Halliburton hijinks. As if there weren't already enough evidence that Cheney's buddies at Halliburton have screwed the taxpayers big time, here's another story on their profiteering. Marie deYoung, a former Army chaplain who worked for Halliburton, brings new allegations:

DeYoung audited accounts for Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR. She claims there was no effort to hold down costs because all costs were passed on directly to taxpayers. She repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud. The company's response, according to deYoung was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody’s going to care."

DeYoung produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: $50,000 a month for soda, at $45 a case; $1 million a month to clean clothes — or $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.

"That money could have been used to take care of soldiers," she said.

DeYoung also claims people were paid to do nothing. Mike West says he was one of them. Paid $82,000 a year to be a labor foreman in Iraq, West claims he never had any laborers to supervise. "They said just log 12 hours a day and walk around and look busy," he said. "OK, so we did."

This would be a good time to watch the "Cost of War" counter for a few seconds. Halliburton thanks you.
(Note: I find it particularly egregious that anyone could justify being paid to do nothing...imagine that, just sitting there all day, doing nothing...awful, just awful!)