Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:15:09 GMT

War Profiteering (Halliburton Dept.): Following An Ancient if Not Honorable Tradition. You might think that amidst all this ‘we support our troops’ rhetoric emanating from secure locations in Washington D.C. that someone in the white house or the Pentagon would be making sure that our troops get fed decent food. Nope. Think again. According to Heather Yarbrough, what we’ve got is a system in which someone whose job is monitoring the quality and safety of food served to soldiers on U.S. military bases in Iraq gets fired for doing her job. Talk about history repeating itself. President Abraham Lincoln secured passage of the False Claims Act in 1863 in order to combat similar frauds against the Union Army, including the sale of rancid food for the troops. Did Heather Yarbrough run afoul of a rush for profits, a system which depends on paying third-world workers pittances and of course no benefits, and gets third-world sanitation practices in return? Or did she just rile an old boy network? Either way, if her charges regarding the way soldiers’ food is stored and prepared are correct, it’s a scandal. Freezers and refrigerators weren’t working. Food was spoiling. The kitchen workers were exhausted, and some of them weren’t following basic sanitation practices. “It became apparent… [Discourse.net]