(Vee are Vatching you! Schultz!!!!! - promoted by johne)
That's right - "Halliburton is an American success story..."
I could hardly believe that is what Dan Deline (Vice President, Government Affairs for Halliburton) wrote to me recently. It appears my candidacy for US Congress has alarmed the corporate bigwigs at Halliburton so much that they were compelled to write me a warning letter to not criticize them (to read the full copy of the Halliburton letter click here).
It seems my efforts to shine a light on the use of armed corporate mercenaries in Iraq and the corruption and waste within contracting operations in Iraq, has struck a nerve with Halliburton's Washington, DC, special interest lobbying apparatus.
The most interesting claim they make in their letter is, "We can find no contract between the Federal Government and Halliburton."
Mercenaries, Missionaries, and Misfits As we pulled out of the Al Rashid hotel around 6 pm, we saw smoke a few hundred yards off, and wondered why our van was made to halt at the checkpoint. Apparently a car bomb or mortar shell had gone off, so the checkpoint was closed and we could not leave the Green Zone. We waited about ten minutes, then were told to get out of the car by the "Triple Canopy" Peruvian/Corporate troops. They took us behind some bunkers. The only Spanish-speaking member of our group, I joked around with them. It was all in a day's work for them; this is their job.
After another fifteen minutes, they let us back in our van and re-opened the checkpoint. Just another day at Assassin's Gate. As we sped through the red zone wearing our bullet proof vests and helmets, we got a few glimpses of regular Iraqi life such as it is. There are always three vans, and the front van pulls all sorts of maneuvers to head off oncoming traffic, create a path for the other vans, and trip any explosion wires so we don't. Every trip through Baghdad is a risk, but these mercenaries are professionals and excel at their jobs.
We rolled into a private mercenary compound in the red-zone about fifteen minutes later. The thought of walking outdoors in the red-zone was scary, but the trade-off is that while the risk of being shot increases, no mortar rounds are being aimed at compounds in the red zone, they are generally pointed towards the "International Zone" (Green Zone).
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