"Making a Killing: The Business of War."

"Making a Killing: The Business of War."
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HalliburtonWatch.........

corporate greed at it's worst. This is an insult to U.S. soldiers and taxpayers. At the same time they'll be avoiding U.S. taxes, I'm sure they won't stop insisting on taking their profits in cold hard U.S. cash."
US: Cheney's Halliburton Options Up 3,281% .....Last Year
An analysis released by a Democratic senator found that Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in the last year.Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $441,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $15 million.
The above graph released by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) charts the value of the Vice President's holdings in Halliburton in the past year.“ Halliburton has already raked in more than $20 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.”Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of a no-bid contact in Iraq. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay.The Vice President has sought to stem criticism by signing an agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these stock options to charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said he will not take any tax deduction for the donations.However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in Sept. 2003 that holding stock options while in elective office does constitute a “financial interest” regardless of whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to charities. CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a financial interest.Cheney told "Meet the Press" in 2003 that he didn't have any financial ties to the firm.“Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest," the Vice President said. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years.”Cheney continues to received a deferred salary from the company. According to financial disclosure forms, he was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004.


HalliburtonWatch reports that contracting giant Halliburton is moving its corporate headquarters from the United States to the United Arab Emirates, which will help it avoid taxes and accountability from federal investigators. The company is also in the process of disposing all its ownership in the scandal-plagued KBR, "notorious for overcharging the military and serving contaminated food and water to the troops in Iraq." The article goes on to report that this isn't the first time Halliburton has used tactics to avoid accountability and restrictions:
Halliburton $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ The Money Maker.....
This company truly has a guardian angel: former Halliburton CEO and now Vice President Dick Cheney who looks out for its interests from the White House. The result? $8 billion in contracts “rebuilding” Iraq in 2004.CEO: David J. LesarMilitary contracts 2005: $5.8 billionOil and gas-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $221,249*The biggest windfall in the invasion of Iraq has most certainly gone to the oil services and logistics company Halliburton . The company, which was formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, had revenue of over $8 billion in contracts in Iraq in 2003 alone. And while Halliburton ’s dealings in Iraq have been dogged everywhere by scandal – including now a criminal investigation into overcharging by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root for gas shipped into Iraq – Vice President Cheney manages to be doing quite well from the deal. He owns $433,000 unexercised Halliburton stock options worth more than $10 million dollars.But Halliburton ’s history of benefiting from government largesse goes back a ways. From 1962 to 1972 the Pentagon paid the company tens of millions of dollars to work in South Vietnam, where they built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the demilitarized zone to the Mekong Delta. The company was one of the main contractors hired to construct the Diego Garcia air base in the Indian Ocean, according to Pentagon military histories.In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement the privatization of routine army functions under then-secretary of defense Dick Cheney. When Cheney quit his Pentagon job, he landed the job of Halliburton 's CEO, bringing with him his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton 's government business until they quit in 2000, once Cheney was elected vice president. This included a $2.2 billion bill for a Brown and Root contract to support US soldiers in Operation Just Endeavor in the Balkans.After Cheney and Gribbin departed, another confidante of Cheney, Admiral Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for U.S. forces in southern Europe, took over Gribbin's old job of go-between for the government and the company, according to Brown and Root's own press releases.In 2001 the company took in $13 billion in revenues, according to its latest annual report. Currently, Brown and Root estimates it has $740 million in existing U.S. government contracts (approximately 37 percent of its global business).For example, in mid November 2001, Brown and Root was paid $2 million to reinforce the U.S. embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, under contract with the State Department, according to the New York Times. More recently Brown and Root was paid $16 million by the federal government to go to Guantnamo Bay, Cuba, to build a 408-person prison for captured Taliban fighters, according to Pentagon press releases.That's by no means all: Brown and Root employees can be found back home running support operations from Fort Knox, Kentucky, to a naval base in El Centro, California, according to company press releases. In December 2001, Brown and Root secured a 10-year deal named the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from the Pentagon, which has already been estimated at $830 million.Meanwhile independent agencies are still skeptical about claimed financial savings from contracting out military support operations. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO), a February 1997 study showed that a Brown and Root operation in Bosnia estimated at $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996 had ballooned to $461.5 million a year later.All told this former Yugoslavia contract has now cost the taxpayer $2.2 billion over the last several years. Examples of overspending by contractors include flying plywood from the United States to the Balkans at $85.98 a sheet and billing the army to pay its employees' income taxes in Hungary.A subsequent GAO report, issued September 2000, showed that Brown and Root was still taking advantage of the contract in the Balkans. Army commanders were unable to keep track of the contract because they were typically rotated out of camps after a six-month duration, erasing institutional memory, according to the report. The GAO painted a picture of Brown and Root contract employees sitting idly most of the time. The report also noted that a lot of staff time was spent doing unnecessary tasks, such as cleaning offices four times a day. Pentagon officials were able to identify $72 million in cost savings on the Brown and Root contract simply by eliminating excess power generation equipment that the company had purchased for the operation.Brown and Root has been also been investigated for over billing the government in its domestic operations. In February 2002, Brown and Root paid out $2 million to settle a suit with the Justice Department that alleged the company defrauded the government during the mid-1990s closure of Fort Ord in Monterey, California.The allegations in the case surfaced several years ago when Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager for Brown and Root turned whistle-blower, charged that between 1994 and 1998 the company fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities, quality, and types of materials required for 224 projects. Campbell said the company submitted a detailed "contractors pricing proposal" from an army manual containing fixed prices for some 30,000 line items.Once the proposal was approved, the company submitted a more general "statement of work," which did not contain a breakdown of items to be purchased. Campbell maintained the company intentionally did not deliver many items listed in the original proposal. The company defended this practice by claiming the statement of work was the legally binding document, not the original contractors pricing proposal."Whether you characterize it as fraud or sharp business practices, the bottom line is the same: the government was not getting what it paid for," says Michael Hirst, of the United States Attorney's Office in Sacramento, who litigated the suit on behalf of the government. "We alleged that they exploited the contracting process and increased their profits at the governments expense." *Source: opensecrets.org
Links
Halliburton
Project on Government Oversight
Occupation Watch
US: What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common; Or, how the Alaskan Inupiat Eskimos got a no-bid contract in South America from the U.S. government.by Michael Scherer, Salon.comJune 17th, 2007An Alaskan Inupiat Eskimo firm has been awarded a multi-million dollar no-bid contract to feed Bolivian soldiers and police in that country's continuing drug war, raising questions concerning the firms on-going relationship with former Halliburton subsidiary KBR and the US Senate's Alaskan Native Corporation privilege.
IRAQ: Death Toll for Contractors Reaches New High in Iraqby John M. Broder and James Risen, New York TimesMay 19th, 2007Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone, according to new government numbers.
US: Halliburton on short list for Corporate Hall of ShameMSN NewsMay 15th, 2007Halliburton Co. is one of eight companies voters can choose to be inducted to Corporate Accountability International's Corporate Hall of Shame.
Goodbye Houston: An Alternative Annual Report on Halliburton May 15th, 2007CorpWatch and its partners today released an alternative annual report on Halliburton titled: "Goodbye Houston" The new report was prepared in association with Halliburton Watch and the Oil & Gas Accountability Project.
Mystery of the Missing Meters: Accounting for Iraq's Oil Revenueby Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatchMarch 22nd, 2007How much crude oil is Iraq actually exporting? Nobody really knows how much is potentially being stolen by corrupt officials because the contractors in charge of fixing the meters have yet to calibrate them, four years after the invasion.
US: Senator calls for more aggressive investigation of war profiteeringby Elise Castelli, Federal TimesMarch 20th, 2007The Justice Department isn’t moving aggressively enough against contractors who have bilked the government out of billions in Iraqi reconstruction dollars, a top Senate Democrat said Tuesday.
US: The battle scars of a private warby T. Christian Miller, L A TimesFebruary 12th, 2007Contractors wounded or killed in Iraq are the anonymous casualties. Ceremonies are secret, and benefits are scarce.
IRAQ: Top Democrat: Halliburton Violated Multibillion Dollar Iraq Contractby Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t ReportDecember 9th, 2006Halliburton Corp., the oil field services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, breached the terms of its multibillion dollar contract to provide US soldiers logistical support in Iraq when one of its subcontractors outsourced security work to Blackwater USA, according to new documents released Friday by Congressman Henry Waxman.
IRAQ: Idle Contractors Add Millions to Iraq Rebuildingby James Glantz, The New York TimesOctober 25th, 2006Overhead costs have consumed more than half the budget of some reconstruction projects in Iraq, according to a government estimate released yesterday, leaving far less money than expected to provide the oil, water and electricity needed to improve the lives of Iraqis.
IRAQ: In Iraq, contractor deaths near 650, legal fog thickensby Bernd Debusmann, ReutersOctober 10th, 2006The war in Iraq has killed at least 647 civilian contractors to date, according to official figures that provide a stark reminder of the huge role of civilians in supporting the U.S. military.
US: Halliburton Unit Risked Civilian Lives, Lawsuits Say (Update3)by Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk, BloombergSeptember 15th, 2006Halliburton Co. sent civilian drivers into combat zones to protect its military supply contract, according to lawsuits filed by families of employees killed or injured while driving trucks in Iraq.
IRAQ: Army to End Expansive, Exclusive Halliburton Dealby Griff Witte, Washington PostJuly 12th, 2006The U.S. Army is discontinuing a controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton to provide logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide, a decision that could cut deeply into the firm's dominance of government contracting in Iraq.(Read CorpWatch's response.)
US: Federal contracts up 86% under Bush; Halliburton rises 600%Raw StoryJune 20th, 2006Top contractor Lockheed got contracts larger than budget of Congress, Dept. of Interior
US: GOP Kills Bill to Police Halliburtonby Bob Geiger, AlterNetJune 20th, 2006I suppose it's old news at this point that the Bush administration lied us into the Iraq war and that the cost of this mess will be fully realized by the next generation when Bush leaves office with the biggest budget deficit in U.S. history.
US: Halliburton sees earnings doubling in coming yearsStuff New ZealandJune 9th, 2006Oil field services company Halliburton Co. expects net income and earnings per share to double over the next three to five years, Chief Financial Officer Cris Gaut said today.
US: Big Bonuses Still Flow, Even if Bosses Miss Goalsby Gretchen Morgenson, The New York TimesMay 31st, 2006As executive pay packages have rocketed in recent years, their defenders have contended that because most are tied to company performance, they are both earned and deserved. But as the Las Vegas Sands example shows, investors who plow through company filings often find that executive compensation exceeds the amounts allowed under the performance targets set by the directors.
US: Protestors Arrested at Halliburton Annual Meetingby Shaun Schafer, Associated PressMay 17th, 2006Sixteen people protesting Halliburton Co.'s role as a military contractor were arrested Wednesday outside a building where shareholders discussed spinning off the subsidiary that provides meals, clean laundry and other services to U.S. troops in Iraq.
Yes-Men Taunt Halliburtonby Brooke Shelby BiggsMay 10th, 2006
IRAQ: Documents track Halliburton battleby David Ivanovich, Houston ChronicleMarch 29th, 2006Federal auditors castigated Houston-based Halliburton Co. repeatedly for failing to control costs and adequately justify its billings when working to rebuild Iraq's southern oil industry, newly released documents show.
US: Being Timely Was Key to Halliburton Bonusesby David Ivanovich, The Houston ChronicleFebruary 28th, 2006Houston's Halliburton Co. earned nearly $100 million from its controversial no-bid contract to repair Iraq's oilfields and import fuel into that violence-torn country, Pentagon records show.
www.opensecrets.org


http://iraqforsale.org/
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http://www.publicintegrity.org/bow/
War results in huge profits for DynCorp
A MUST READ BELOW........EDUCATE YOURSELF!!!!!!!!

http://www.citizen.org/documents/USdereg.pdf

http://www.citizen.org/documents/House07.pdf
WASHINGTON, — The oil services company Halliburton, largely through its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, has received more revenue from government contracts in the last year than from 1998 through 2002. In 2003, when the company had record revenue of $19.3 billion, Halliburton received contracts from the Department of Defense worth $5.3 billion, while in the previous five years it obtained less than $2.5 billion from the military. (2005 thru 2007).... 29.9 BILLION! ..........another RECORD!
A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has also found that a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this war commerce – a growth industry whose bottom line never takes into account the lives it destroys.
Read more on this subject in ICIJ's 11-part series, "Making a Killing: The Business of War."
Big Bucks.....Worldwide, private military companies earn about $500 billion in yearly government contracts. Ninety private military companies are listed on the Web site for the Center for Public Integrity. In comparison, the U.S. defense budget is about $480 billion this year, excluding emergency spending, and is expected to rise to more than $600 billion
To give you some idea of the money involved in privatizing war:
"Since 1999, Pentagon contracts signed with just 12 companies totaled more than $300 billion, Freedom of Information Act request. The training and construction portions alone amount to $80 billion, and the Saudis have spent hundreds of millions more to equip the force
Making a killing: the business of war

A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has also found that a handful of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East have profited from this war commerce – a growth industry whose bottom line never takes into account the lives it destroys.
President Eisenhower and The “Military-Industrial Complex”

On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower gave his final televised speech from the Oval Office. In his farewell speech to the nation, Eisenhower raised the issue of the Cold War and role of the U.S. armed forces. He described the Cold War saying: “We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method…” and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense
More than 170 American companies have received contracts worth up to $99.7 billion for work in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the latest update of the Center for Public Integrity's Windfalls of War project. This figure represents an increase of 82 companies and more than $85 billion since the Center first released its study of contracts awarded to U.S. companies for postwar work in Afghanistan and Iraq
The world's premier rent-a-cop business runs the security show in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US-Mexico border. They also run the coca crop-dusting business in Colombia, and occasional sex trafficking sorties in Bosnia. But what can you expect from a bunch of mercenaries?
With Kellogg, Brown & Root handling everything from mail delivery to bug control on U.S. bases in Iraq and around the world, plenty of other soldiers are finding themselves on the front lines.
CEO: Van HoneycuttMilitary contracts 2005: $6.8 billionnote: CSC sold DynCorp in January 2005The U.S. State Department awarded DynCorp a multimillion-dollar contract to advise the Iraqi government on setting up effective law enforcement, judicial and correctional agencies. DynCorp will arrange for up to 1,000 U.S. civilian law enforcement experts to travel to Iraq to help locals "assess threats to public order" and mentor personnel at the municipal, provincial and national levels. The company will also provide any logistical or technical support necessary for this peacekeeping project. DynCorp estimates it could recoup up to $90 million for the first year of the contract
DynCorp
"DynCorp of Virginia, with 23,000 employees, may range even more wide.
The world's premier rent-a-cop business runs the security show in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the US-Mexico border. They also run the coca crop-dusting business in Colombia, and occasional sex trafficking sorties in Bosnia. But what can you expect from a bunch of mercenaries?

With Americans were hurting at the pump, Big Oil took in $180 billion in combined profits last year, over a third of that going to ExxonMobil alone. Yet the Bush administration and the Bush Congress still sees fit to reward Big Oil with billions in unnecessary tax breaks - $6.5 billion just last year.

in order for Oil companies to DRILL..they must sign a lease with The Dept of Interior....after all cost are made up..a portion of the profits are to go back to the American Taxpayer...Somehow Oil Companies are keeping ALL profits...which violates the inital lease agreement...The intentional error in the 1998-99 lease contracts for deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, cost the American Taxpayer over $20 billion in lost royalty payments given the current price of crude oil and natural gas, according to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' auditing agency.
WASHINGTON -- Several major oil companies said Wednesday they are willing to discuss with the Interior Department changes in offshore drilling leases that contain a government error which could give the industry a $10 billion windfall.
Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $500 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1.6 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.