by Deb Cupples | Wednesday, Henry Waxman's House Oversight Committee held a hearing about the seemingly shoddy electrical work in Iraq that seems to have led to 283 fires and the death of 16 U.S. soldiers since 2004: some soldiers were electrocuted in showers, some in swimming pools, some while washing military vehicles.
The primary contractor was KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root -- a former Halliburton subsidiary). At the hearing, witnesses from KBR, the Defense Department, and the Defense Contract Management Agency testified.
Obviously, someone was responsible for failing to properly inspect or fix the electrical equipment that had caused the electrocutions or fires: either the military failed to ask for repairs or KBR failed to properly perform them.
Note that military officials had been warned repeatedly about electrical deficiencies since 2004, yet the problems remained unsolved.
From the beginning of the hearing, it was apparent that witnesses did not want to implicate either the military or KBR for negligence or shoddy work.
Toward the end of the hearing, one Committee member went through a list of names of soldiers who'd been electrocuted and asked the witnesses "Who installed the equipment and who was responsible for maintaining it?"
Each witness answered each question with some version of "I don't know." This unawareness seems odd, given that the Oversight Committee has been investigating the electrocutions for quite some time now and had given the witnesses advanced notice of the hearing. Surely, at least one of the military witnesses could have had staffers go through computer records and find out who installed the equipment and who was responsible for maintaining it.
It was a 2-hour hearing and worth watching (see hearing video at the Oversight Committee website.) If you don't have time to watch it, you can get the basics from reading Congressman Waxman's opening statement.
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