Toilet bowl? Oh, dear lord, what I would have given to sit on a porcelain throne during my tour...

Is that really all you've got to say, MG?

These assholes are physically injuring troops through negligence and purposely bankrupting our country for private gain, and you're just gonna mention how it sucked that you had to shit in plastic bags?

They are private corporations that are stealing our money and doing it right in front of us because they don't think we can do anything. Maybe replace 'Haliburton' and 'KBR' with 'McDonalds' and 'KFC', or 'Ford' and 'GM', if that puts it in perspective.

Sorry, just thought maybe you'd be more upset.

There's not much more to say, really. I normally hate "documentaries" filmed with chopped up clips and one sided jibes, but this pretty much matched my experience. I'd be a little more forgiving on the mess halls though since, in all fairness, the DFACs on bases that have them are almost always open. They close down temporarily throughout the day to clean up and prepare the next meal. The time windows that you have to get yourself an actual cooked meal are very open. Also, there's plenty of MRE's which you usually have to eat anyway seeing as most people don't have access to a real DFAC, or it's just not feasible to eat there even if you do.

Oh, I am. I just don't know where to start. I think I needed a bit to cool down.
::Ahem::

And to think I almost took a job with those fucking assholes!
Let me start off by telling the sift where my water came from. Take a look at this map. You see that little creek under the arrow? Well, we had one of those running through our base. next to it were pumps and a filtration system. The water dogs (Marines who ran the pump/filter station) would pump it out, filter/"purify" it, and pump it into holding tanks. From there, a water truck would fill up, and drive around the base filling up all the tanks that provided the shower trailers with the water we needed for the showers and sinks. Now, I can't tell you exactly how clean it was, but you could drink it if you had to. It was periodically tested by the battalion doctor to make sure it was clean.
Let me reiterate that: someone who's profession is to care for injured troops was responsible for the water's purity.
Meanwhile, there are KBR and Halliburton employees making at minimum $80,000 a year who's sole purpose is the purity of water, and the water in their charge is full of malaria? What the fuck is that all about? How does that fucking company even have it's contract still?

As far as the chow halls are concerned: Yes, ideally they would be open 24/7 so as to reduce the amount of troops near it at any given time, but the fact of the matter is that the troops operate on your standard 16-hour day, so their meals would be at the regular times. However, proper measures should be taken to fortify the chow halls against mortar attacks. Texas barriers, sand bags on the roof and an enclosed space for the line should be there.

At the base that I was at, our chow hall was very well protected against mortars with said precautions.

Laundry: I can't offer much on that subject because the service we has was superb. I could turn in a set of cammies that was crispy and literally stiff from dried up sweat from two week's use, and in three days I would have them back as soft as new.

This better make it to the top 15, this shit pisses me off so much. It's unbelievable they can get away with this shit.

Not to be to negative but I feel that majority of the people wont really give this to much notice. Everyone all gungho for "supporting the troops" but when the troops are getting screwed royally, and with first had insight from people like MG, I feel most people will say "thats terrible" and the go on about their day never thinking of it again. I dont know maybe my faith in humanity is weakening. If we brought them home so they didnt have to fight maybe they wouldnt be mistreated by their own government anymore, or is it to idealistic of me to think the government will take care of them?

This clip is from the documentary Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers.
http://iraqforsale.org/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815181/

"Laundry: I can't offer much on that subject because the service we has was superb."

Did it cost you $90?

Probably not, but it probably cost the taxpayers $90.

Those facts are most likely correct (as I have nothing to compare them to) and it sickens me.
There's absofuckinglutely no reason for those assholes to be charging our taxpayers so much for so little. We jest need to set them up for success and get the fuck out. Save money, save lives.

In Afghanistan the local labor that Halliburton employs only gets paid between 2 dollars(for doing unskilled labor - like clearing mines) to up to ten dollars if the Afghan could speak English and serve as foreman for the crew. This led to an overabundance of "hodgie" laborers running around and most of the KBR crew just serving as babysitters. It wouldn't surprise me if their fleecing of Afghanistan wasn't more efficient. I didn't, however, see any of the major fraud and abuse highlighted in this clip. Although, they did serve steak and lobster on Fridays in the chow hall.

/seriously - not that I was complaining at the time, but ya, they did.

In order to have minimal armed forces on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nominal supply side of the US army was replaced by private contractors. This allowed the administration to make it seem like less forces were deployed in the war on terrorism, while focusing all those deployed on combat operations, while allowing to profit privately from giving no bid contracts to favored private contractors.

The reasoning was that private contractors are would be more efficient since profits are involved in the services provision, it's silly free economist thinking that believes all government side components should be privatized for efficiency. The same reason the government wants to privatize everything from health care to transportation maintenance to social security.

F you Halliburton. Still paying Cheney's stipend? Yeah. Of course you are.

Everyone all gungho for "supporting the troops" but when the troops are getting screwed royally, and with first had insight from people like MG, I feel most people will say "thats terrible" and the go on about their day never thinking of it again.

A lot of us care and just have no idea what we can do about it.

I think the government should sue them... On behalf of the soldiers. They should be forced to pay the health care costs and lost wages of every serving man, woman, and beast of burden in Irag. As well as, the Iraqis who were bystanders of their negligence.

Halliburton = dicks!

A lot of us care and just have no idea what we can do about it.

My sentiments exactly. This video makes me angry beyond belief. I knew that we have almost always shorted the troops on equipment, but this goes way beyond that.

But seriously, what can we do? I don't even see anything that Halliburton makes that us civies can boycott. I'll surely let my congressman know, but that's still putting the power in someone else's hands.

If it weren't illegal, I would advocate the murder of the board and executives including their extended families and the confiscation of all their respective property.

All of Halliburton's management should go to jail for embezzling money from the government, and the fools responsible for cost-plus should go to jail also. I would not be surprised if Cheney is getting billions of dollars in "kickbacks" from this.

You don't see any liberal bitching about the non-stop fraud and abuse of Medicare and -caid.

If it's not the huge scale corruption that offends, it must only be...the war!

I've never heard of any soldiers getting sick from Halliburton's water.

My Uncle went to Iraq for a year because he got hired by Halliburton. He was paid 4 times what he was making at home. He said he really didn't have to do anything, either. He ultimately quit because he couldn't stand working for such a terribly managed company any longer.

"You don't see any liberal bitching about the non-stop fraud and abuse of Medicare and -caid.

If it's not the huge scale corruption that offends, it must only be...the war!"

This may be true, but do you have an opinion that doesn't rely solely upon comparisons between liberals and conservatives? Try sticking to the subject, QM.

Of course half of this video is BS'd. You BS all you can if you're trying to get a message across. Point being, The Halliburton execs are going the whole nine yards to pick Uncle Sam's pocket, and we're paying out the ass for it here at home while the guys who're stuck over there FIGHTING the damn war have as much of a threat in profiteering assholes cutting corners as they do in the insurgents!

*promote

Escalades? My unit couldn't afford a bundle of RAGS. True story.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 8:22pm PST - promote requested by MarineGunrock.

this is *engineering on the darkest side. corrupted by policy and greed. sad engineering.

Adding video to channels (Engineering) - requested by oxdottir.