The long awaited announcement of the first LOGCAP IV task order to be awarded in Iraq has been made.

KBR has been awarded Task Order 2 under KBR’s LOGCAP IV contract W52P1J-07-D-0009 for the Iraq CTP (Corp Logistics/Transportation/Postal) effort in the amount of $2.345B.

Work is to begin under this Task Order on March 1, 2010.

Interesting...just four days ago KBR received a ZERO award fee for unsatisfactory work and is now awarded a $2.3B contract. Is anyone else gong "What the hell?"

For a list of other LOGCAP IV Task Order awards click here.

I can't even imagine how devastated people like Cheryl Harris, SSG Ryan Maseth's mother is. As you may know Ryan was electrocuted and died in his shower in Baghdad. I'm sure Cheryl is thrilled that just a few days ago KBR was being punished at least financially for their shoddy work and today they are being rewarded with a new multi-billion dollar contract.

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Originally published at Asia Times

BEIJING - Former United States vice president Dick Cheney, ex-defense minister Donald Rumsfeld and assorted US neo-cons will have plenty of time to nurse their apoplexy. One of their key reasons to unleash the war on Iraq in 2003 was to seize control of its precious oilfields and thus shape a great deal of the new great game in Eurasia - the energy front - by restricting the access of Europe and Asia to Iraq's staggering 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

After at least US$2 trillion spent by Washington and arguably more than a million dead Iraqis, it has come to this: a pipe dream definitely buried this past weekend in Baghdad with round two of bids to exploit a number of vast and immensely profitable oil fields.

The bids, supervised by the Oil Ministry, were presented on a live TV game show. Instead of American Idol, Iraqis got "Oil Idol". In a raucous carpet bazaar atmosphere, the ministry played "my way or the highway" and forced 44 foreign Big Oil corporations to cut to the max the fee they collect on every barrel extracted in Iraq and submit to 20-year contracts. These multinationals were not given a share in Iraqi oil production; they will be paid a $2 fee per barrel for raising output above a mutually agreed level.

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Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program.

In this interview McGovern talks with Real News Network CEO Paul Jay about the paper trail on the Iraq war, as revealed in the British "Downing Street Memo".


The Real News Network - August 08, 2009
The Downing Street Memo - Pt.1
McGovern: "It's there in black and white - The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy"

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Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.

"Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said.

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Leila Fadel, Baghdad Bureau Chief of McClatchy Newspapers, speaks to Paul Jay about the changes in Iraq over the past four years. ... She says that there is, "the sense of the necessary evil, a lot of people want the U.S. to leave but they're not sure that Iraq can defend its borders because its security forces were broken apart and built from the bottom up and they're not ready. They don't have an army that's necessarily loyal to the government, they're loyal to political parties that have sectarian or ethnic leanings. So there's nothing for them to really hold on to or be sure of in their country. People will hold America accountable for their current suffering and what happens next."

Real News - March 20, 2009 - 13 minutes
Leila Fadel: Iraqis will hold America accountable for what happens next