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Old 01-30-2004, 08:19 AM   #1 (permalink)
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Why doesn't the army cook for itself?

Something very odd about this.

I see Haliburton cooking and supplying the military and fueling them. This seems strange to me.

I mean you pay a PFC dirt Why are the enlisted people not more cost effective to use than a contractor who would obviously have to pay good money to anyone who works in iraq.

Just seems strange to me that it would be more cost effective to use civillians contractors to feed, and fuel our military.

This appears to have been the status quo method for quite some time even before iraq but it simpy does not seem to make sense to me. I would have to think that a soldier cook would simply be cheaper than any other method out there.

Is it the freeing up of .5% of the military that would be cooks and potato peelers or something else.

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Old 01-30-2004, 09:18 AM   #2 (permalink)
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Hey, that's a good question. Especially since HAL has added insult to injury by not paying taxes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/opinion/30HERB.html
I don't control the sign-in at the NY Times. But here is an excerpt:

"But if you go through some of Halliburton’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have, you’ll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the government that has been so good to it.

Annual reports filed with the S.E.C. since the mid-90’s — when Dick Cheney took over as chief executive and wrote the game plan for garnering government goodies — showed Halliburton subsidiaries incorporated in such places as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu.

Vanuatu? Who knew?

Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and subsistence farming. “Additional revenues,” according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, “derive from a growing tourist industry and the development of Vila [the capital] as a corporate tax shelter.”

Halliburton, in an S.E.C. filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu) Ltd.

The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it’s indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton’s tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, “After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability.”

That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a ride."
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Old 01-30-2004, 09:25 AM   #3 (permalink)
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Hi Mtatech,

Will you post a link that I dont have to sign into to view?
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Old 01-30-2004, 09:48 AM   #4 (permalink)
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One of the main reasons is that they can "hire" a contractor to do useful stuff like cooking, cleaning, maintenance, etc.

But they cannot pay a contractor to fight for you. That is what the troops are for. So that lowly PFC can pick up his 80lb pack, (loaded with MREs) MREs .
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Old 01-30-2004, 09:48 AM   #5 (permalink)
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civilians are not going into combat zones to work that is why our troops went for days without food and water. Our motor pool ran out of fuel and the tankers were used to provide fuel to the gas stations in down town Baghdad at $.05 per gallon that you were paying hal/brown&root $2.54 a gallon to deliver.

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?UR...ast/10GAS.html

Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton Corporation has been caught, once again, ripping off U.S. taxpayers. This time, it's not just overcharging for gasoline or other contracted items; it's the very food being fed to American soldiers in Iraq; and it's not just taxpayers, but U.S. troops being exposed to filthy mess halls and rotten food, according to official Pentagon inspection reports.

According to a Dec. 12 NBC "Nightly News" investigative reportâconfirmed to EIR by other sourcesâa Pentagon audit found dirty and unsafe conditions in four mess halls that Halliburton's KBR subsidiary operates in Iraq. NBC also reported that KBR's promises to improve its food services "have not been followed through," and that the Pentagon warns that "serious repercussions may result" if the contractor does not clean up its act. The auditors reported finding "blood all over the floor ... dirty pans ... dirty salad bars ... rotting meats... and vegetables" during a series of inspections in August, September, and Octoberâincluding of the mess hall that President Bush visited during his Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad. (No wonder he was parading around with the decorative turkey. He wouldn't want to touch the real thing.)

For this "service," Halliburton charges $28 for each meal that it serves to over 100,000 troops each day. The day before the NBC report, Defense Department officials had also reported that KBR had proposed a charge of $220 million for cafeteria services, about $67 million more than it was paying its subcontractor.

http://conspiracy-history-news.joeus...x.asp?AID=3724


the following is from a civilian employee.
http://www.ismckenzie.com/archives/000492.html

Most of my time was spent driving a refrigeration truck all over Iraq to deliver food to the Army. The trucks were junk along with the refrigeration trailers and much of the food spoiled or the trucks were left at the side of the road in Iraq when they broke down.
I heard the trucks were so bad because the first supervisor refers had took a lot of money under the table and excepted the junk even though he knew better. When I left Iraq the refrigeration trailers were still 20 to 30 Y O and most would not stay running long enough to send food with out it going bad.
Are these links credible, I don't know, I offer them for you exam you can do further research.
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Old 01-30-2004, 09:53 AM   #6 (permalink)
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My dog has been an avid reader of the ny times for quite a while. she signed up a long time ago so she can read the online articles. She even has a hotmail acount so she can fill out those oh so important forms required by some sites.
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Old 01-30-2004, 09:58 AM   #7 (permalink)
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My question goes more to the root of the problem then the concept of whether haliburton is ripping us off or not.

Why subcontract out the job in the first place. This is a much older situation than bush or cheney MTA.

How much do the subcontractors on military bases in the us charge for feeding our troops during clinton years and in kosovo.

Taking part of a day of a soldier to cook does not restrict him from doing patrol. Soldier would cost materials + 1 dollar per hour to make food for 300 soldiers.

What drove the military to even thing of subcontracting this out to anyone.

PS halliburton has won many of the bid contracts as well so apparently they are the best people for the job.

But why have the job in the first place.
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Old 01-30-2004, 09:59 AM   #8 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally posted by jynxedu
One of the main reasons is that they can "hire" a contractor to do useful stuff like cooking, cleaning, maintenance, etc.

But they cannot pay a contractor to fight for you. That is what the troops are for. So that lowly PFC can pick up his 80lb pack, (loaded with MREs) MREs .
Still cheeper to have an army 1% larger that has 1% of the soldiers in the food services.

Remember this is not just happening in iraq this is through out the military AFAIK
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Old 01-30-2004, 10:12 AM   #9 (permalink)
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28$ a meal 3 time aday?
What are we feeding these guys?
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Old 01-30-2004, 10:19 AM   #10 (permalink)
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When I was in the Marine Corps the thought of doing a 30 day tour as a mess cook had a way of making you want to stay off the First Sgt's S**t list. Sure made for brighter brass and shinier shoes.
Also every Marines secondary mos (military ocupational specialty) was rifelman.
when in the field we had about 8 cooks (real cooks school trained etc) and 20-30 messmen to serve and clean etc. the messmen were pulled from the units eating in the mess hall or field kitchen it worked then and we had hot meals in some extremely hazardous situations.
I have been out since 1965 so I don't know when the change came about but it looks like a real money waster to me.
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