Inside the World of War Profiteers

Slowly, the graft associated with the largely privatized war in Iraq is being exposed. Unfortunately, an impotent Congress and a wholly corrupt Department of Justice owned by the Executive branch will keep most of this under wraps, or at least in the "a few bad apples" ball park, long enough to let everyone off unscathed except the taxpayers.

From The Chicago Tribune:

ROCK ISLAND, Ill.—Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out.

Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand.

The graft continued well beyond the 2004 congressional hearings that first called attention to it. And the massive fraud endangered the health of American soldiers even as it lined contractors' pockets, records show.

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show. (story continues here)