War profiteering

[Zarxrax]

Hi, this is my first post here. I came across this forum after watching the movie Zeitgeist and looking for information supporting or debunking the case it laid out. I found lots of good information here, so I'd like to put forth another topic that I am having difficulty finding clear answers on.

I recently saw a film called "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" and it contains a lot of information about how the Iraq war is very privatized, and it has a ton of interviews and anecdotes that would make anyone really mad about what is going on over there.

I'm curious about just how accurate this film is? It makes a lot of statements that I know are factually true, but I'm wondering if it stretches the truth to make its case more urgent, and if so, just how much is it stretching it?

The one thing that really raises my suspicions is that much of the film is interviews, and the interviews are HEAVILY edited. There are of course, legitimate reasons for heavy editing like that, but theres no way to tell when you only see the edited result.

The film in question can be found on Google video.

 

[gumboot]

Does it mention Haliburton "no bid" contracts?

-Gumboot

 

[Zarxrax]

Yes.

 

[bofors]

Hi, this is my first post here. I came across this forum after watching the movie Zeitgeist and looking for information supporting or debunking the case it laid out. I found lots of good information here ...

This forum is where 9/11 deniers/"debunkers" hang out to reinforce their preconceived illogical views and maliciously attack anyone who stands up to their nonsense and psuedo-science. These people are anything but objective and rational.

If you have questions about the 9/11 content of Zeitgeist, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for answers. This is the last place to go for good information.

 

[OldTigerCub]

Welcome to the forum, Zarxrax.

Zeitgeist is one of the favorite "major" videos with the woo crowd. I haven't watched it all the way through for some time, but there is a long thread on the forum from a few months back discussing it HERE

 

[AMTMAN]

This forum is where 9/11 deniers/"debunkers" hang out to reinforce their preconceived illogical views and maliciously attack anyone who stands up to their nonsense and psuedo-science. These people are anything but objective and rational.

If you have questions about the 9/11 content of Zeitgeist, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for answers. This is the last place to go for good information.

As opposed to your preconceived illogical views, nonsense and psuedo-science.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

This forum is where 9/11 deniers/"debunkers" hang out to reinforce their preconceived illogical views and maliciously attack anyone who stands up to their nonsense and psuedo-science. These people are anything but objective and rational.

If you have questions about the 9/11 content of Zeitgeist, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for answers. This is the last place to go for good information.

*So offended and full of such self-loathing*

Because that is the effect you wanted isn't it?

 

[Bell]

This forum is where 9/11 deniers/"debunkers" hang out to reinforce their preconceived illogical views and maliciously attack anyone who stands up to their nonsense and psuedo-science. These people are anything but objective and rational.

If you have questions about the 9/11 content of Zeitgeist, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for answers. This is the last place to go for good information.

Why the f[rule10] are you posting here then?

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Hi, this is my first post here. I came across this forum after watching the movie Zeitgeist and looking for information supporting or debunking the case it laid out. I found lots of good information here, so I'd like to put forth another topic that I am having difficulty finding clear answers on.

I recently saw a film called "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" and it contains a lot of information about how the Iraq war is very privatized, and it has a ton of interviews and anecdotes that would make anyone really mad about what is going on over there.

I'm curious about just how accurate this film is? It makes a lot of statements that I know are factually true, but I'm wondering if it stretches the truth to make its case more urgent, and if so, just how much is it stretching it?

The one thing that really raises my suspicions is that much of the film is interviews, and the interviews are HEAVILY edited. There are of course, legitimate reasons for heavy editing like that, but theres no way to tell when you only see the edited result.

The film in question can be found on Google video.

Welcome to the forum Zarxrax, do stick around.

What is it about the editing that makes the content change?

 

[Zarxrax]

Welcome to the forum, Zarxrax.

Zeitgeist is one of the favorite "major" videos with the woo crowd. I haven't watched it all the way through for some time, but there is a long thread on the forum from a few months back discussing it HERE

Yea, I've already seen that. I don't have any questions about that movie now, I was just using it to start up my conversation

 

[Zarxrax]

Welcome to the forum Zarxrax, do stick around.

What is it about the editing that makes the content change?

I'm not certain, I just know that it is very possible to completely change the meaning of someones words through clever editing. I'm not sure if that was done in this case or not... I just know that it has a lot of edits.

 

[Hokulele]

Hi, this is my first post here. I came across this forum after watching the movie Zeitgeist and looking for information supporting or debunking the case it laid out. I found lots of good information here, so I'd like to put forth another topic that I am having difficulty finding clear answers on.

I recently saw a film called "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" and it contains a lot of information about how the Iraq war is very privatized, and it has a ton of interviews and anecdotes that would make anyone really mad about what is going on over there.

I'm curious about just how accurate this film is? It makes a lot of statements that I know are factually true, but I'm wondering if it stretches the truth to make its case more urgent, and if so, just how much is it stretching it?

The one thing that really raises my suspicions is that much of the film is interviews, and the interviews are HEAVILY edited. There are of course, legitimate reasons for heavy editing like that, but theres no way to tell when you only see the edited result.

The film in question can be found on Google video.

I would be very hesitant to accept any video that relied mainly on interviews and anecdote. If they can show copies of contracts, evidence of the bidding process being skewed, or other hard proof, I would be more likely to give the idea some consideration. Without it, I wouldn't give it any more credence than a newspaper OpEd piece.

But that's just me.

ETA: And welcome to the forums!

 

[Zarxrax]

By the way, if anyone is interested in the main content of the video, but doesn't want to spend time to watch the whole thing, just start it at the 50 minute point and then watch at least 10 minutes of it. The basic assertion is that halliburton and other companies are totally ripping off the American taxpayers by doing things like replacing an $80,000 vehicle when it gets a flat tire, or charging $99 to do a bag of laundry.
Most of the movie before that is focused more on things like loss of life due to negligence and greed, torture, etc.

 

[Rob Lister]

can't speak to the flat tire issue (but I doubt it) but I wonder how much you would charge to do a 120 lb bag of laundry?

 

[T.A.M.]

Welcome to the forum Zarxrax.

In addition to here, the Cospiracy Theory subforum, you may find info or people to help you in the politics section of this forum.

TAM

 

[leftysergeant]

can't speak to the flat tire issue (but I doubt it) but I wonder how much you would charge to do a 120 lb bag of laundry?

Given that there was no supportable reason to go to war immediately, and that the invasion had been in a planning stager before Bush was even considered a viable candidate for the presidency, there is no excuse for having not built up the military infrastructure to have done the job without hiring a bunch of war proifteers to do what used to be a military job.

$80 for 120lb of laundry washed by non-union workers is too much.

 

[leftysergeant]

Do stick around, Zarxrax. You will find some honest attempts here to actually get to the heart of these matters.

I think that sometimes the real and supportable conspiracies get swept under the rug by the people who find what they consider evidence of other crimes that do not stand up to scrutiny.

The war-profiteering issue is, in my mind, quite separate from the cause of the 9/11 attacks, but serves as a good rerason to question that rationality and legitimacy of what the Bush cabal has done in its aftermath.

That there is favoritism and lack of oversight is without question. The only question I see is how badly we are being screwed by war profiteers.

The scary part is that Haliburton is not even the worst of the lot, nor as great a threat to the well-being of our soldiers. Black Water is down-right horrifying in the possible aggenda they represent.

 

[Rob Lister]

$80 for 120lb of laundry washed by non-union workers is too much.

In Iraq?!

Yea, right.

 

[leftysergeant]

If the contractors had been doing the jobs they were paid to do, there would be more than adequate facilities and cheap Iraqi labor to do the job a lot cheaper. And think how much less likely someone who has a paying job is to be out setting IEDs.

If this was not all thought up as a jobs program for shady contractors, it is the least competant occupation since since Pyrrhus invaded Italy.

 

[gumboot]

Yes.

I can't speak for flat tyres or laundry, but I can address the "no bids" thing.

The US Army has a contract it awards, which is called LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program). Basically, the Army recognised that in the event of operations there's an enormous amount of support work that it needs done. Getting the Army itself to do the work burns up valuable military resources, but they can't afford to sit around waiting for a bidding process for vital work.

Thus LOGCAP was born. It's basically a long term contract, without guarantee of work. Companies publicly bid to gain the contract. Who ever wins has it for a set period of time (let's say, 5 years). During that five years, if the Army gets sent to, say, Botswana, and needs someone to provide mess (food) services for their troops while they're there, the company that holds LOGCAP provides their food services. The individual jobs that may (or may not) be issued are called Task Orders.

This is, of course, great if the army head off and occupy a country! On the down side, the army might do nothing, and then the entire LOGCAP contract would be worthless.

Profit margins for LOGCAP are fixed in advance - less than 4%, with most task orders hovering around the 1% mark.

LOGCAP I was awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) in 1992 by the Corps of Engineers, after a public competitive bidding process. The task orders they gained off this contract were primarily to do with supporting US forces in Somalia.

In 1994 LOGCAP II was awarded to another company called DynCorp. Despite DynCorp holding the LOGCAP, in 1999 Bill Clinton created the Balkans Support Contract to be awarded to KBR, who provided many of the services in the Balkans that should have gone to DynCorp. Interestingly, there was very little media comment on this at the time.

In December 2001 the contract came up again and this time KBR secured LOGCAP III, under which their task orders in Iraq and Afghanistan were issued.

There was a stir over invoicing. With LOGCAP the task orders are paid as cost plus the set profit margin I mentioned earlier. The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) took issue with KBR invoicing for meals that were not actually served. However this ignored the fact that the US Army had issued requirements that a set number of meals be provided at specific sites, regardless of how many people were actually there to consume them. As such KBR had to pay for the food to provide those meals, and expected thus to be paid for them.

KBR's average profit margin for their Iraq task orders was 1.4%.

-Gumboot

 

[Zarxrax]

Interesting info, gumboot. The no bid thing was probably one of the least important aspects of the film though, but it's good to understand how that actually worked. Like you say there, these companies get fixed profit margins... the point being made in this movie is that they are being incredibly wasteful and doing everything in their power to drive their costs sky-high, thus increasing the amount of money they get from the profit margin.

 

[ZenFountain]

Haliburton and Bechtel didn't take government contracts to skim money off food services and Iraqi reconstruction projects, they took them so they would be in position to gobble up contracts from the Iraqi government after the war. Iraq was supposed to be the last big bonanza in the Middle East that would make Dubai look like a playground, but it's been a disaster for all parties. Bechtel and many other engineering contractors actually left as soon as they possibly could. The only businesses making boat loads of money in Iraq now are private security companies. I don't pity the contractors but people need to accept that war is war, it's inherently an enterprise of inefficiency and corruption.

 

[george@etcorngods.co]

This forum is where 9/11 deniers/"debunkers" hang out to reinforce their preconceived illogical views and maliciously attack anyone who stands up to their nonsense and psuedo-science. These people are anything but objective and rational.

If you have questions about the 9/11 content of Zeitgeist, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for answers. This is the last place to go for good information.

You couldn't have said it better. This is a mutual admiration society, a church social.

 

[T.A.M.]

You couldn't have said it better. This is a mutual admiration society, a church social.

As opposed to Woo Forums where everybody argues with everybody, and noone agrees right.

Give me a break...welcome to the way the world works. This is a skeptics forum, so OBVIOUSLY it will be populated predominantly by skeptics. As a result, like most forums where one group predominates, most get along, and agree.

TAM

 

[OneShotKi11]

This forum is where 9/11 deniers/"debunkers" hang out to reinforce their preconceived illogical views and maliciously attack anyone who stands up to their nonsense and psuedo-science. These people are anything but objective and rational.

If you have questions about the 9/11 content of Zeitgeist, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for answers. This is the last place to go for good information.

Worst answer/response to a question ever.
He did not even mention 9/11 yet someone felt the urge to bring it up!!!

 

[Beerina]

This war is the perfect profiteering storm. Not only do they get arms sales and whatnot ("support" contracts, a new invention), but, as oil men, they get massive profits on oil barrels from the instability in the region.

 

[Darth Rotor]

This war is the perfect profiteering storm. Not only do they get arms sales and whatnot ("support" contracts, a new invention), but, as oil men, they get massive profits on oil barrels from the instability in the region.

Nope.

My second cousin worked for IBM in Viet Nam, in the 1960's, as a support contractor.

KBR was contracted to provide significant logistic support in Rwanda when the hundreds of thousands of refugees needed simple things like potable water. US Army ROPU teams (Reverse Osmosis Processing Units) were able to provide less than 10% of the requirement. KBR didn't use RO, they used a simpler method of getting ahold of water in large tanker trucks from whatever source, treating it, and distributing it.

This sort of support work, also done in Bosnia and elsewhere, was one way to keep the military manpower head count down (which in the long term saves Congress money in training and entitlement costs) and still be able to provide some support services of a logistic nature on an ad hoc basis, mission by mission. It's one way the Clinton era Congress and DoD saved money on the O & M budget . . . or so they claimed.

DR

 

[BPSCG]

I can't speak for flat tyres or laundry, but I can address the "no bids" thing.

The US Army has a contract it awards, which is called LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program). Basically, the Army recognised that in the event of operations there's an enormous amount of support work that it needs done. Getting the Army itself to do the work burns up valuable military resources, but they can't afford to sit around waiting for a bidding process for vital work.

Thus LOGCAP was born. It's basically a long term contract, without guarantee of work.

Thanks - this was very informative.