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Excerpts from statements submitted by Halliburton
whistleblowers to the House Committee on Government Reform,
which were made public by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) after
Republican leaders refused to hear the testimony.
Halliburton has $8.2 billion in Iraq-related contracts.

One day, I was ordering some equipment. 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-plus contract.” I asked
him, “So basically, this is a blank check?” The camp manager
laughed and said, “Yeah.”…

Of the 35 or so Halliburton employees at [Camp] Anaconda,
only a handful had anything to do.… The human resources
supervisor said: “Don’t worry. Just write down 12 hours.
Walk around, look around, look busy.”

–Michael West, former labor foreman

Prices obtained from vendors were never questioned by
supervisors or managers. The procurement supervisor also
instructed us to keep as many purchase orders as possible
below $2,500 in value so that we wouldn’t be required to
solicit more than one quote. Large requisitions were split
into smaller requisitions below the $2,500 level…. I
questioned this practice early on, but was told by my
supervisor to get back to my purchase orders.

–Henry S. Bunting, former procurement officer

For some reason that was never explained to us, KBR [the
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root] removed all the
spare tires in Kuwait. So when one of our trucks got a flat
tire on the highway, we had to leave it there for the Iraqis
to loot, which is just crazy. I remember saying to myself
when it happened, “You just lost yourself an $85,000 truck
because of a spare tire.”…

A related problem was that KBR would run trucks empty quite
often.… One time, we ran 28 trucks and only one had anything
on it.… I don’t understand why KBR would have placed our
lives in danger that way for no reason.

–David Wilson, former kbr convoy commander

The theft was rampant. Most of the stealing was done between
9 p.m. and midnight, when the trucks were at Camp Anaconda.
I reported this to my convoy commander, Don Martin, who told
me, “Don’t worry about it, it’s the Army stealing from the
Army.”

In March, I called [KBR president] Randy Harl personally…and
told him about the theft going on at night at Camp Anaconda.
He promised he would get to the bottom of it, and thanked
me. I never saw any evidence that KBR tried to stop the
theft after my call to Mr. Harl.

–James Warren, former kbr convoy truck driver

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At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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