$25 million denied on contracts of how many billions? Sounds like less than lip service.

With the military, it might buy a toilet seat or a ladder.

The DOD can’t account for something like 1/4 of their budget. $25 million is not even rounding error for either DOD or KBR.

In fact, $25 million isn’t even enough to pay one Wall St. bonus.

anything less than life in prison for these fucking scum is a bonus.

True enough. Was just remembering back to a time when people were outraged, I think it was during Reagan, when it became known how much the military paid for such cheap items as screw, toilet seats and ladders. Not sure exact numbers, but it was beyond ridiculous.

The Army and halliburton probably conferred before hand and the Army begged them to agree to something that would help their image. halliburton probably told them that withholding the bonus would make the best impact on the public without hurting halliburton’s bottom line because it was chump change.

How many solders died total?

Maybe we should require all government contract work be done by government workers or Union workers. I’m thinking Union Electricians would not make these mistakes.

Will anyone ask Darth about the dead solders the next time he goes on tv?

This action by the Pentagon is a start, but only a start to reel in the contractor abuse that is rampant.

Not awarding a bonus for widespread sloppy contracting work that killed soldiers is just the beginning, not the end point, of accountability.

Not awarding a bonus used to be something that happened when things were late or didn’t work quite as they should. Incompetence like that KBR is accused of should have resulted in contracts being terminated years ago.

No, that would be shrill.

Did the executives at KBR give themselves bonuses for the good work that did that year? Can’t the families sue KBR?

And disrespectful

We need to get rid of all KBR and Hal’s government contracts.

I have to defend the price of items, even toilet seats and nails, purchased by the military. The items bought are supposed to be subjected to rigorous certification, and often special materials or procedures. Without the various standards, the materials and services have no accountability. As it is, there is no practical accountability because the Army Quality Engineers or Inspectors are not doing their jobs. For example, the electrocutions of people in the showers. The military did shift to off-the-shelf purchases for many items some time ago, so there is less accountability. Imposing penalties for noncompliance with the terms of contracts or outright criminal actions depends on the upper military echelon.

I’m already against the next war.

Seize their assets.
Imprison the miscreants.
Make all of Cheney’s ‘innovations’ on war profiteering illegal.

You forgot the snark tag.

I’m ready for tonight’s late late. Doing laundry in a basement where the sump pump is going off every 3 minutes, and the precip is not supposed to let up for another 2 days.

Do you have your water wings handy? :)

I have a blow up mattress. I haven’t tested whether it floats yet, but there’s always tonight for the grand experiment. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a glass holder for the booze.

We encourage basement blogging at LLN….)

It is miserable down there. It’s an historic house with a dirt floor in the basement, convered by washed gravel. (Concrete under the furnace, laundry, etc.) When there’s this much precip, the water table rises above the level of the basement floor and there’s nothing else to do but pump it out. Hopefully the electricity won’t go out & the sump pump won’t fail. Electricity went out for a few hours yesterday when the precip was wet snow & failed briefly today. I had planned, foolishly, to do laundry tonight, not anticipating the conditions.

I will never understand why people would build a basement at all under those conditions.

In 1817?

Oh, I knew it was old, but not that old.

Still.

It’s fine most of the time. But heavy precip starting yesterday, and ground already pretty water logged from a wet prior year.

$25 million is only a start. We really need to re examine some of the base closure decisions that the committee made with Cheney’s leadership. Our nation has been fleeced by the repug pro business thugs far too long. We really need to get decent employees back on the govt payroll and get some institutional memory working again. We also, need loyal americans on the public payroll who will stand up for american taxpayers and be insulted by those who would steal from US on a regular basis.

How about reinstating Bunnatine Greenhouse and other whistleblowers who risked everything to do right by their fellow citizens (http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=108). Now that’s change I can believe in.