THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

From USA Today, we get this short, punchy piece about Halliburton, KBR and their feast at the public trough. Remember, these are services for soldiers in Iraq. Yoy know, the ones the Bushoviks love so much.

Rory Mayberry, a former KBR food manager at Camp Anaconda in Iraq, testified on videotape from Baghdad that the company charged for twice the number of meals it provided and served food beyond its expiration date. He said managers ordered workers to pick bullets and shrapnel out of food shipments that had been damaged by gunfire or bombings and serve it to troops.

Yum! That is how real men get their iron each day.

Whistle-blower testimony and a previously undisclosed Army audit found Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) inflated cost estimates, billed for unnecessary equipment and personnel, submitted millions of dollars in duplicate charges and was repeatedly given preferential treatment over other contractors.

The report cited these examples of inflated costs:

• $617,000 for double-billed soft drinks.

• $1 million in excessive laundry charges.

• More than $560,000 for unneeded heavy equipment, including tractors and trailers.

• $2.2 million for cargo aircraft and $7.6 million for freight costs that "appeared to be duplicate."

• $1.4 million to pay 146 workers at a facility that had only 62.

The Army audit blamed lax Defense Department oversight, saying Pentagon officials often discarded lower government cost estimates in favor of the contractor's inflated ones. While the government estimated it would take $1.9 million to run Baghdad's airport, Halliburton charged $12.8 million. A contract to run Camp Arifjan in Kuwait cost $10.8 million instead of the government $2.8 million estimate.

A separate Defense Contract Audit Agency review revealed $219 million in questioned charges related to fuel imports by Halliburton.

Those are your tax dollars because the corporations and rich folk all got tax breaks.