Your tax dollars - hardly at work

The following excertpted material comes from Pratap Chatterjee's book Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War.

In June 2004, another group of whistle-blowers came forward to testify before the Committee on Overishgt and government Reform at the U.S. House of Representatives, but Tom Dais refused to allow them to speak, so Waxman placed the testimony on his Web site.

One testimonial came from Mike West, who said that prior to Halliburton/KBR, he had been working as an area manager for Valero Energy with a yearly salary of $70,000. "When i heard about a chance to earn more with Halliburton, I called them up," he said. "After just a few minutes, the woman said I was hired as a labor foreman at a salary of $130,000. I didn't even have to send in a resume."

When he arrived, West explained he was paid despite the fact that he had no work. "I worked only one day out of six in Kuwait," he explained. "That day, a supervosor told me to operate a forklift. I explained taht I didn't ahve a license, or any experience, to operate a florklift. The response was: 'It's easy and no one will know."

When West got to Camp Anaconda in southern Iraq, he ways that he didn't have any work to do. Nor did most of the other thirty-five workers. The supervisors told them to walk around and look busy. Then they went to a camp in Al Asad, where they had only one day of work out of five days. They were told to bill for twelve hours of labor every day. From there, his group was sent to Fallujah for six weeeks, where once again he had almost no work to do except help with security and follow Iraqi workers around to make sure they cleaned the toilets properly.

"One day, I was ordering some equipment," West said. "I asked the camp manager if it was okay to order a drill. He said to order four. I responded that we didn't need four. He said: 'Don't worry about it. It's a cost-plus contract.' I asked him, 'So basically, this is a blank check?' the manager laughed and said, 'Yeah.' He repeated this over and over again to the employees. ... As a Halliburton employee, I was disappointed by all of the company's lies and disorganization. As a taxpayer, I'm disgusted by all of the money spent by Halliburton to pay employees to do nothing."