While George Bush and his friends in the wide and diverse military-industrial complex sell us on the benefits of privatizing our armed forces, the reality of what they are doing is far different from their power-point presentations. Instead of bringing more efficiency to the mix, companies like KBR and Halliburton are making things in Iraq far more dangerous....and deadly.
From The NY Times:
During just one six-month period — August 2006 through January 2007 — at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.
And while the Pentagon has previously reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted in Iraq, many more have been injured, some seriously, by shocks, according to the documents. A log compiled earlier this year at one building complex in Baghdad disclosed that soldiers complained of receiving electrical shocks in their living quarters on an almost daily basis.
Electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an Army survey issued in February 2007. It noted “a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.”
Things in Iraq and Afghanistan are treacherous enough for our soldiers when dealing with insurgents. The fact that our troops are literally being burned by a corporation that gets no-bid contracts and continually screws things up over there is a tragedy. The army did just fine in WWII without KBR, and we would be much better off without them now.
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