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Douglas Farah flags quite a scoop by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. Not only has notorious "Merchant of Death" blood-diamonds trafficker Victor Bout been flying ammunition into Iraq under US government contract. It's been flying it in for Kellogg, Brown & Root, the subisidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. Not once or twice or a dozen times: 142 times. Farah writes:
Read the rest here. More on this later. Alex Harrowell is following these revelations closely as well.Well, after months of trying to get my friends in the press to pursue Victor Bout's ties to the U.S. military, Michael Isikoff at Newsweek dug into the story and advanced it considerably. He found Bout's Air Bas planes landed in Iraq 142 times this year, courtesy of a Pentagon contract allowing it to refuel at military bases in Iraq. By my count, if the contracts were voided after 7 months, or roughly 28 weeks, that means Air Bas was refuelling five times a week at U.S. military bases. Hardly an occassional operator in the field.
The most beautiful thing he found, which I had not heard, is that Bout's firm was flying on behalf of Kellog Brown and Root, the division of Halliburton hired to rebuild Iraqi oilfields. Isiskoff's Periscope item is here. The agreement was cut off in August, the Pentagon, under pressure from State and Treasury, queried Air Bas on its activities or what business it was conducting for the U.S. government. That finally raised enough red flags at the Pentagon, and gave them plausible reason to terminate the contract. The Air Bas incident has led the Pentagon to change, at least on paper, the way it does business with air contractors. It is supposed to be checking much more carefully as to the subcontractors, something that, until the Bout incident, was not done and viewed as necessary. Call it a belated victory for State and Treasury in one of the many mini-wars being fought in Iraq...