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WASHINGTON - Halliburton Co. failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused “mass sickness or death,” an internal company report concluded.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the company failed to assemble and use its own water purification equipment, allowing contaminated water directly from the Euphrates River to be used for washing and laundry at Camp Ar Ramadi in Ramadi, Iraq.

The problems discovered last year at that site — poor training, miscommunication and lax record keeping — occurred at Halliburton’s other operations throughout Iraq, the report said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11854311/

I hope I'm not jumping 'off topic' immediately but another thing I found out from a young guy I talked to was that when our soldiers buy anything (e.g. a can of pop) from Haliburton it costs a small fortune. I imagine everyone else knows this already but somehow I missed this tidbit. So it's not bad enough that our soldiers are vastly underpaid but ANOTHER part of the military industrial complex includes adding to their profits when our soldiers buy anything that's a non-military issued "luxury" item.

That's what tragically happens when you subcontract crappy, unqualified Third World or local Iraqi laborers with no oversight.

That's what tragically happens when you subcontract crappy, unqualified Third World or local Iraqi laborers with no oversight.

A long time ago, the US Military was quite capable of doing their own maintenance, preparing and serving their own food and so on.

A long time ago, the US Military was quite capable of doing their own maintenance, preparing and serving their own food and so on. Then, our leaders in Washington realized they could reward their rich pals by paying their companies 10 to 10,000 times as much, to do the same job.

Companies like Halliburton are importing 'third country nationals' -- and putting them to work in horrible conditions -- to fulfill their U.S. government contracts.
by David Phinney

Jing Soliman left his family in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing -- a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. His new employer, Prime Projects International (PPI) of Dubai, is a major, but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton's multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to provide support services to U.S. forces.

But Soliman wouldn't be making anything near the salaries -- starting $80,000 a year and often topping $100,000 -- that Halliburton's engineering and construction unit, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) pays to the truck drivers, construction workers, office workers, and other laborers it recruits from the United States. Instead, the 35-year-old father of two anticipated $615 a month -- including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that would be just over $3 an hour. But for the 12-hour day, seven-day week that Soliman says was standard for him and many contractor employees in Iraq, he actually earned $1.56 an hour.

Soliman planned to send most of his $7,380 annual pay home to his family in the Philippines, where the combined unemployment and underemployment rate tops 28 percent. The average annual income in Manila is $4,384, and the World Bank estimates that nearly half of the nation's 84 million people live on less than $2 a day.

"I am an ordinary man," said Soliman during a recent telephone interview from his home in Quezon City near Manila. "It was good money."

His ambitions, like many U.S. civilians working in Iraq, were modest: "I wanted to save up, buy a house and provide for my family," he says.

That simple dream drives hordes of low-wage workers like Soliman to travel to Iraq from more than three dozen countries. They are lured by jobs with companies working on projects led by Halliburton and other major U.S.-funded contractors hired to provide support services to the military and reconstruction efforts.

Called "third country nationals" (TCN) in contractor's parlance, they hail largely from impoverished Asian countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan, as well as from Turkey and countries in the Middle East. Once in Iraq, TCNs earn monthly salaries between $200 to $1,000 as truck drivers, construction workers, carpenters, warehousemen, laundry workers, cooks, accountants, beauticians, and similar blue-collar jobs.

Invisible Army of Cheap Labor

Tens of thousands of such TNC laborers have helped set new records for the largest civilian workforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war. They are employed through complex layers of companies working in Iraq. At the top of the pyramid-shaped system is the U.S. government which assigned over $24 billion in contracts over the last two years. Just below that layer are the prime contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel. Below them are dozens of smaller subcontracting companies -- largely based in the Middle East -- including PPI, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting and Alargan Trading of Kuwait, Gulf Catering, Saudi Trading & Construction Company of Saudi Arabia. Such companies, which recruit and employ the bulk of the foreign workers in Iraq, have experienced explosive growth since the invasion of Iraq by providing labor and services to the more high-profile prime contractors.

This layered system not only cuts costs for the prime contractors, but also creates an untraceable trail of contracts that clouds the liability of companies and hinders comprehensive oversight by U.S. contract auditors. In April, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of the U.S. Congress concluded that it is impossible to accurately estimate the total number of U.S. or foreign nationals working in Iraq.

The GAO's investigation was prompted by concerns in Congress about insurance costs that all U.S.-funded contractors and subcontractors in are obligated by law to carry for their workers -- costs which are then passed on to the government.

"It is difficult to aggregate reliable data," said the GAO report, "due in part to the large number of contractors and the multiple levels of subcontractors performing work in Iraq."

The menial wages paid to TCNs working for the regional contractors may be the most significant factor in the Pentagon's argument that outsourcing military support is far more cost-efficient for the U.S. taxpayer than using its own troops to maintain camps and feed its ranks.

But there is also a human cost to this savings. Numerous former American contractors returning home say they were shocked at conditions faced by this mostly invisible, but indispensable army of low-paid workers. TCNs frequently sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in line in 100-degree-plus heat to eat "slop." Many are said to lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day, for little or no overtime pay. Few receive proper workplace safety equipment or adequate protection from incoming mortars and rockets. When frequent gunfire, rockets and mortar shell from the ongoing conflict hits the sprawling military camps, American contractors slip on helmets and bulletproof vests, but TCNs are frequently shielded only by the shirts on their backs and the flimsy trailers they sleep in.



Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington D.C., whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times,

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 6th, 2005


For tens of thousands of workers from poor countries in Asia, the war in Iraq has been a magnet for money. Lured by the chance to make a fast buck, men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, have left the familiarity of their homelands to tough it out in the sands of Iraq.

They form a silent army of low-wage workers without which U.S. military bases in Iraq would come to a standstill. But life is vastly different for the Asian workers, known in military parlance as Third Country Nationals, than it is for the soldiers or American contractors they serve.

The Asians toil long hours for low wages and endure living conditions that have prompted some of their respective nations to address what they call human rights violations.


Sanjay Sharma of Nepal works in the dining hall at Camp Striker. Conditions and pay for foreign workers have been criticized by some of their countries.


At Camp Striker, which housed a majority of the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Brigade Combat Team, teams of Asian men clean the latrines and showers, fix electrical problems, cook the food in the chow hall and run the laundry, recreation facility and the local PX.

Importing workers

Most are employed by military contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston-based subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., and its various subcontractors.

Even though thousands of Iraqis are jobless, the U.S. military frowns on employing them on bases for fear of insurgent infiltration. Instead, companies with military contracts ship in Asian men, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, Thailand and the Philippines, to work on the bases at a fraction of the wages U.S. employees would ask.

In an area of Camp Striker called Mayberry, the scent of sandalwood wafted from a series of congested trailers. Outside one of the trailers, racks of well-worn shoes and grimy sandals lined the doorway. Inside, a dozen men fell to their knees in prayer in front of a shrine to Ganesh, the Hindu elephant-headed god of success.

It was success that Ganesh Sharkar - named after the very god to whom he was praying - was seeking when he decided to join 3 million other Indians already working in the Middle East.

The son of a poor farmer from the eastern Indian district of Nadia, Sharkar made his way to the Middle East through a labor recruiting agency in Mumbai. He had no idea he would end up in a war zone.

He was taken first to Oman, then to Dubai, where, he said, he was finally told that the job that awaited him was really in Iraq. By then, he had signed a contract and had no choice but to accept - he had given his life savings to the agents who sent him overseas.

"They didn't tell me the job was here. But what are beggars to do?" said Sharkar, 30, speaking in his native Bengali. "All of us have the same dream. Money."

'What can I do?'

The workers said they make between $550 and $1,000 a month, depending on the job. Sharkar draws $650 a month after eight months in Iraq. He spends 12 hours a day fixing electrical problems in tents and trailers. Though that's an attractive salary for rural India, Sharkar has barely made enough to pay off what he owed the recruiting agency - more than $2,000 - and make sure his extended family at home is sufficiently supported. In August, he said his employer, KBR subcontractor Prime Projects International, was several months behind on a paycheck.

Sharkar, like other workers at Striker, said he is allowed to take only one day off a month. When he does, it is without pay.

He shares a cramped trailer with a dozen other men in Mayberry, an enclave reserved for KBR and PPI employees. Some have had their passports confiscated, though Sharkar managed to hold on to his. He cannot eat at the same dining facility as the soldiers - his food is shipped in from Camp Victory and is often cold and tasteless.

Sharkar is not allowed to use the Internet trailer, the phone center or the recreation facility. He has little contact with home.

Amit Kumar of Nepal serves lunch to Sgt. Charles Cloud of Lithia Springs in the dining hall at Camp Striker.

He has no medical insurance and often begs workers with contacts in Baghdad to buy him medicine he needs. He has no body armor or helmet, even though military bases regularly come under attack.

"I don't like it here, but what can I do?" Sharkar said.

Indian newspapers have written repeatedly of alleged abuse of their workers in Iraq with such headlines as "U.S. slave camps."

CorpWatch, a globalization watchdog group based in San Francisco, claims on its Web site that TCNs in Iraq are mistreated and make extremely low wages compared to American employees of Halliburton and KBR, who often top $100,000 a year.

Recommended wage scale

KBR supervisors at Striker would not comment on the Asians. They referred questions to Nikki Wheeler, a company spokeswoman in Iraq, who said via e-mail that the company employs 40,000 people from 30 nations to support U.S. and coalition forces. She said KBR could would not discuss salaries or working conditions.

"It would be inappropriate to discuss the 'average salary paid' because as with any company, an employee's rate of pay is commensurate with their experience and the value they bring to the position," Wheeler wrote in her e-mail.

"Our compensation packages and the compensation packages provided by our subcontractors are based on a wage scale that was recommended by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and are competitive. Additionally, KBR's subcontractors are required to comply with all local labor laws and provisions and must be competitive in order to recruit and retain qualified personnel."

Wheeler added that KBR does employ Iraqis at a number of project sites and "strives to maximize local participation whenever possible. It merits mentioning," she said, "that in some cases the military restricts our ability to bring Iraqis on to some sites."

In May, Filipino employees went on strike against PPI and KBR at Camp Taji to protest poor working conditions and low wages. The Manila Times reported that the dispute was eventually settled with the intervention of Filipino diplomats.

The Philippines, India and Nepal have officially barred their citizens from seeking jobs in Iraq because of the danger.

Still, poor people keep coming to Iraq with a dream of striking it rich.

Money a big lure

Roderick Osbual, 23, left the rice paddies of Lusan, Philippines, behind so he would not have to be a farmer like his father. He quit college, where he was getting a degree in education to become a schoolteacher, and instead sought out a labor recruiting agent who sent him to Iraq.

He has been at Camp Striker since June 2004. After a variety of jobs, Osbual landed behind the counter at the laundry, where he always greets soldiers with a smile. PPI pays him $700 a month. When he takes a day off, he forfeits pay.

"That's OK with me," he said. "I need my rest."

Osbual said he doesn't like the way Asian workers are treated by contractors or the soldiers.

"I don't like the term TCN. It's degrading," he said. "The Americans, they look at us differently."

In the evenings, Hindi music blares from the Indian trailer while the Filipinos watch soap operas from home. The workers live among their own countrymen since language can be a barrier.

Osbual said he will likely stay in Iraq for another year. Half his salary goes into a Filipino bank account. The rest goes to his parents and a twin brother who is struggling to pay for college.

The work is boring, but Osbual is making twice what he would in his homeland.

"It's simply a matter of money. That's all," he said.

Message: Thanks Nick , but man is that ever disgusting ? $700 a month and they are happy with it and then haliburton thinks they are getting someone who knows what they are doing ? Man It should be $700 a day in my world if the person is qualified. That is just rediculous to think that the soldiers are being taken care of by people without qualifications.

The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services

The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid

An earlier audit by the inspector general found deficiencies in accounting for $5.2 billion of U.S. payments to buy weapons, trucks, generators and other equipment for Iraq's security forces. In addition, the Defense Department spent $1.8 billion of seized Iraqi assets with "absolutely no accountability,"