Wage Slave for the Empire

“What do you think my wife would rather have,” Ivil asks. “A hundred thousand dollars or me?”

It’s hard to tell if he’s kidding. In the space of 24 hours, Ivil saw four TV news reports about a Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) job fair being held in Tampa and he thought of his son, who is only two years away from college. This graying African-American family man decided that $75,000 to $100,000 a year—with the first $80,000 tax-free if he lasts the entire year—was too much to pass up. So on August 18 he snuck out of the house and came to the Crowne Plaza Hotel to try and get hired as a truck driver in Iraq or Afghanistan.

KBR, a subsidiary of Dick Cheney’s infamous former company Halliburton, is in the third year of a 10-year contract with the U.S. military. According to the Washington Post, by May of 2006, KBR will have received more than $11 billion for work related to LOGCAP (the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program), which pays for, among other things, chefs, electricians, mechanics, medics, laundry, pest control, construction and water purification workers.

On November 4, U.N. auditors called on the United States to repay Iraq $208 million that had been paid to KBR from Iraqi oil proceeds for services that the auditors found to be overpriced, lacking proper documentation and awarded non-competitively. While much of that money surely ended up in executive paychecks, it’s also helped KBR become an attractive employer with 200,000 job applications on file.

For the most part, the Vietnam veteran stays true to his word. In the first 10 minutes of his talk, Howatt provides his audience with the official KBR contractor death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan (68 at the time). He tells the applicants that they’ll be working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, with 10 days off every 4 months. After a short film showing construction of a tent city in the desert, he advises the room full of military veterans, former Halliburton/KBR employees and average Joes and Jills (complete with a crying baby in the back) that if they are killed in an NBC (nuclear biological or chemical) attack and their remains are contaminated, they won’t be flown home to their families. Instead, they will be cremated.

But heads perk up at the mention of salary, and Howatt’s sales pitch to the group is tight: “If you owe back taxes, call the IRS, tell them you are gonna go overseas, make a ton of money, and they’ll be glad to let you go. Same with child support.”...

Bring on the nukes, baby. As long as the lawyers can't touch you. On the Dark Side of the Force, a little expedience is expected.

Especially with all the private contractor perks to keep you busy.