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MORE April Fool, Bush style

Insurance, security prove costly for contractors in Iraq

Is anyone really surprised by this?

Well - yes.

For some contractors who work for the Defense Department, 40 cents out of every dollar spent goes for required insurance for workers, said Bunny Greenhouse, the chief contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers. At least a dime to 15 cents of every dollar spent is for security, according to the inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"Why are we paying 40 percent?" for insurance, Greenhouse asked in an interview Wednesday with Knight Ridder. "That's unbelievable. ... Nobody foresaw that we were going to be in this kind of dilemma." The civilian officials in the Pentagon who planned the war foresaw a quick end to Iraqi resistance and a rapid reconstruction of the country.

"Why are we paying 40 percent?" for insurance, Greenhouse asked"

Maybe the insurance had something to do with the likelihood that employees would be killed and would then seek compensation and exhaust all manner of legal alternatives. We wouldn't want to have a backup plan for that, now would we Ms. Greenhouse? I'm sure you'd rather they just suck the life-juices out of Halliburton in such cases.

It was probably just too tempting to resist for Ms. Bunny not to exploit her position, both on behalf of her leftist friends and to get a marker in the big game for herself.

There's so much predictability in her actions alone that there's just no further meaning vis-a-vis anything Halliburton might have done in what Bunny has spewn forth.