Happy happy day.... I've been skipping around the kitchen since I
heard this on the radio. Halliburton's army supply deal has been
cancelled, and the global supply job will be retendered later this year.
There's a catch however. This means that instead of one global corporation
following yank troops around the world, now there will be four or five.
[Reuters extract}
Army officials said they will not renew the contract
awarded in 2001 to Halliburton subsidiary KBR to provide water,
dining and laundry services and transport fuel and other items,
including mail, to U.S. troops.
Instead, they described a plan to divide the work among
three companies, with a fourth supporting the work. "It will be
rebid," said Dave Foster, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon,
adding KBR is free to take part in the new competition.
Texas-based Halliburton, formerly run by Vice President
Dick Cheney, has drawn scrutiny from auditors, congressional
Democrats and the Justice Department for the quality and
pricing of its work in Iraq.
KBR has gotten orders worth $17.1 billion since the start
of the contract, including about $15.4 billion in Iraq,
according to Army figures.
"The termination of Halliburton's contract is long overdue.
Taxpayers can breathe easier knowing that the days of $45 cases
of soda and $100 bags of laundry are coming to a close," said
Rep. Henry Waxman, top Democrat on the House of Representatives
Government Reform Committee.
But the good news is that even the U.S. troops have decided
to never be manipulated again (at least on such a major level) by a
blatant commercial profiter..... oh who am I kidding- I just want to
wear rose coloured glasses again for this one day!
At the very least the leverage the contract provided for manipulating the Australian government will be gone...
In that spirit, I'd love to see Brendan Nelson do the same thing here...
too late she cried .....
In the name of a criminal President
From the New York Times
For Accused G.I., Iraq Only Added to His Woes
By JIM DWYER and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: July 14, 2006
On the last day of January 2005, Steven D. Green, the former Army private accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her family, sat in a Texas jail on alcohol-possession charges, an unemployed 19-year-old high school dropout who had just racked up his third misdemeanor conviction.
Days later, Mr. Green enlisted in a soldier-strapped Army, and was later assigned to a star-crossed unit to serve on an especially murderous patch of earth.
He arrived at the very moment that the Army was increasing by nearly half the rate at which it granted what it calls “moral waivers” to potential recruits. The change opened the ranks to more people like Mr. Green, those with minor criminal records and weak educational backgrounds. In Mr. Green’s case, his problems were emerging by junior high school, say people who knew him then.
Mr. Green’s Army waiver allowed a troubled young man into the heart of a war that bore little resemblance to its original declared purposes, but which continued to need thousands of fresh recruits.
Now, there is shame and rage in the Army — from the ranks of the enlisted to the officer corps — over the crimes attributed to Mr. Green, who was discharged in April on psychiatric grounds, and four other soldiers charged with a rape and four killings in March in Mahmudiya, a town about 20 miles south of Baghdad. A sixth soldier was charged with failing to report the matter after learning about it.
Mr. Green’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk, told his brother in a recent letter that “his worst fears, the nightmare every commander dreams of, has basically come true,’’ the brother, Peter Kunk, said in an interview describing the letter.
Read more at the NYT
More hypocrisy spread by US
From Al Jazeera
US vetoes UN resolution on Gaza
Thursday 13 July 2006, 23:28 Makka Time, 20:28 GMT
Ten of the 15 Security Council nations backed the resolution
The United States has rejected a United Nations resolution demanding Israel end its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The US was the only country to vote against the draft resolution put forward by Qatar on behalf of Arab nations. Ten of the 15 Security Council nations voted in favour and four, Britain, Denmark, Slovakia and Peru, abstained.
The draft resolution accused Israel of a "disproportionate use of force" that endangered Palestinian civilians, and demanded Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza.
The draft had been changed before the vote over concerns that it was too biased against Israel. Calls for the release of the Israeli soldier abducted by Palestinian militants and an end to rocket attacks on Israel were added.
But John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said the draft was still unacceptable because it had been overtaken by events in the region - including the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah on Wednesday - and was "unbalanced".
Read more at Al Jazeera
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