basement room

It had some of the atmospheric sense of the hearings that Rep. Conyers held
on the Downing Street Memo. The only difference this time is that it was not being
held in a basement room of the Capital. It was being held in an actual chamber
of Congress. The hearing was however, only attended by members of Congress who
sit on the left side of the aisle.

On Monday, Democratic Congressmen conducted a hearing into the actual
contracts by Halliburton for the rebuilding of Iraq. This hearing did not get
any press, except for being showed on C-Span. The hearing asked questions
involving the actual work that Halliburton and it’s Subsidiary, KBR, has done in
Iraq. This was, as the conservatives would call it, another “mock” trial.
Testimony was given by some experts including, Allan Waller who is C.E.O. of
Lloyd Owen International and Gary Butters who is the chairman of the same company.

Lloyd Owen International is a company that was contracted by the Iraqi
Government to deliver fuel to the people of Iraq. They are a security and
operations firm with a U.S. office based out of Florida. During the testimony of
the two top officials of this company, they gave compelling statements of how
Halliburton has not worked on the actual restoration of the oil infrastructure
as pursuant to their contract with the United States. Mr. Butters said that to
date they have only seen one K.B.R. official at one of the sites used to restore
the oil infrastructure to Iraq. Lloyd Owen employees visit all these sites on a daily basis. K.B.R. was suppose to be repairing the
infrastructure and get it back in operation, however Lloyd Owen has had to
purchase their own equipment in order to get fuel to the Iraqi people.