Contractors should be Held Accountable

KBR, former subsidiary of Haliburton Corporation has been a contractor in the IRAQ war for many years. As many as sixteen soldiers, 11 Army and 5 Marines, have now died from electrical shock while showering and this has been linked to unsatisfactory wiring by KBR. In addition, numerous fires have been reported started by faulty electrical wiring. The company says they are not responsible. They say they are proud of their work and that their employees make great sacrifices to get the job done. In addition, the Department of Defense had paid "tens of millions of dollars in bonuses" says an unnamed source, quoted by the website Common Dreams, www.commondreams.org

From the AP, Congress had hearings earlier this month on the matter and former KBR electricians said KBR employees with little electrical experience supervised work done by subcontractors and foreign electricians who could not speak English. Company electricians who raised doubts about the work were allegedly fired.

¹Sen. Bob Casey said there have also been dozens of injuries and hundreds of fires from faulty electrical work and that there have been reports of problems with people being shocked as recently as three weeks ago. "It leads to hundreds and hundreds of questions that Congress must ask," Casey said.

KBR has said it has not found a link between electrical work it did and the electrocutions.

I sincerely hope that Congress is going to hold these people accountable and that we will be seeing some prosecutions come out of these hearings. But, I am not holding my breath.

¹ Additional material from Huffington Post, Greg Mitchell: Pentagon Admits More Electrocutions in Iraq—KBR Denies Blame.