EconAtheist: "That could very well be,"


What other companies are equipped to do the same type of international work, often in hostile areas in addition to Halliburton?

"The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992, as the first Bush administration (including then-Secretary of Defense Cheney) was leaving office. Four companies competed, and the winner was Brown & Root, as it was known at the time (Halliburton changed the name to Kellogg Brown & Root after an acquisition in 1998). The multi-year contract was in effect during much of the Clinton administration. During those years, Brown & Root did extensive work for the Army under the LOGCAP contract in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia; contract workers built base camps and provided troops with electrical power, food, and other necessities.

In 1997, when LOGCAP was again put up for bid, Halliburton/Brown & Root lost the competition to another contractor, Dyncorp. But the Clinton Defense Department, rather than switch from Halliburton to Dyncorp, elected to award a separate, sole-source contract to Halliburton/Brown & Root to continue its work in the Balkans. According to a later GAO study, the Army made the choice because 1) Brown & Root had already acquired extensive knowledge of how to work in the area; 2) the company "had demonstrated the ability to support the operation"; and 3) changing contractors would have been costly. The Army's sole-source Bosnia contract with Brown & Root lasted until 1999. At that time, the Clinton Defense Department conducted full-scale competitive bidding for a new contract. The winner was . . . Halliburton/Brown & Root. The company continued its work in Bosnia uninterrupted.

That work received favorable notices throughout the Clinton administration. For example, Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review mentioned Halliburton's performance in its Report on Reinventing the Department of Defense, issued in September 1996. In a section titled "Outsourcing of Logistics Allows Combat Troops to Stick to Basics," Gore's reinventing-government team favorably mentioned LOGCAP, the cost-plus-award system, and Brown & Root, which the report said provided "basic life support services - food, water, sanitation, shelter, and laundry; and the full realm of logistics services - transportation, electrical, hazardous materials collection and disposal, fuel delivery, airfield and seaport operations, and road maintenance."

In 2001, after the Bush administration came into office, the giant LOGCAP contract expired again and another competition was held. Once again, Halliburton won the contract, and it was under that arrangement that the Iraqi-oilfield analysis was done. As the record shows, Halliburton won big government contracts under the Clinton administration, and it won big government contracts under the Bush administration. The only difference between the two is that Henry Waxman is making allegations of favoritism in the Bush administration, while he appeared untroubled by the issue during the Clinton years."

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york070903.asp

User927= ignorant and uninformed on matters that involve the truth.

(whidbey: I'm sure the business community would disagree with you, and outfits are chomping at the bit to place bids.)

The CraneMeister: "So name one. Last I heard they DID open for bids, and Halliburton was still the only company that could fulfill the contract."


Well, "Dyncorp" would be one, ( not that he or anyone else flailiang against Halliburon would be aware of their competetors in the first place ) but as linked above, their capabilities are inferior to Halliburton, and that's why Halliburton is most often picked to do the job.

You see, people who are ignorant about this, draw on thier own experiences to imagine what is going on. They can go to the store over here, or over there to get what they want. In the case of what Halliburton does ... the government would have to hire two or three other companies to do what Halliburton can ( or, the other companies would hire the services of Halliburton subsidiaries to get the job done, as contracted to the government. ) When the government needs something like this done, there are few real entities to choose from, besides the obvious choice.