Support the troops! Bring freedom and democracy to an oppressed people! And give out oodles of dollars to Halliburton to manage the — well — water supply for our bases there. Just don’t expect them to give anyone clean water to drink while they’re doing it:
WASHINGTON Jan 22, 2006 — Troops and civilians at a U.S. military base in Iraq were exposed to contaminated water last year and employees for the responsible contractor, Halliburton, couldn’t get their company to inform camp residents, according to interviews and internal company documents.
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, disputes the allegations about water problems at Camp Junction City, in Ramadi, even though they were made by its own employees and documented in company e-mails.
“We exposed a base camp population (military and civilian) to a water source that was not treated,” said a July 15, 2005, memo written by William Granger, the official for Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary who was in charge of water quality in Iraq and Kuwait.
“The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River,” Granger wrote in one of several documents.
Water dirtier by a factor of TWO than if they had just given them water untreated straight from the river. I know, this is an outrage, but its hardly unexpected now, is it?
So where’s Congress? Specifically, where are our Republican Congressional leaders who so willingly call out Democratic veterans on the floor of the House and call them cowards and traitors? Why aren’t they all over this story?
Well, maybe it’s because Halliburton is in bed with the Bush administration, just one of many “untouchable” defense contractors who’ve made a killing short changing the troops after contributing heavily to Republicans over the last several election cycles.
So who will take a stand and expose this corruption and criminal malfeasance? Oh right. The cowards and traitors, of course:
The Associated Press obtained the documents from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry into the allegations Monday.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who will chair the session, held a number of similar inquiries last year on contracting abuses in Iraq. He said Democrats were acting on their own because they had not been able to persuade Republican committee chairmen to investigate.
Be nice if TV news at ABC and CBS and CNN and MsNBC covered those hearings. Let’s say we email them just in case they haven’t heard of this story.<p.
Her's the contact links:
ABC
CBS Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on the “Contact us” link.
NBC Click on the “Email us” link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
CNN
MsNBC This is a link to Keith Olbermann at Countdown. Click on the “Email the show” link in the upper right hand side of the screen.
And Senator Dorgan, thank you.
