Pentagon Audit Questions Halliburton’s Costs in Iraq (washingtonpost.com)

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc.’s cost data doesn’t match its accounting.

KBR reported it had purchased liquefied gas for $82,100, and then spent $27.5 million to transport it!

$1.8 billion in “unsupported costs” in a $10.5 billion Army logistics contract that KBR won on a competitive bid.

$100 million in questionable “costs” just in one section of the fuel delivery.

The audit summary, written in October 2004 but withheld from public release (my emphasis), covers one out of 10 sections from a $2.5 billion contract under which Halliburton was tapped to deliver fuel, fight oil well fires and repair oil facilities in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in the spring of 2003. Of the $2.5 billion, approximately $1.6 billion came from Iraqi oil proceeds and the rest was funded by U.S. taxpayers.

We’re not only continuing to pay them, but the Army is giving them “performance bonuses”!!!

Reps. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who made a summary of the fuel audit public, called on President Bush to release audits for the other nine sections of Halliburton’s no-bid contract.

“[T]he Administration has withheld these audits from Congress for months, and Halliburton has repaid nothing under this contract,” they wrote. “We would like to know when and how you plan to recover the overcharges from Halliburton and restore them to U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people.”

Richard Jones, a former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, acknowledged sending an e-mail in which he pushed for KBR to sign a deal quickly with Altanmia to meet a rising demand for fuel in Iraq. Jones also testified the embassy had received reports from Altanmia officials that Halliburton executives were demanding kickbacks (my emphasis). Jones said those reports were passed along to Pentagon investigators.

So how about the rest of the audit, then? Now I wonder, why would Bush be withholding them from the public? Why is this administration so secretive if they are in the right? Can anyone really believe what they say anymore?