Army to probe $3 Billion in Iraq contracts

Above: Thanksgiving at a mess hall run by KBR in Kirkuk.

The Army will examine as many as 18,000 contracts awarded over the past four years to support U.S. forces in Iraq to determine how many are tainted by waste, fraud and abuse, service officials said yesterday.

Overall, the contracts are worth close to $3 billion and represent every transaction from 2003 to 2007 by a contracting office in Kuwait, which the Army has identified as a significant trouble spot.

Among the contracts to be reviewed are awards to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which has received billions of dollars since 2001 to be a major provider of food and shelter services to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The officials did not specify which KBR contracts would be examined or their value.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

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