Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore

The Boston Globe (Farah Stockman)

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands. More ...

"Big Dick" Cheney has never been questioned about his financial interests in Halliburton/KBR. A suspicious person like myself might question the billions in DoD contracts awarded to a company whose former CEO happens to be the VP. An Army soldier told me about his experiences with an arm of KBR that provides food service to troops in Iraq. KBR charges the government about $24 per meal and bases its daily count of meals served on the number of disposable meal trays used. According to this soldier, he and many of his fellow soldiers prefer to get their meals "to-go." Not a problem for KBR folks who simply cover each "to-go" meal with a second meal tray to keep it warm. And do to its use of tray counts to determine the number of meals served, KBR receives $48 dollars for each "to-go" meal. Duyba says we're in Iraq to bring democracy to the Middle East. What bullshit! We're in Iraq because the war generates huge profits for companies like Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, and a host of other companies with connections to the Bush White House. Our precious assets are being bled out in the sands of Iraq. With almost 4,000 dead and over 30,000 seriously wounded, Senator McCain says we need to continue the fight. Unfortunately, there's no military solution to the problems in Iraq. Until our government recognizes that we can't seed democracy from the barrel of a gun, our brave soldiers will continue to pay dearly for our government's criminal incompetence.