Abstract

It has been seen that over the last 20 years. The United States of America started to depend on the private organization for its required services in armed forces than even before.

This includes many certain jobs, and requirement that uniformed personnel were supposed to do, and now all those specific jobs turned over to private organizations. With adopting this policy more personal were freed up and more money was saved.

This strategy was so effective because it helped out government to downsize its military infrastructure and to invest more in the modernized equipment, better training and many other important issues that were neglected earlier.

Many of these costs off of defence budget were placed in other places and fund them. but the question is that does really privatization helped the government to save money? Are the companies accountable as if they were in the military command structure when charging the military for goods and services? What happens if they are?

Within the last 3 years, Halliburton has come under heavy public and political criticism for its pricing and profit practices, allegations of corruption, and connections to Vice President Dick Cheney. I will take a look into these allegations and present the facts as they have been reported.

Halliburton

Introduction

Today, there are at least 100 companies, and still growing that provide services to the United States military in some capacity or another. Halliburton with its subsidiaries, Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) and Energy Services Group (ESG), is by far one of the largest military contractors in the world. It employs 100,000 people all over the worldwid to sustain its contractual obligations to support military personnel and equipment around the globe (Halliburton, unknown date).

Within the past 60 years, Halliburton has worked to establish its presence as a large scale military contractor that provides construction, life-cycle management services, fuel transportation, food preparation, and numerous other services deemed critical to supporting our military. Its biggest brake came in the 1990s when President Clinton and Congress started the process of outsourcing or privatizing many unnecessary functions once performed by the military to save money and free up personnel for more important duties. This was an ideology first introduced by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to cut back on costs associated with running daily functions that could be performed more efficiently and cheaper by the private sector. It would in turn free up resources for more equipment, training, personnel, and other programs that more deserved the funding. At least that's the way it's suppose to work. It turned out it was not the case at all with some companies. Some companies were able to receive government contracts without much competition. Others were able to inflate their costs and overcharge the government for millions of dollars. A few even lost millions of dollars worth of equipment and supplies and never had to pay for it. Only one company got away with all, Halliburton.

Padding or inflating charges in government contracts has been going on since the beginning of civilization. The main reason ...