Stripes LTTE: Halliburton and profits

[Raster]

Halliburton and profits

In the letter “A ‘Candidate’ for comparison” (Aug. 16) Halliburton was referred to as one of the few corporations “brave and capable enough” to go into a dangerous place like Iraq and do the necessary work. I feel compelled to respond.

Revenues of Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary for the second quarter of this year are 68 percent higher than the same quarter of last year, thanks to contracts in the Middle East. According to Halliburton’s most recent quarterly results, KBR recorded $78 million in operating income (defined as profit before deduction of interest and taxes) in the second half of 2003, and $32 million in the first quarter of 2004. Despite Halliburton’s touted bravery and capability, it was unable to account to Pentagon auditors for 43 percent of the $4.18 billion that KBR has charged for feeding and housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait, to say nothing of the $61 million KBR was found by auditors to be overcharging the Pentagon for oil deliveries and the additional $67 million they may have overcharged in the future.

Having said the above, anyone brave and patriotic enough to venture into Iraq and support our efforts to establish democracy there has my admiration and utmost respect. Forty-two KBR workers have died in Iraq and Kuwait since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am grateful for their sacrifice.

However, corporate executives and institutional investors raking in vast profits from Americans dying in faraway lands should not be held up as objects of esteem. Many, like former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, managed to find priorities other than military service to occupy them during time of war. I am very disturbed by the methods Halliburton used to acquire its lucrative contracts in Iraq and I am angered by the disorganized and unprofessional manner in which some of them have been fulfilled.

Samuel Adams
Stuttgart, Germany

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=24531