"KBR runs this country"

(KBR employee Brian Bodway, of Gulf Shores AL, trains new Indiana soldiers on how to extract a truck driver in case of an emergency. Bodway has driven trucks in Iraq for almost three years.)

(The Army's ASV- more armor and firepower than the Humvee)

“You’re gonna learn real fast that KBR runs this country,” said Sgt. Robert Bishop, 29, of the Alaskan 297th combat support battalion, as he spoke to several Indiana platoons on their mission for the next nine months- convoy security to and from Iraq's U.S. bases.

KBR, Kellogg Brown and Root, is the omnipresent corporation that seems to supply and maintain everything from Port-a-potties to busing on U.S. bases in Iraq.*

Sgt. Bishop who’s been in Iraq for six months, said the vehicle convoys are over 30-vehicles long and, “Look like a football field rolling down the field,” with all their extra-bright lights to search for Improvised Explosive Devices.

Tactics have changed. Early on in the war, when U.S. vehicles took enemy fire, many turned and went after the shooters. Currently soldiers who take fire on convoys are instructed to lay suppressing fire, aiming at enemy muzzle flashes, and to keep the convoy going.

There may be many tactical reasons for this change- among them the prevention of more casualties, as insurgents, whose tactics have evolved along with the Army’s, might be expecting troops to engage them, and therefore be laying traps.

Basically these soldiers are protecting the KBR guys, Bishop said. Another way to look at it is they are protecting essential supplies- water, food, fuel, without which the U.S. mission wouldn’t run.

What may be hardest is to tell an infantryman not to counterattack when attacked. Some veterans complain that the Army trained them for one mission and now won’t let them do it.

Sergeant First Class, Dennis Piercy, 43, of Fort Wayne doesn’t agree. “I’m an infantryman. I trained to dismount.” Piercy has 25 years experience both active and National Guard. He said with the convoy security mission, they still use the backbone of infantry tactics applied to vehicle movements.

“Look at the equipment we’re given now,” Piercy said. “These things are awesome (pointing to the Army’s ASV vehicle), as far as being in them and being safe.”

Another veteran soldier who didn’t wish to be identified said, “The (new)soldiers who say they want to shoot someone. That’s stupid. The first time they take small arms fire they’re going to be scared. If I have to be over here and don’t have to pull the trigger, it’s better.”

* "Kellogg Brown and Root, also known as KBR Engineering & Construction, is a unit of the Halliburton Company which provides military support services.

Brown & Root's open-ended logistics contracts from the Army and Navy --indeed much of the military privatization campaign -- are grounded in a 1992 study the company did for the Defense Department that several analysts said formed the template for privatization of logistics for a downsized U.S. military. Soon after the company delivered the classified study, which reportedly concluded that the Pentagon could save hundreds of billions of dollars by outsourcing, Brown & Root won its first competitively bid logistics contract.

Vice President Dick Cheney was defense secretary when the first Brown & Root study was done, and he became chief executive of its parent company, Halliburton, when he retired."

(Source: Los Angeles Times; January 24, 2003 Pg. 1;"Privatized Army In Harm's Way" By Mark Fineman, Times Staff Writer) Read Fineman's entire story on private contractors here.