fayfreethinkers.com

The U.S. government awarded more than $16 million in federal contracts to the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR between 2004 and 2006, despite controversial charging practices and allegations of overcharging in Iraq, according to a new report released Monday.

According to the Center For Public Integrity, the investigative journalism group, KBR's contracts amounted to more than nine times the total given to the second largest contractor...

...U.S. government contracts have grown more than 50 percent annually, from $11 billion in 2004 to almost $17 billion in 2005 and more than $25 billion in 2006.

The report, which follows a previous project in 2003, revealed that more than $20 billion in war contracts went to foreign companies whose identities were impossible to determine. These contracts, along with the $20 billion awarded to the "unidentified" companies, accounted for about 45 percent of all funds awarded to the top 100 contractors...

Read the rest here.

DAR
Buying mountains of foreign military gear with borrowed Chinese money. How long can this game go on?

The game can go on as long as China is willing to loan us money. Since an awful lot of the material bought with that money is from China, the money goes back to China - isn't outsourcing wonderful. This is shaping up to be like the run up to the "Great" Depression. We were loaning Germany the money to pay their war debts, which came back to us as the WWI Allies used it to pay their WWI material debt to us. It's sort of like kiting checks (back in the day when you had at least 48 hours before a check cleared). It works until somebody cashes one.

This evil invasion/occupation of W's is costing America somewhere in the area of 3 times what it would have if the military was still in charge of feeding, clothing, housing, and arming itself. Wars are always expensive, but this one has been a ripoff from day one. Even people who believe all the 9/11 crap should be royally P.O.'d at the "privatization" of the military - and all their tax dollars going to make sure Cheney and Co have good berths at their chosen MIC companies after 1/20/09.