|
Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War
|
| List Price: | $26.95 |
| Price: | $20.48 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com
98 new or used available from $0.01
Average customer review:
Product Description
Pratap Chatterjee—one of the world’s leading authorities on corporate crime, fraud, and corruption—shows how Halliburton won and then lost its contracts in Iraq, what Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld did for it, and who the company paid off in the U.S. Congress. He brings us inside the Pentagon meetings, where Cheney and Rumsfeld made the decision to send Halliburton to Iraq—as well as many other hot-spots, including Somalia, Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and, most recently, New Orleans. He travels to Dubai, where Halliburton has recently moved its headquarters, and exposes the company’s freewheeling ways: executives leading the high life, bribes, graft, skimming, offshore subsidiaries, and the whole arsenal of fraud. Finally, Chatterjee reveals the human costs of the privatization of American military affairs, which is sustained almost entirely by low-paid unskilled Third World workers who work in incredibly dangerous conditions without any labor protection.
Halliburton’s Army is a hair-raising exposé of one of the world’s most lethal corporations, essential reading for anyone concerned about the nexus of private companies, government, and war.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #488899 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9781568583921
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Chatterjee (Iraq Inc.) delves into the nebulous world of the Houston-based Halliburton corporation, tracing the company to its roots, when a fortuitous meeting with a young Lyndon Baines Johnson propelled the Brown and Root Company (which later merged with Halliburton) into Washington power politics. The author details the military contracting that largely funded the company through WWII and into the present-day war in Iraq, intertwining the company's history with the biographies of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other officials in the Bush administration. Chatterjee provides a laundry list of abuses for which the company has been investigated, including inflated billing of the Pentagon, providing unsafe living conditions for U.S. soldiers, labor exploitation and coverups to avoid congressional inquiry. He concludes with a look at the whistleblowers that brought these scandals into the public eye and the repercussions of the eventual congressional investigation. Chatterjee keeps the pace of the narrative at a quick clip and nimbly marshals his extensive evidence to reveal—without sanctimony or stridency—Halliburton's record of corruption, political manipulation and human rights abuses. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"A sordid tale of politics and profiteering, courtesy of the Bush administration and a compliant military... A report that deserves many readers, about many matters that deserve many indictments." -Kirkus 'In a calm and measured but insistent voice, Chatterjee charts the pattern of wrongdoing built into KBR from its origins in the late Thirties... If the dust finally does settle over Iraq, while moving onto Afghanistan, the new secretary of state may well find many more questions to ask about the company's conduct in recent years. President Obama's track record suggests that her boss too will be wanting some answers. Anyone reading this important book will be demanding answers too.'-The Telegraph"
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Needs to Be Used by the Dept. of Justice!
"Halliburton's Army" provides detailed stories of corporate theft, bribery, and malfeasance that cry out for prosecutorial attention.
The author begins by relating the rapid growth of military privatization - from about 1% of those serving in the 1991 Operation Desert Storm to today's Operation enduring Freedom, where the number of contractors is about equal the number of military personnel.
The program was supposed to cut about 15% of military administrative staff and about $3 billion/year, as first proposed by Don Rumsfeld. The rationale made sense - a huge organization cannot be excellent in everything, and some military tasks such as feeding the troops, washing their clothes, providing messenger and mail service, and general logistics could likely be better provided by experts in those areas.
However, the program immediately fell victim to the same problem it was supposed to avoid - How can a single company, Halliburton, be expert in not only oil drilling but also large-scale logistics, feeding, etc.? In addition, the profit-incentive and pressures of wartime led to no-bid contracts and every form of skulduggery, penny-pinching and pressure known to keep the contracts and profits flowing.
"Halliburton's Army" begins citing how $5,000/day oil-well fire-fighters were brought in, despite the Kuwaiti's offering to do the job for free out of gratitude for Gulf War I and concern for their own environment. The situation rapidly deteriorated - potential whistle-blowers demoted or other wise threatened, overheads running 43-55%, overcharges for fuel - $2.64/gallon, vs. a local Iraqi source at .96/gallon (or even an internal Defense Dept. source at $1.32/gallon), splitting contracts to avoid bidding requirements associated with large dollar amounts, billing for hours not worked, ordering multiple items when just one was needed (cost-plus!), serving overpriced and sometimes outdated food to non-existent troops, failure to treat water with chlorine, using very-high-priced suppliers, electrocuting troops via improper electrical work, failing to pay required disability benefits to those injured on the job, etc.
Key Question: Were these just incidental occurrences, or pervasive? The multitude of sources clearly lean towards it having been pervasive.
Halliburton's Army - the most crooked company in America
Halliburton's Army by Pratap Chatterjee is so mind boggling that it jars the reader's brain as one attempts to assimilate the facts put forth.
There are scathing exposes' of those who had a hand in the daily running of this company. However, none match the abject evil of Richard Burton Cheney.
This is a book that shows what happens when companies are allowed to do as they choose without the benefit of checks and balances. There are no words to describe how poorly KBR/Halliburton have served this nation's troops- or have NOT served this nation's troops in their obsession to squeeze every nickel possible out of a no bid contract which they got The Evil One - Cheney to push thru early on in the Bush Administration.
Perhaps the most troubling of all events noted in this book is the documented mistreatment of KBR/Halliburton's employees, to include Americans, who got to Iraq to find out things were not as they were described as they hired on.
This is a troubling book, one that really makes a taxpayer wonder how did we allow these crooks to continually fleece America for many, many years!
The Pentagon did not stop them and interestingly enough, most of the whistleblowers are women!
For those who want a serious view of what has been happening to erode the image of America, this is a must read book!
Objective insight - revealing
Chatterjee quickly catches the reader's attention with a series of interesting snapshots of the people and services of Halliburton and its subsidiaries in Iraq in the Introduction and Chapter 1. Starting with Chapter 2, he gets into the history of Halliburton, and as the story unfolds, Chatterjee reveals the political connections - from both parties, starting with LBJ and going up to Cheney/Rumsfeld - that has enabled Halliburton to evolve and thrive over several decades. As the book progresses, he gets deeper into Halliburton's involvement in the `Global War on Terror' (Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Guantanamo, etc.) and effectively explains how this company, as the title says, "...revolutionized the way America makes war." Also covered in detail are the whistle-blowing, the resulting Congressional grilling, and the remarkable resiliency of this company despite the negative publicity, public outcry, and growing opposition to the Iraq war.
This book is objective because the author presents both sides of the military privatization issue: quotes from underpaid, uninsured contractors as well as from enthusiastic employees. You read criticism from media reports and high praise from military commanders. Readers can see both the pros and the cons of this new way of operating a war with soldiers doing military tasks, and outsourcing support services to the private sector. Chatterjee does a good job of presenting differing views and letting readers come to their own conclusions.
I learned a lot reading this book. Before, I had no idea how widespread the cancerous corruption is, or what LOGCAP meant. I knew Halliburton was awarded contracts in Iraq and had a history with Dick Cheney, but before reading this book I had no idea of the extent of Halliburton and its subsidiaries' involvement with military support services (too many aspects to list here), and the impact this has had on our military personnel. I was also surprised to see just how many Halliburton people had one foot in the US government and the other foot in Halliburton's corporate operations. The book remains true to its title: a tightly-focused and intelligent story about how Halliburton changed the way our country manages wars.
