"Arny Krueger" wrote:

You're way behind CNN & Fox, Sanders.

Well, I was just now watching "Hardball" on MSNBC, and one right-wing pundit
has continued to identify the "subcractor" as "KBR", a division of
Halliburton.

Even the "Truthout" site
http://truthout.org/docs_03/121103D.shtml has things more correct and
up-to-date than you do.

Obviously, the NY Times article was poorly written, as it both referred to
an identified "subcontractor" (Halliburton's own KBR) and an unidentified
"subcontractor.

The story there is far more complex than you'd lead us to believe.
The *subcontractor* is a Kuwaiti firm, and not Kellogg Brown & Root (the
relevant Halliburton subsidiary)


http://www.kiplinger.com/news/XmlSto...212670.6.357_7
b8502d20935c0fd

"But the charge is not that Halliburton profited from this deal, but
merely
that it might not have been diligent enough in negotiating a market price
contract from a subcontractor, Kuwaiti oil company that was designated by
the Kuwaiti government as the only company that could bid on this
contract."

As usual Sanders, you've got all the relevant facts wrong.

I relied on the NY Times article, which was the first news I saw about it.
Admittedly, it is confused. Yet you selectively quote some very misleading
stuff. Halliburton is still to blame for its involvement in this scandal,
and it's more complex than you pretend. Why not just put it all on the
table by quoting from truthout.org's article:

"High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq
By Don Van Natta Jr.
New York Times

Wednesday 10 December 2003

The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an
average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from
Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel,
government documents show.

Halliburton, which has the exclusive United States contract to import
fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti firm, government
officials said. But Halliburton gets 26 cents a gallon for its overhead and
fee, according to documents from the Army Corps of Engineers.

The cost of the imported fuel first came to public attention in October
when two senior Democrats in Congress criticized Halliburton, the huge
Houston-based oil-field services company, for "inflating gasoline prices at
a great cost to American taxpayers." At the time, it was estimated that
Halliburton was charging the United States government and Iraq's
oil-for-food program an average of about $1.60 a gallon for fuel available
for 71 cents wholesale.

But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents
recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with
The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of
fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, defended the company's
pricing. "It is expensive to purchase, ship, and deliver fuel into a wartime
situation, especially when you are limited by short-duration contracting,"
she said. She said the company's Kellogg Brown & Root unit, which
administers the contract, must work in a "hazardous" and "hostile
environment," and that its profit on the contract is small.

The price of fuel sold in Iraq, set by the government, is 5 cents to 15
cents a gallon. The price is a political issue, and has not been raised to
avoid another hardship for Iraqis.

The Iraqi state oil company and the Pentagon's Defense Energy Support
Center import fuel from Kuwait for less than half of Halliburton's price,
the records show.

Ms. Hall said Halliburton's subcontractor had had more than 20 trucks
damaged or stolen, nine drivers injured and one driver killed when making
fuel runs into Iraq.

She said the contract was also expensive because it was hard to find a
company with the trucks necessary to move the fuel, and because Halliburton
is only able to negotiate a 30-day contract for fuel. "It is not as simple
as dropping by a service station for a fill-up," she said.

A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Bob Faletti, also defended
the price of imported fuel.

"Everyone is talking about high costs, but no one is talking about the
dangers, or the number of fuel trucks that have been blown up," Mr. Faletti
said. "That's the reason it is so expensive." He said recent government
audits had found no improprieties in the Halliburton contract.

Gasoline imports are one of the largest costs of Iraqi reconstruction
efforts so far. Although Iraq sits on the third-largest oil reserves in the
world, production has been hampered by pipeline sabotage, power failures and
an antiquated infrastructure that was hurt by 11 years of United Nations
sanctions.

Nearly $500 million has already been spent to bring gas, benzene and
other fuels into Iraq, according to the corps. And as part of the $87
billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush signed last
month, $18.6 billion will be spent on reconstruction projects, including
$690 million for gasoline and other fuel imports in 2004.

From May to late October, Halliburton imported about 61 million gallons
of fuel from Kuwait and about 179 million from Turkey, at a total cost of
more than $383 million.

A company's profits on the transport and sale of gasoline are usually
razor-thin, with companies losing contracts if they overbid by half a penny
a gallon. Independent experts who reviewed Halliburton's percentage of its
gas importation contract said the company's 26-cent charge per gallon of gas
from Kuwait appeared to be extremely high.

"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said Phil Verleger,
a California oil economist and the president of the consulting firm PK
Verleger LLC. "That's a monopoly premium - that's the only term to describe
it. Every logistical firm or oil subsidiary in the United States and Europe
would salivate to have that sort of contract."

In March, Halliburton was awarded a no-competition contract to repair
Iraq's oil industry, and it has already received more than $1.4 billion in
work. That award has been the focus of Congressional scrutiny in part
because Vice President Dick Cheney is Halliburton's former chief executive
officer. As part of its contract, Halliburton began importing fuel in the
spring when gasoline was in short supply in large Iraqi cities.

The government's accounting shows that Halliburton paid its Kuwait
subcontractor $1.17 a gallon, when it was selling for 71 cents a gallon
wholesale in the Middle East.

In addition, Halliburton is paying $1.21 a gallon to transport the fuel
an estimated 400 miles from Kuwait to Iraq, the documents show. It is paying
22 cents a gallon to transport gas into Iraq from Turkey.

The 26 cents a gallon it keeps includes a 2-cent fee and 24 cents for
"mark-up costs," the documents show. The mark-up portion is intended to
cover the overhead for administering the contract.

Ms. Hall of Halliburton said it was "misleading" for the corps to call
it a mark-up. "This simply means overhead costs, which includes the general
and administrative costs like light bulbs, paper and employees," she said.
"These costs are specifically allowable under the contract with the Corps of
Engineers, are defined by detailed regulations, and are scrutinized and
approved by U.S. government auditors."

In recent weeks, the costs of importing fuel from Kuwait have risen.
Figures provided recently to Congressional investigators by the corps show
that Halliburton was charging as much as $3.06 per gallon for fuel from
Kuwait in late November.

If the corps concludes that Halliburton has successfully administered
the gas contract, it could be paid an additional 5 percent of the total
value of the gas it imported.

Halliburton's Kuwait subcontractor was hired in May. Halliburton and
the Army Corps of Engineers refused to identify the company, citing security
reasons. Aides to Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat
who has been a critic of the fuel contract, said government officials had
identified it as the Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company. Several
independent petroleum experts in the Middle East and the United States said
they had not heard of Altanmia.

Copies of the Army Corps documents were given to Mr. Waxman's office,
which provided them to The Times.

Iraqi's state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring in
gas, which includes the cost of gasoline and transportation costs, the aides
to Mr. Waxman said. The gasoline transported by SOMO - and by Halliburton's
subcontractor - are delivered to the same depots in Iraq and often use the
same military escorts.

The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center pays $1.08 to $1.19 per
gallon for the gas it imports from Kuwait, Congressional aides said. That
includes the price of the gas and its transportation costs.

The money for Halliburton's gas contract has come principally from the
United Nations oil-for-food program, though some of the costs have been
borne by American taxpayers. In the appropriations bill signed by Mr. Bush
last month, taxpayers will subsidize all gas importation costs beginning
early next year.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Waxman responded to the latest
information on to costs of the Halliburton contract. "It's inexcusable that
Americans are being charged absurdly high prices to buy gasoline for Iraqis
and outrageous that the White House is letting it happen," he said."

In another article I read, it noted, as above, Halliburton stands to profit
between a minimum 2% and a maximum 7% on the Kuwaiti overcharges - meaning
w/r/t the overcharges alone, Halliburton stands to profit an extra $1.2
million to over $4 million.

What is clear, is that this secretive "subcontractor" in Kuwait is charging
a lot more than other oil firms in Kuwait for oil imported into Iraq? What
the hell is Halliburton doing using our taxpayer dollars paying such an
outrageous price to this secretive "subcontractor" when it can get much
lower prices from other Kuwaiti and Turkish companies?. It smells pretty
oily to me. I'm sure there's a lot going on that neither the Pentagon,
Bush, Halliburton, or Kuwait want us to know.