to investigate the showers built by KBR, a private military contractor in Iraq. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been fatally electrocuted by faulty wiring in the showers. There has been a lot of blogger commentary and reporting about the electrocution, including several items I wrote for Progressive Future.

And while I think we certainly helped push this issue into the mainstream, I'm pretty sure all the blogger activism in the world would not have made a bit of a difference without the efforts of Cheryl Harris.

So some good will come from the death of Ryan Maseth after all. The Pentagon -- after Ryan's mother, and my friend, Cheryl Harris, brought his death by electrocution to national attention --  has just ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, the major military contractor.

Cheryl, as I have written here previously, has  researched other electrocutions and pressed a wrongful death lawsuit against KBR. You remember: the military lied to her in trying to blame it all on him.

The senator from Cheryl's state, Pennsylvania, Bob Casey made public on Monday afternoon a written statement by Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.  Petraeus informed Congress of the new inspections -- while also disclosing that at least 13 U.S. soldiers had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began, and many others had received electrical shocks. Until now, the Pentagon had said 12 had been electrocuted.

US soldiers assigned to guard a crucial part of Iraq's oil infrastructure became ill after exposure to a highly toxic chemical at the plant

They were bleeding from the nose, spitting blood.

There apparently were hundreds of American soldiers at this site that were contaminated.

And who do they and others accuse

Cross posted at Turn Maine Blue

In light of recent reports in the New York Times and the BBC Jonathan Kaplan has this in today's Portland Press Herald reporting on Rep. Tom Allen's renwed criticism of Susan Collins' work as chair of the Senate committee tasked with overseeing all Federal contracts:

Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, on Friday used the recent reports to renew his accusation that Republican Sen. Susan Collins did not conduct sufficient oversight of private contractors providing services to U.S. troops in Iraq when she chaired the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee from 2003 through 2006.

"Sen. Collins should have been doing investigations, holding hearings and calling contractors on the carpet," Allen said in a phone interview that his campaign initiated. "These horror stories would be very much minimized if she had done her job."

More on the flip:

Ah, yes, Dick's buddies have suffered a setback.  Now they will no longer be able to create shell companies on the Cayman Islands in order to avoid paying taxes.  Not only that, the closing of this loophole means more money for our vets.  A big kudos to John Kerry and Barack Obama in the Senate for writing this bill, and making sure that private contractors are not screwing over we the taxpayers by both reaping a profit from the government while also avoiding paying taxes.  Yes, not even George W. Bush was going to fight this one, it was so unconscionable.  I have been writing about this since the story broke in  this diary when Kerry and Obama called for an investigation and an end to this practice and this diary about the bill passing Congress.  More details about the bill at the flip.

Hey Kossacks,

I’m sure many of you have seen the recent spate of stories about KBR on the front page of the NYTimes a couple days ago and the always fantastic coverage over at TPM .

We’ve focused on the contractor accountability side of the War in Iraq and tomorrow are working with Sacramento for Democracy and the Sacramento Coalition to End the War to highlight CalPERS investments in KBR at their monthly board meeting.  

About a month ago, we kicked off this campaign with a simple petition calling on pension funds and retirement accounts to hold KBR accountable for fraud waste and abuse.
You can still sign the petition at: http://www.TrueMajority.org/...

CalPERS, the public pension and retirement system in California is one of the biggest investors in KBR, owning over $25,000,000 in shares, so our California members went to work making over 200 calls in one day calling on CalPERS to divest from KBR.

In yet another exposé of how this administration allows their big business buddies to bleed America by contracting with the government in no-bid and cost-plus deals, the Washington Post exposes just how Halliburton subsidiary KBR was allowed to contract certain rebuilding tasks after Hurricanes Katrina and Ivan on a cost-plus basis, and bill the government for shoddy and substandard work for which an additional $200K had to be spent to have a different contractor fix KBR's foulups.

This is, of course, the same KBR that has been responsible for sloppily-building showers in Iraq that have electrified and killed several of our troops serving there.  

You have also no doubt read about the 2004 firing of Charles M. Smith, the senior civilian overseeing the Pentagon's KBR contract for his decision to hold off payment of $1 Billion in unsubstantiated KBR bills.

Kinda makes you mad, and ask "why"?... more after the jump...

Has anyone but me wondered why it was so important to give no-bid contracts to Halliburton/KBR?  I understood that it had something to do with Dick Cheney, but what?  He no longer worked for the company, so no more paychecks to him from them.  Right?  Well not quite. Below the fold: from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

KBR had the Army over a barrel:  if the Army refused to pay KBR's inflated bills (more than $1B in unjustified costs), KBR threatened to shut off payments to its subcontractors, which in turn would stop feeding the army in Iraq.  

Another day, another middle finger to the American taxpayer and American soldier from the Bush Administration and friends at Kellogg Brown & Root.

The New York Times has an article up detailing how back in the early stages of the Iraq War, the Army's own auditor found lack of support for $ 1 billion in fees and charges sought by KBR for their "services," and that the senior civilian overseeing the KBR contract was "reassigned" for demanding KBR provide information:

The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

More below...

The flagship BBC documentary program "Panorama" Tuesday is to focus on the loss, fraud, bad accounting and corruption in US Iraq war spending that could amount to $23 Billion.

A BBC press release introducing the program claims:

For the first time the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

Based on information from these sources, the programme can reveal that as much as $23billion is not properly accounted for in Iraq.

The program is scheduled for showing at 21.00 BST on BBC1.

UPDATE: I have added by rough notes of the content made as the program was transmitted on Louise's more recent diary. Regrettably there appears to be little not already familiar here. The U tube links do not appear to work outside the UK so I have removed the front page one to allow this addition.

This story is headlining over at cnn.com, and it is appalling. Since it doesn't appear to be on dkos at all, here's the story. [correction: gregmitch covered this story already, before cnn.com did]

As has been noted in a IGTNT diary, Green Beret Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, passed away in Iraq.

But...not as a fallen soldier on the battlefield. Maseth was a casualty of the war profiteer KBR, which colluded with corrupt Bush government officials to rip off taxpayers for shoddy work and inferior contracts.

Links and more info below the fold..

Congress acts to close one of the more ridiculous tax loopholes being exploited by some of the biggest war profiteers:

The Senate yesterday passed by unanimous consent a bill prohibiting federal contractors from avoiding Social Security and Medicare taxes by hiring workers through offshore shell companies.

Earlier this week, the House of Representatives also voted unanimously to ban the practice, used by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR to avoid payroll taxes for more than 10,000 American workers in Iraq.

The bill, which appears to have veto-proof support, now goes to President Bush. The White House has not indicated whether he supports it.

Of course, nothing's ever done until it's signed into law. And one never knows whether or not this president is crazy enough to veto something like this, the bill's unanimous support notwithstanding. And truthfully, even its enactment into law isn't the end-all, be-all it used to be back when we respected the rule of law, and signing a bill meant signing all of it.

I mean, isn't it rather amazing that there even has to be a sentence in there indicating that the White House's support for a bill that ends some shady tax avoidance by the biggest war profiteers around and uses the revenues to provide tax relief to veterans is still up in the air?

But Schoolhouse Rock-wise, this has to be noted as a good thing.

Of course, no good bill can go unsubverted by corporate profiteers for long:

John Krieger, tax and budget attorney at US PIRG, said he expects the bill to be signed into law in the coming days.

"There has been no threat of veto issued by the White House, and it looks like it would definitely withstand a veto anyway, since it was unanimous in both chambers," he said. Still, he said, he believes contractors will search for ways to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes for employees overseas, predicting that once the bill is signed into law, some companies will try to classify the employees as independent contractors, a move that would place the sole responsibility for paying those taxes on the worker.

We got 'em.  

Finally, KBR, subsidiary of Halliburton, has lost a battle, this time their craven tax sheltering racket in the Cayman Islands.  The Boston Globe first reported back in March of yet another outrage coming from KBR in an article titled "War profiteering by tax dodge".  It was a bad move all the way around:  they weren't responsible for employee benefits and they didn't have to pay U.S. taxes.  After the article came out, Congress started flexing its muscle as even the most right wing of Republicans would have trouble defending a defense contractor being paid by the government, while not paying any taxes on its profit from those government contracts.  John Kerry and Barack Obama led the effort in the Senate, and now we are only one presidential signature away of righting one wrong from the private contractors.  The icing on the cake?  The KBR tax money to be paid is going to the troops.

Earlier this month, President Bush received a report on how to update the Pentagon's current procedures for security clearances (used to ensure the integrity of those handling classified documents regarding the war) in order to make them more effective, timely and efficient. A clear theme in this report was the need to become technologically up-to-date, and thus the idea of electronically automated security clearances was born.

Considering the potential for human error within the giant bubble of bureaucratic waste that the administration has installed in Iraq, electronic security clearance procedures seems like not such a bad idea. What baffles me, however, is that within the bloated pdf file in which the report is placed on the internet, the topic of private contractors was not even broached.

[Cross-posted from www.progressivefuture.org]

This entire week, I've been blogging my interview with Rachel, a formerly deployed soldier in Iraq, who has been brave enough to share her experiences with contractor abuse and the harm it is causing our troops. Her testimony has placed a spotlight on the need for policies that truly support the troops in practice, not just in rhetoric. For as much as the current administration uses empty talking points such as "protect of our national security" and "support the troops" to justify its policies, when it comes down to it, our leaders clearly view the well-being of the soldiers on the front lines as an afterthought to the profits they and their cronies have reaped from the war. In this final entry, Rachel weighs in on the need for accountability:

Yesterday we learned that mental health professionals in Veterans Adminstration offices were being told what diagnosis they could give to Veterans being assessed for psychiatric sequelae related to the war. Given the recent cover-up of incidence of suicide, this is further evidence of the dishonest, callous, unethical, and inhumane behavior of this administration.

Keith Olberman discussed this tonight on Countdown.

As a licensed clinical social worker in the State of Massachusetts, a former board member of the Massachusetts National Association of Social Workers, and an adjunct faculty member teaching at now two graduate schools of Social Work, I want to inform everyone, especially Vets, that while the Veteran’s Administration can attempt to dictate diagnosis, which is highly unethical, Social Workers are ethically bound to give the diagnosis that best fits the reported symptoms. The VA is evidently ordering professionally trained persons to violate their ethical responsibilities, and to give diagnosiis that do not fit the presenting symptoms, or fail to fully explore clinically significant symptoms

Vets can arm themselves in their battle for rightful benefits with knowledge:

Cross-posted from www.progressivefuture.org:

Yesterday, in Part II of this five-part series, I shared my friend Rachel's experiences in Iraq with having to shower in dirty, contaminated water provided to the troops by private contractor and former Halliburton subsidiary, KBR. This story followed Rachel's recollectionof the grossly higher paychecks the contractors were receiving for the same work as the military personnel, a sick twist of irony if you consider how poorly the contractors were doing the jobs they are paid six-figure incomes to perform.

While the firsthand testimony of her experiences shocked and angered me, the findings of the investigations that followed truly made me disgusted: