being taken to the cleaners

The New York Times carried a Reuters article last night clarifying more information of Halliburton's various contract amounts in Iraq. Under LOGCAP III, Halliburton has now billed approximately $596.8 million. This amount is in addition to the Task Orders issued under a separate contract with Halliburton/KBR reported on the USACE website (See bpost June 18).

By the end of May, task orders for Iraq accounted for $596.8 million of the $708 million earmarked under that deal.

Under that contract, the Halliburton subsidiary has provided housing, recreation, laundry, power and sanitation for troops in Iraq, said Dan Carlson, a spokesman for U.S. Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Illinois.

A recap of LOGCAP III and Halliburton: On December 14, 2001, the Army Material Command awarded Halliburton KBR Government Operations an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity 10 year contract known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program III (LOGCAPIII)

[Halliburton KBR Government Operations] will provide for the construction of facilities and infrastructure of base camps including billeting, mess hall, food preparation, potable water, sanitation, showers, laundry, transportation, utilities, warehousing and other logistical support. Also included is support of the Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, Integration (RSOI) process of U.S. Forces as they enter or depart their theater of operation by sea, air or rail.

Just to be clear, there are three contracts with Halliburton in use in Iraq: 1) LOGCAP III, 2) the March 8, 2003 Implementation Contract 3) the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Contract. 1) & 2) issue Task Orders. Little is known about the third contract.

A recent article in Gov Exec attempts to explain where the money for reconstruction is coming from. On the surface, the numbers appear satisfactory. However, there is the ongoing reporting of "vested assets" totaling $1.7 billion dollars while the 2002 seized assets report lists $2.43 billion dollars.

Details on "vested assets" : For the year ending December 31, 2002, according to the Annual Report to the Congress, Terrorist Assets Report available in pdf, Iraq had $2.43 billion dollars in assets blocked in the US.

The money included assets frozen (blocked) in 1990, belonging to the Iraqi government that has been sitting in accounts at U.S. banks and their foreign branches. The institutions include Citigroup, Bank of America and Wachovia. The March 20, 2003 executive order signed by President Bush allows these assets to be transferred to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The information is available on line. Is Bpost really the only one who has noticed this discrepancy?

By the way, just in case the curiosity is killing you, Paul Bremer gets his suits dry-cleaned in Kuwait. Halliburton's LOGCAP III contract with the US military covers laundry. So is Halliburton handling Bremer's suits? Being taken to the cleaners is taking on a whole new meaning.

Are we the only ones who see the irony of this today?