Posted on 03/10/2008 10:06:53 AM PDT by Perdogg
Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using "unmonitored and potentially unsafe" water supplied by the military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, the Pentagon's internal watchdog says.
A report obtained by The Associated Press said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.
The Defense Department's inspector general's report, which could be released as early as Monday, found water quality problems between March 2004 and February 2006 at three sites run by contractor KBR Inc., and between January 2004 and December 2006 at two military-operated locations.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
The report said KBR took corrective steps and was providing adequate water quality by November 2006. But military units at the two sites they controlled were still failing to perform required quality control tests and maintain appropriate records by that time.
My, how gracefully they managed to insert the VPs name.
“...military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, the...”
How far removed from the fact are MSM going to try for?
lol - hmmm
While dirty water is unacceptable in any case the AP’s title tries to lead people to think it was drinking water.
What will have to happen for that to no longer be mentioned at every opportunity? Do they think we don’t know? Do they think it’s important to the story, who was at the helm nearly a decade ago?
KBR is Satanic. Of course they would poison the water. Halliburton is right now enlarging the main reception halls in Hell. Why is this news?
Wow...they got it in there in the first sentence.
Way to go AP...you scummy media vermin.
I have no problems with the story, no matter who badly the AP mischaracterized the story.
You want to shave/bathe in dirty water? The contractor needs to be held accountable.
They fixed the problem two years ago. I do have to add though, this is pretty basic stuff for those qualified to set up a potable water system.
Our medic once treated our ROPU water while were were staged in the South Pacific. Anyone want to know what happens when your water has way to many parts per million of chlorine? Let's just say we ran out of Portalet capacity. LOL
Halliburton is the oil services conglomerate that Cheney once led. Congressional Democrats long have complained that KBR has benefited from its former ties to Cheney.Unreal.
But since it's KBR, let's just go ahead and make sensationalist headlines so we can zing ol' Cheney's name in there and make it look like this was all his fault.
The KBR sites were Camp Ar Ramadi, Camp Q-West and Camp Victory.
I was at Camp Victory in 2004. I don't remember anything like this. Must have been a blip on the screen?
I've been at places where we use Baghdad city water for these things (like where I am now). How safe can that be, I wonder?
The media needs to suck it up.
No mention of Lady Bird Johnson and how KBR stole an election for her husband?
Halliburton is the oil services conglomerate that Cheney once led. Congressional Democrats long have complained that KBR has benefited from its former ties to Cheney.Blah blah blah...Cheney...Halliburton...KBR...evil...blah blah blah...ad nauseum.
Stay safe over there. Avoid taking baths. :)
Toby, I understand it fully, but the way your original sentence was phrased, you show a desire to place more blame on the story than the contractor itself.
Your last sentence, quoting the IG report, illustrates an untrained mind on reading bureaucratise. What I read into that sentence is that they were able to link the dirty water to at least one of the illnesses. I doubt the full IG report will ever be made public, so the end result is we can both say our interpretations are correct.
By the time the report was completed, I'd be willing to bet that it was reviewed by a number of senior officers in the chain of command. I would not be at all surprised if the wording of a few key sentences were edited for the benefit of KBR.
Cheney has been let off the hook for the mismanagement of the Iraq conflict from 2004-2006. I know being the Veep isn't worth a bucket of warm spit, but Cheney can't have it both ways. He's either a key member of the Bush Presidency, or he's been shuffling papers in the Old Executive Mansion for the past 7 years.
VP Cheney is a good man, and I'll leave it at that.
Let the AP have their fun. All this means to me is that the operations in Iraq are succeeding beyond their wildest fears.
What else can we draw from reports like this, when 18 months ago the news was filled with nothing but carnage from Iraq? In the years to come, military historians will rightly mark the brilliance of the Petraeus "surge" and his plan of counterinsurgency. They will be correct to rank Petraeus with the likes of Grant, Patton, and MacArthur.
Not that Petraeus is yet on par with those 3, but let's see how it all plays out. There's way too much history to be written.
Crickets will really be chirping at the AP, NYT, and others when the troop drawdowns commence later on this year.
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