Last week, I posted an interview I did with former KBR worker, Ben Carter, and the reaction I got was huge. Many, many people congratulated Ben on having the courage to face public scrutiny in order to bring the abuses of KBR to the public, and hundreds of you sent an email to DoD Chief Financial Officer, Tina Jonas (or signed the petition to her after she blocked her email address), asking her to cut off funding to KBR until a full public investigation is made into each of their alleged abuses.

I had ended my post with a heads up that the following week (meaning, today) I would be posting a breaking new story from Ben about a lawsuit against the contracting company that has been kept hidden by the Department of Justice. Well, bad news: Ben's story is so hot, it hasn't gotten the legal clearance to go public yet. I have been told to hold out for a few more days on that, so keep your fingers crossed!

One of the reasons I felt so buoyed by all the support shown for Ben is that I had long felt disturbed by both the magnitude of corruption among war contractors and the lack of coverage on the issue in the press.

Call it a qualified victory.

On July 1, the Pentagon agreed to investigate the showers built by KBR, a private military contractor in Iraq. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have been fatally electrocuted by faulty wiring in the showers. There has been a lot of blogger commentary and reporting about the electrocution, including several items I wrote for Progressive Future.

And while I think we certainly helped push this issue into the mainstream, I'm pretty sure all the blogger activism in the world would not have made a bit of a difference without the efforts of Cheryl Harris.

I just Stumbled! upon a video by a journalist for the Nation which had some disturbing things to say about our candidates and their position on private contractors in Iraq.

View it in the extended entry and then tell me what you think.

Earlier this month, President Bush received a report on how to update the Pentagon's current procedures for security clearances (used to ensure the integrity of those handling classified documents regarding the war) in order to make them more effective, timely and efficient. A clear theme in this report was the need to become technologically up-to-date, and thus the idea of electronically automated security clearances was born.

Considering the potential for human error within the giant bubble of bureaucratic waste that the administration has installed in Iraq, electronic security clearance procedures seems like not such a bad idea. What baffles me, however, is that within the bloated pdf file in which the report is placed on the internet, the topic of private contractors was not even broached.

[Cross-posted from www.progressivefuture.org] This entire week, I've been blogging my interview with Rachel, a formerly deployed soldier in Iraq, who has been brave enough to share her experiences with contractor abuse and the harm it is causing our troops. Her testimony has placed a spotlight on the need for policies that truly support the troops in practice, not just in rhetoric. For as much as the current administration uses empty talking points such as "protect of our national security" and "support the troops" to justify its policies, when it comes down to it, our leaders clearly view the well-being of the soldiers on the front lines as an afterthought to the profits they and their cronies have reaped from the war. In this final entry, Rachel weighs in on the need for accountability

Cross-posted from www.progressivefuture.org: Yesterday, in Part II of this five-part series, I shared my friend Rachel's experiences in Iraq with having to shower in dirty, contaminated water provided to the troops by private contractor and former Halliburton subsidiary, KBR. This story followed Rachel's recollection of the grossly higher paychecks the contractors were receiving for the same work as the military personnel, a sick twist of irony if you consider how poorly the contractors were doing the jobs they are paid six-figure incomes to perform. While the firsthand testimony of her experiences shocked and angered me, the findings of the investigations that followed truly made me disgusted:

Yesterday, in Part 1 of this series, "Who's Supporting the Troops?", I shared part of my interview with Rachel, a formerly deployed soldier in Iraq who experienced first hand the abuse and neglect of private military contractors. Although many people identified with Rachel's incredible story, Rachel requested we not print her last name or rank for purposes of privacy. Rachel's story began by exposing the egregious pay discrepancies between military and civilian contractors. Her experiences teach us that the very idea of hiring these contractors is at once channeling resources away from the troops and placing profit as a priority over the security of our troops.

This reality would be infuriating enough if there wasn't an additional piece compounding this problem: the contractors are doing a poor, and sometimes downright destructive, job. In the case of KBR's performance in fulfilling their contracted service of providing water to the troops, Rachel had much to share with me:

(Cross-posted from progressivefuture.org): This is the first installment of a five-part blog series sharing the experiences of Rachel, an Iraq War veteran who was a firsthand witness to many cases of contractor abuse against the troops.

It seems that, each day, I wake up and read a new way in which private contractors are taking advantage of our troops in Iraq. New reports surface that illuminate the greed and corruption of these private companies, hired through multi-billion dollar contracts to support the health and security of American soldiers. These services are too important to be performed without oversight and accountability for the devastating results that occur. From electrocutions due to faulty wiring and the provision of contaminated water, to rape, arbitrary shootings of Iraqi civilians, and tax evasion, the stories pile up with such a magnitude of horror, it is truly conscience-stirring for even the most jaded among us.

And yet, so many of these stories remained buried in the mainstream press. It saddens me that so many of these soldiers have received disgusting and hazardous treatment while defending our country, and are unable to make their voices heard. So when Rachel, a formerly deployed soldier who was stationed at Camp Ramadi, offered to tell me about her experiences with the contractors in Iraq, I wanted to share her testimony with all supporters and members of, Progressive Future, in an exclusive five-part blog series. Each day this week, I will post a new entry sharing another aspect of Rachel's story.