Thursday, July 22, 2004
The $60 roll of duct tape. Thank you Halliburton. Please just take my wallet while you're at it. No wonder we're $12 billion in the hole on Bush's Big Iraq Adventure.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR paid inflated fees for cell phone services, bought hundreds of rolls of duct tape for $60 each and obscured the waste by failing to file paperwork properly. In one case, he said, a fellow procurement employee recorded a multimillion-dollar purchase as a $200 order, then dismissed it as a mistake.
At least they're holding hearings on the fraud. But it doesn't look too good when you have representatives like Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.):
...the so-called whistle-blowers" simply misunderstood the logistical reality of life during wartime. He said he was giving the Democrats a chance "to put up or shut up" on an issue that won't go away.
