What will Obama do with KBR?

[FarCenter]

By Pratap Chatterjee

President Barack Obama will almost certainly touch down in Baghdad and Kabul in Air Force One sometime in the coming year to meet his counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he will just as certainly pay a visit to a United States military base or two.

Should he stay for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or midnight chow with the troops, he will no less certainly choose from a menu prepared by migrant Asian workers under contract to Houston-based KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root and once a subsidiary of Halliburton.

If Obama takes the Rhino Runner armor-plated bus from Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone, or travels by Catfish Air's Blackhawk


helicopters (the way mere mortals like diplomats and journalists do), instead of by presidential chopper, he will be assigned a seat by US civilian workers easily identified by the red KBR lanyards they wear around their necks.

Even if Obama gets the ultra-red carpet treatment, he will still tread on walkways and enter buildings that have been constructed over the last six years by an army of some 50,000 workers in the employ of KBR. And should Obama chose to order the troops in Iraq home tomorrow, he will effectively sign a blank check for billions of dollars in withdrawal logistics contracts that will largely be carried out by a company once overseen by former vice-president Dick Cheney.

<snip> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KB21Aa06.html

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Excellent article on KBR.

[babylonsister]

1. Maybe some House members will convince him to investigate KBR...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5099573

[Mind_your_head]

2. Yes, it IS complicated, isn't it?

Answer: something 'clever' is how he should handle this situation. I'm all out-of-clever at the moment (not that I had that much to begin with...) but, there's a whole lotta "mind power" here on DU....

[katandmoon]

3. My guess? Nothing.

[luvspeas]

4. I think he's working on disentangling the tentacles right now...

Significantly decreasing the budgets for Iraq and Afghanistan will help a great deal. I think it's just going to take some time, and he NEVER said he was a pacifist.

[Thothmes]

5. Probably correct.