Just when you thought you’d heard it all, along come charges that U.S. contractors and sub-contractors have been using slave labor practices to bring in foreign workers.
About 35,000 of the 48,000 people performing support duties for the army under private contracts are third country nationals, imported from outside Iraq. The largest emplyer of these employees is Halliburton subsidiary KBR which has spent some $12 billion, outsourcing most of the work to subcontractors.
Laborers are brought into Iraq under false pretenses; often their families are required to pay substantial fees to brokers for obtaining these jobs. Subcontractors routinely seize the workers’ passports to prevent them from leaving, deceive them about their safety and contract terms, subject them to substandard living conditions, and even threaten to cut off their food and water if they refuse to move to Iraq.
At the same time that thousands of foreign workers are illegal kept under coercive conditions, rampant unemployment among Iraqis fuels resentment of the U.S. occupation.
The reality of Iraq is becoming more and more unreal every day…
When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said ….
…”it must be a Bush presidency!”