WEIRDNESS….The jury is still out on whether Halliburton has been overcharging for the fuel it delivers to the Army in Iraq, but either way this is just weird:
The Army has allowed Halliburton to increase the supplies of fuel delivered to Iraq without giving the usual data to justify its cost, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The December action by the Army Corps of Engineers does not exonerate Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company in a dispute with the Pentagon over fuel prices, Army corps spokesman Ross Adkins said Tuesday.
But the decision does mean that Halliburton subsidiary KBR does not have to provide price figures for the increased flow of gasoline and kerosene it buys in Kuwait and delivers to Iraqi civilian markets, Adkins said. He said Halliburton’s Kuwaiti supplier, the Altanmia Marketing Co., refused to provide the price data required under U.S. contracting regulations.
What does it mean that Altanmia refuses to supply price data? If KBR is buying fuel from Altanmia, they know what price they’re paying, right? So why can’t they pass along that information to the Pentagon?
Or does this mean that Altanmia refuses to say how much it pays for fuel? And if so, why is it that our faithful allies the Kuwaitis can’t help us out here?
This just doesn’t make sense.
