"Thank you HALLIBURTON!" - Halliburton equates their loss w/ Vietnam Wall

[Bluebear]

Prelude: I do not celebrate ANYONE'S death. Further, I can't and won't question someone's financial situation that would drive them to go to Iraq as a civilian employee. However. To equate the lost Halliburton employees with Vietnam War casualties is over the top as far as I am concerned. Whatever drove these people to go to Iraq, they did indeed volunteer to go knowing it was a dangerous place. Our lost troops most certainly did *not* volunteer for this. So many obituaries I read say that the soldier enlisted "after 9/11" to defend America. That at least was noble. Going to Iraq to earn $100K as a truck driver and being kidnapped and killed is tragic, but quite the same. Is it?

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Often overlooked in the MSM’s daily casualty tally is the toll taken on our contract support workers in Iraq. On August 3, a wall hanging was dedicated in Baghdad honoring the 43 men and women of Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) who have paid the ultimate sacrifice supporting our service members and other civilian staff.

Steven Arnold, the current director and project manager of the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program III (LOGCAP), recalled how in Somalia, KBR civilians fed the Soldiers, got them out of the dirt to get a shower and “made all the difference in the world.” In Bosnia, KBR employees followed right behind the lead combat echelon to set up the main airfield so additional troops and supplies could flow in to make the mission a success.

A veteran KBR operations manager, Marc Whitt II, noted that most of those killed,

“…were truck drivers at the beginning of the conflict … that was the most dangerous job with KBR. I equate this wall with the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. The emotions I felt there are very similar to the emotions I feel today. Young men and women came over here to help the military and assist the Iraqis in having a freer life, and they paid the ultimate price of giving their life.”

All of us owe our deepest gratitude to these courageous people in addition to our fallen service members; and our prayers go out to their families and friends.

But there is one last thing. We are still waiting for an apology from Dan Rather for his rant about these “desperate” people.

I’m not holding my breath.

Douglas Hanson 8 13 05

http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=2860

[JDPriestly]

1. My condolences to the grieving families, however war profiteering

was illegal in WWII. It should be illegal now. I do not fault the men and women who go over there to work for Halliburton. I blame Halliburton, the Bush administration and all who favor privatizing the support facilities for war. These deaths are off the books. They shouldn't be. The salaries of these men and women are also, in one sense, off the books in terms of government accounting for the war. They shouldn't be.

We need, open, transparent government -- no secrets allowed. If the American people knew the truth about Iraq and so many other things, Bush would not have dared to even run in 2004, much less be able to claim he was elected. Truth in government. End the corruption and secrecy. This goes for Democrats as well as Republicans as far as I am concerned. These deaths and all the deaths of private contractors count and should be counted in the total casualties in Iraq.

To what extent do you think the huge salaries for some of these people are intended to include compensation for the deaths of those who don't make it home? That is one of the motivations for keeping the money and the people off the books -- to hide them, to deny their deaths, to lessen government liability in the form of lifelong veterans' benefits for them and their families. Privatization is cheating short and simple.

[madeline_con]

2. The Fallujah massacre was also....

because of a few mercenaries getting killed. I keep reading accounts of how trigger happy and cruel some of the private security groups, like Blackwater, are.

As for Halliburton, I wonder if all the death and destruction they've caused all over the world can be equated to the loss of innocent life in Vietnam???

SNIP----------

Halliburton and Brown & Root have played a role in some of the world's most volatile trouble spots. These include Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Kuwait, Nigeria, Russia, Rwanda, and Somalia.

In 1998, while I was in Rwanda conducting research for my book, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (Edwin Mellen, 1999), a number of U.S. military personnel assigned to that country raised questions about Brown & Root's activities. "Brown & Root is into some real bad shit," one told me. The U.S. Army Materiel Command has confirmed that Brown & Root was in Rwanda under contract with the Pentagon. One U.S. Navy demining expert told me that Brown & Root helped Rwanda's U.S.-backed government fight a guerrilla war. Brown & Root's official task was to help clear mines. However, my research showed it was more involved in providing covert military support to the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Army in putting down a Hutu insurgency and assisting its invasion of the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (Cheney and Halliburton declined numerous opportunities to comment on this story.)

Cheney was no stranger to covert activities in Rwanda. In 1990, during his tenure as Secretary of Defense, Rwandan strongman Major General Paul Kagame, then a colonel in the Ugandan People's Democratic Force, attended the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Kagame, with the likely knowledge of the U.S. Army and Cheney, suddenly dropped out of the school to assume command of the nascent Rwanda Patriotic Army, which later that year launched a full-scale invasion of Rwanda from rear bases inside Uganda. U.S. military advisers were present in Uganda at the time of the invasion, another fact that would have been known to Cheney and his Pentagon advisers.

Wayne Madsen, author of "Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999"

[dbeach]

3. war profiteering ain't enough

now hallbutton..the corporat home of TREASON is asking for sympathy

and pity

next they will just say give us all the taxpayers money or we will take our illustrious bulldozers to china

oops sauron cheny just sold 2 nukes to china with westingmouse..

58,000 plus died in a corporat war while 2 pres avoided their miltary obligations

I served and they did not..fair huh ?
thanx for the scars boys

Now bush is reviewing PTSD claims in order to take away their disability checks..
TREASON. must be gettin expensive..