by TChris

Once again, Halliburton is accused of overcharging the government for its work in Iraq. TalkLeft's previous coverage of the Vice President's former employer is collected here.

Leading U.S. defense contractor Halliburton may have overcharged the U.S. government by more than $100 million under a no-bid oil deal in Iraq, said a military audit released by a Democratic lawmaker on Monday. The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) audit, parts of which were released by California Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman on his Web site www.democrats.reform.house.gov/, questioned $108 million in costs by Texas-based Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root for delivery of fuel to civilians in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

Waxman and Rep. John Dingell wrote to the president, pointing out that "the administration has withheld these audits from Congress for months and Halliburton has repaid nothing under this contract."

They complained to the president that the administration had ignored more than a dozen requests for copies of KBR oil contract audits.

by TChris

A GAO investigator today told a subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee that the Defense Department's claims about the number of Iraqi soldiers and police officers who are trained and equipped to do their jobs are unreliable.

Mr. Christoff [testified] that the U.S. government's claim that Iraq now has more than 80,000 trained and equipped soldiers and over 60,000 trained and equipped police officers must be understood in the context of the many challenges facing the effort to expand Iraq's security forces. He said those challenges include problems in the Iraqi force structure and leadership ranks, a lack of clarity on the actual readiness of those forces to conduct independent operations and the need to continually re-evaluate security needs as the insurgency continues.

Calling the Defense Department's numbers "Fantasyland" and accusing the department of issuing a "phony report," Committee member Dennis Kucinich compared the Department's assessment to its assurances that Iraq was filled with weapons of mass destruction.

Newsweek reports on the more than 1,000 American kids who have lost a parent in Iraq.

Former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told investigators that one of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was 11 years old.

Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib from July to November 2003, said she often visited the prison's youngest inmates. One boy "looked like he was 8-years-old," Karpinski said.

"He told me he was almost 12," Karpinski said. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."

[link via Suburban Guerilla.]

The transcript of the interview was among the documents released yesterday pursuant to the FOIA request by the ACLU. While the Pentagon says no juveniles were abused, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary, including:

According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, the CIA and Army secretly agreed to ship some detainees to Abu Ghraiband keep their names off the official lists, holding them as "ghost detainees." The practice of holding "ghost detainees" violates international law.

Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, who was second in command of the intelligence gathering effort at Abu Ghraib while the abuse was occurring, told military investigators that "other government agencies" and a secretive elite task force "routinely brought in detainees for a short period of time" and that the detainees were held without an internment number, and their names were kept off the books.

The military report on the Abu Ghraib prison scandals is complete and will be presented today to Congress. The Associated Press has obtained a copy of the Executive Summary and reports:

The report by Navy Vice Adm. Albert T. Church said the pressure was not excessive. The investigation could find no "single, overarching reason" why prisoners under U.S. control were abused at the Abu Ghraib prison complex in fall 2003 and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan. Command pressure for more intelligence was to be expected in a battlefield setting, Church wrote.

"We found no evidence, however, that interrogators in Iraq believed that any pressure for intelligence subverted their obligation to treat detainees humanely," he wrote in a summary of his findings.

The army is having a tougher time recruiting, and the Army has a new study showing that it's losing ground as a career choice, particularly among blacks and females.

The share of blacks in the Army's recruiting classes has plummeted by about one-third over the past five years. It has continued slipping this year despite more generous enlistment bonuses offered to all prospective recruits and an increase in the number of recruiters.

A Judge today denied a request to dismiss any charges against Army Reservist Sabrina Harman. She faces a maxiumum of six and one half years in jail if convicted on all counts in her Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse trial.

The 27-year-old reservist and former pizza shop manager from Lorton, Va., is accused of writing "rapeist" on the leg of one prisoner and forcing another to stand on a box with wires in his hands and telling him he would be electrocuted if he fell. Harman is also accused of taking photographs of a group of naked detainees.

Her lawyers tried to get some charges dismissed on the ground that the prisoners weren't really injured because they had sandbags on their head and didn't know they were being photographed.

Trial is set for May 12. Given the judge's ruling, it could be a good time for Reservist Harman to make a deal. Background on her case is here.

by TChris

It's hard enough to be a soldier in an environment that makes it difficult to identify the enemy. It's all the more difficult for women, who have to defend themselves not just from enemy attacks, but from men who are supposed to be on their side.

The number of sexual assaults of female soldiers is hard to pin down, in part because the crime frequently goes unreported. The numbers are nonetheless disturbing.

Defense Department numbers show that from August 2002 through October 2004, 118 cases of sexual assault on military personnel were reported in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. But the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps victims of military domestic violence and sexual assault, reports that it was contacted by 258 military assault victims in the combat theater during that same time span. That number rose to 307 through mid-February, according to the foundation.

According to an investigation by The Sacramento Bee, the problem extends beyond rape.

by TChris

Giuliana Sgrena, wounded by American troops shortly after her release by Iraqi captors, believes she may have been targeted because the United States opposes the kind of negotiation with terrorists that secured her release.

In an interview with RAI, Italian state television, Sgrena recounted her final moments before freedom: "When they let me go, it was a difficult moment for me because they told me, `The Americans don't want you to return alive to Italy.'"

The United States says the shooting was "a horrific accident." Horrific it was. An Italian intelligence officer was killed, and one or two others were wounded.

Sgrena's editor at the daily Il Manifesto, Gabriele Polo, said Italian officials told him 300-400 rounds were fired at the car.

Accounts of the shooting are in conflict.

The U.S. military has said the car Sgrena was riding in was speeding and Americans used hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and warning shots to get it to stop at the roadblock. But in an interview with Italian La 7 TV, Sgrena said, "There was no bright light, no signal." She also said the car was traveling at "regular speed."

Iraq insurgents freed Italian hostage and journalist Giuliana Sgrena yesterday. Today, in mistaken attack, U.S. troops fired on her car, wounding her and killing a security agent. Ms. Sgrena is expected to recover.

The U.S. has increased the number of prisoners it is holding in Iraq. Right now it stands at 8,900. And the jails are overcrowded.

Abu Ghraib's capacity is said to be "ideal" at 2,500. It now houses 3,160 detainees. Camp Bucca has 5,600.

The military must hire enough effective interrogators and military intelligence officers to process detainees quickly, said Bruce Hoffman, an analyst at the RAND Corporation who has worked in Iraq with American policy makers. Otherwise, innocent people will languish in the prisons, a fertile recruiting ground for the insurgents, and could take up arms when they are freed.

A day in the life: