Another KBR Employee Reports Rape and Coverup

[babylonsister]

Another KBR Rape Case

Karen Houppert
Editor's Note: Lisa Smith is a pseudonym used on request. Additional reporting by Te-Ping Chen. Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute.


It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Lisa Smith*, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. "Right then my whole life was turned upside down," she says.

What follows is the story she told me in a lengthy, painful on-the-record interview, conducted in a lawyer's office in Houston, Texas, while she was back from Iraq on a brief leave.

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand--but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Smith would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. "Because then, all of a sudden, if you've done exactly what you've been instructed not to do--tell somebody--then you're in danger," Smith says.

As a brand-new arrival at Camp Harper, she had not yet forged many connections and was working in a red zone under regular rocket fire alongside the very men who had participated in the attack. (At one point, as the sole medical provider, she was even forced to treat one of her alleged assailants for a minor injury.) She waited two and a half weeks, until she returned to a much larger facility, to report the incident. "It's very easy for bad things to happen down there and not have it be even slightly suspicious."

more...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080421/houppert

[EFerrari]

1. This is what we need to send to Mr. John Conyers.

This link. Exactly THIS.

[babylonsister]

2. I hear your anger and share it. These contractors are getting away

with acting like animals? And being rewarded? :nuke:

[EFerrari]

3. And Bush/Cheney have facilitated the whole brutal culture.

:nuke:

[Fovea]

4. Every story like this

is like russian-roulette. One of these times, ka-bam!

The corruption must be reaching an internal breaking point.

[EFerrari]

5. That's exactly what I told the Conyers staff a minute ago

when I emailed the link to them.

[e-mail]

[babylonsister]

6. Thanks. I'm going to do likewise. I imagine they'll have another

useless meeting on it. :(

[EFerrari]

11. With you. I have no use for playacting -- at all. n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. OMG

Smith, who says she cannot sleep, appears exhausted. She tells her story without affect, little inflection and tamped emotion. She only tears up twice, most visibly when speaking about one of her sons, a 22-year-old US soldier who served in the Middle East recently. While she was in the process of debating whether--and how--to go about reporting her assault, she contacted him to see what his feelings were on the matter. "I didn't want him upset with his mom," she says, explaining that she was very loyal to the mission in Iraq and that he was similarly loyal to his service. "I was assaulted by somebody who was wearing the same uniform as him, and I just didn't want him to think bad of me. My children are pretty much my world." Smith's eyes fill with tears, and she pauses to collect herself. "I didn't want him to be upset because I was calling out somebody who was wearing his same uniform. They're supposed to be proud of what they do. And I'm proud of my sons. And in my mind, I live that war every day. I can make all sorts of excuses under the sun for bad behavior."

Her son advised her to make the formal complaint.

"He was like, 'Of course you're going to talk to CID, Mom. Of course you are.'" Smith smiles. "He doesn't think people should be allowed to wear his uniform and act like that. He's been in the war too and says it's no excuse. They're better trained than that. That's what my son thought. And he's not angry at his mom."

[Ilsa]

10. Sounds like she has some PTSD, and understandably.

She can't mentally work out that her sons would value her over protecting "the uniform". She can't sleep, is exhausted, little inflection in her voice, etc. I am so sorry for this woman. I hope they can catch the bastards.

[Fovea]

8. When black friday comes...

So many centrists will be suddenly sound like wobblies.
So many free market mavens will suddenly be screaming reform.

Socialism for the elite, capitalism for the poor is not a solution that bodes well for the owners. And when the economy turns south, I expect some really bad days.

I cannot see any signs of a fundamental economic recovery based on employment and the strength of the dollar. Even when the stock market holds value, like today, it loses relative to the countries who make the crap we buy.

By 2009, Blackwater and CACI will be cutting loose their mercs as we do the Saigon two step outta the green zone. Everything we hear about them visiting on the local Iraqis will be coming to a local bank near you. Kidnapping will become a big problem. Smuggling, turf wars among rival merc gangs, welcome to post black friday america.

[EFerrari]

9. I couldn't agree more.

People here have some kind of belief that they are insulated from their government's worst behavior visited on others.

No, that's not true.

[Fovea]

12. Flirting with disaster.

Dear Mr. Conyers,

Looking at the arc of the economy in the last week, the content of the Yoo memo, and the latest iteration of the KBR employee rape story, I find myself asking which fresh insult will cause, like a perverse inversion of hyperchilled water freezing on the impact of a raindrop, the complete immolation of American society.

It feels like 1968 again.

I do not believe that by the time July rolls around, and the liquidity crisis deepens, the rich have all landed their golden parachutes,the Sadr army controls Iraq, and another climate change induced disaster has gone un-responded to, we will have the ability to maintain order when gasoline tops five dollars a gallon.

And the meta level mover of all of the above horrors is the war administration of G.W. Bush.

To put *it* back on the table is to invoke the law of holes.

Thank you,