posted on June 18, 2005 09:13:58 PM new
BIG SURPRISE !!!!
Halliburton to build new $30 mln Guantanamo jail
WASHINGTON (Reuters) --A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.
The announcement comes the same week that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the jail after U.S. lawmakers said it had created an image problem for the United States.
Critics have decried the indefinite detention of Guantanamo detainees, whom the United States has denied rights accorded under the Geneva Conventions to prisoners of war. The prison was called "the gulag of our times" in a recent Amnesty International report.
An air-conditioned two-story prison, known as Detention Camp #6, will be built at Guantanamo to house 220 men. It will include exercise areas, medical and dental spaces as well as a security control room, the contract announcement said.
The contract announcement did not specify whether the new prison would also hold foreign terror suspects.
Under the deal with the Norfolk, Virginia-based U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Atlantic, the work is to be wrapped up by July 2006. It is part of a larger contract that could be worth up to
$500 million
if all options are exercised, the Defense Department said.
Posted by David Corn at 12:09 PM | Comments (163)
Nice to see Halliburton ripping off the taxpayer's once again to make terrorists comfortable...wonder if the Republicans see this as good or bad
[ edited by crowfarm on Jun 18, 2005 09:19 PM ]
posted on June 19, 2005 10:53:46 AM new
WeBayer: You are sadly mistaken.Not all government contracts are "bidded" upon. The contract referenced here is just an extension of a master contract that was awarded to Halliburton, specifically their subsidiary Kellog, Brown and Root .
This began eleven year ago, when then-Secretary of Defense Cheney directed the Pentagon to pay Brown & Root about $9 million to study how private companies could provide logistical support to the military. The report is still classified. The first contract was awarded to them shortly after the report was filed. It was a no-bid contract for Halliburton to be the sole provider of worldwide support services and contingency operations for the U.S. military. After it's 5 year term expired, it was expanded and renewed. In 2001, it was renewed and expanded again, in spite of the ongoing investigations into Halliburton's little monetary fauxs pas, like charging the government 80 bucks for single sheets of plywood.
Nobody bid on this contract. NOBODY. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and anyone willing to believe that it's coincidental Dick Cheney is the VP is a fool.
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Fue por lana y salió trasquilado...
