1115.org

When it comes to our continuing adventures inside Iraq, we’ve all become so accustomed to gigantic sums of money being thrown about that it has ruined our perspective. In a war whose costs have stretched to nearly $400 billion, it’s understandable.

Nevertheless, it’s discouraging to see $250 million—a sum which Pentagon auditors says that Halliburton overcharged or didn’t provide adequate documentation for—being sent to the company as if the questions surrounding the payments didn’t exist:

The Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency had questioned $263 million in costs for fuel deliveries, pipeline repairs and other tasks that auditors said were potentially inflated or unsupported by documentation. But the Army decided to pay all but $10.1 million of those contested costs, which were mostly for trucking fuel from Kuwait and Turkey.

That means the Army is withholding payment on just 3.8 percent of the charges questioned by the Pentagon audit agency, which is far below the rate at which the agency’s recommendation is usually followed or sustained by the military — the so-called “sustention rate.”

Figures provided by the Pentagon audit agency on thousands of military contracts over the past three years show how far the Halliburton decision lies outside the norm.

In 2003, the agency’s figures show, the military withheld an average of 66.4 percent of what the auditors had recommended, while in 2004 the figure was 75.2 percent and in 2005 it was 56.4 percent.

Hmmm, interesting. I know that the Halliburton drum has been beaten way too often by critics of the administration, but this doesn’t do much to make me feel like taxpayers are getting their money’s worth. Remember that the Halliburton contracts were in many cases drawn up without any competitive bidding; that the company has been accused of overcharging on numerous occasions; that executives were caught accepting kickbacks from Kuwaiti companies; and that government officials who questioned the contracts were demoted. All of this, and more.

$250 million might not be much in the larger picture of the Iraq war, but we can thank the Army for making sure the funds got where they were so desperately needed—Halliburton’s bottom line.