<I'm not as up to date on Halliburton as most of you FReepers, could you explain why no-one else can do what Halliburton does or direct me to a site please. My roomie is asking and I just told him so far that they have a lot of experience and that Clinton gave them no bid contracts but other than that I do not know.>
Hallibuton
Contrary to all screaming about Hallibuton, the work WAS done under a competitively awarded contract system known as the U.S. Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP. The LOGCAP system came about because of the military's need to perform complex jobs, specifically peacekeeping in Bosnia and intervention in Haiti, on sometimes very short notice. In such situations, American troops require lots of logistical support; camps have to be built, utilities have to be supplied, food has to be cooked. By the early 1990s, as the size of the active-duty force shrank, the Pentagon began to "outsource" much of that work, that is, pay civilian contractors to do it rather than tie up soldiers with non-essential tasks. Instead of going through a months-long competitive-bidding process for each job, the military came up with LOGCAP.
LOGCAP is, in effect, a multi-year super-contract. In it, the Army makes a deal with a single contractor, in this case Halliburton, to perform a wide range of unspecified services during emergency situations in the future. The last competition for LOGCAP came in 2001, when Halliburton won the contract over several other bidders.
The next question was how large the contract should be. That was a difficult problem, because no one knew how big the problem would be. Would all the fields burn? Would none of them? Just a few? The Army assumed a worst-case scenario and decided the contract could be worth any amount between $0 and $7 billion (a common contracting practice known as ID/IQ, which stands for indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity).
Of course the democrats (specifically Waxman) immediately began calling the KBR deal a $7 billion contract. Because most of the anticipated disasters did not take place, the Army has asked KBR to do much less work than the original worst-case scenario envisioned, and the contract has therefore been worth far less than it might have been. "We will come nowhere close to the $7 billion figure," says Lt. Col. Pawlik. Pawlik says, the task orders issued to Kellogg Brown & Root totaled about $214 million.
The first LOGCAP was awarded in 1992. Four companies competed, and the winner was Brown & Root. 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; 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 Bosnia Waxman correctly points out that the Halliburton’s payment far exceeded original estimates, but he fails to mention that a 1997 GAO report placed the blame on the Army, and not Halliburton/KBR. "Our review shows that the difference in the Army's estimates was largely driven by changes in operational requirements once the forces arrived in Bosnia," the GAO wrote. "Specifically, the Commander in
Chief of United States European Command decided to increase the number of base camps from 14 to 34 and to accelerate the schedule for upgrading troop housing." Halliburton/KBR was paid more because the Army wanted more.
Commander-in-Chief, United States European Command was Wesley Clark by the way. 