AP: Army whistleblower draws fire (Bunnatine Greenhouse vs. Halliburton)

[RSchewe]

This is just another one of those Sibel Edmonds types of cases that never see the light of day. Just throw this one on the Mt. Everest pile of corruption from this administration.

I remember this from back in the 2004 presidential campaign. For some reason the AP put out this story again. Does anyone know what is new about it?

Here is an excerpt of what was in the new AP article:

WASHINGTON --In the world as Bunnatine Greenhouse sees it, people do the right thing. They stand up for the greater good and they speak up when things go wrong. She believes God has a purpose for each life and she prays every day for that purpose to be made evident. These days she is praying her heart out, because she is in a great deal of trouble.

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse is the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting ("PARC" in the alphabet soup of military acronyms) in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Lest the title fool, she is responsible for awarding billions upon billions in taxpayers' money to private companies hired to resurrect war-torn Iraq and to feed, clothe, shelter and do the laundry of American troops stationed there.

She has rained a mighty storm upon herself for standing up, before members of Congress and live on C-SPAN to proclaim things are just not right in this staggeringly profitable business.

She has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton -- a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq -- getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?

Halliburton denies any wrongdoing. "These false allegations have been recycled in the media ad nauseam," the company said in response to a list of e-mailed questions from The Associated Press.

Now Bunny Greenhouse may lose her job -- and her reputation, which she spent a lifetime building.

She is a black woman in a world of mostly white men; a 60-year-old workaholic who abides neither fools nor frauds. But she is out of her element in this fight, her former boss said.

"What Bunny is caught up in is politics of the highest damn order," said retired Gen. Joe Ballard, who hired Greenhouse and headed the Corps until 2000. "This is real hardball they're playing here. Bunny is a procurement officer, she's not a politician. She's not trained to do this."

Greenhouse has known for a long time that her days may be numbered. Her needling of contracts awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) predated the war in Iraq, beginning with costs she said were spiraling "out of control" from a 2000 Bosnia contract to service U.S. troops. From 1995 to 2000, Halliburton's CEO was Dick Cheney, who left to run for vice president. He maintains his former company has not received preferential treatment from the government.

Since then, she had questioned both the amounts and the reasons for giving KBR tremendous contracts in the buildup to invading Iraq. At first she was ignored, she said. Then she was cut out of the decision-making process.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/08/07/army_whistleblower_draws_fire/


Older articles:

Vanity Fair - The Spoils of War - http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/050307roco02?print=true

CBS/AP - Oct. 28, 2004 - Halliburton Contract Probe Opened - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/28/politics/main652183.shtml

[punpirate]

1. It might be because...

... there was another story Friday or Saturday that some ex-Halliburton employees were alleging that Halliburton was doing badly in Iraq:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1681741&mesg_id=1681932

Cheers.

[shance]

2. Hope she contacts Sibel and joins their whistle blower organization

God bless her and all those doing the right thing and telling the truth despite the opposition.

[punpirate]

3. Sibel Edmonds has set hers up...

... for national security whistleblowers.

There are other whistleblowers' organizations for people such as Greenhouse, who was in procurement.

Cheers.