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Democrats urge probe into post-war contracts
Senior Democratic lawmakers are questioning the Bush Administration’s policy of awarding post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts to a group of American firms, particularly to Halliburton, once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.
The House of Representatives' senior Democrat in the government reform committee, Henry Waxman, and the senior Democrat in the commitee on energy and commerce, John Dingell requested the General Accounting Office – the government’s oversight body – to investigate how those contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were given.
The Bush Administration has so far only provided few details to the public and Congress.
The lawmakers said the US Agency for International Development had awarded two contracts and apparently solicited bids for six others.
The agency gave one contract worth $ 4.8 million to rebuild Iraq's only deep-water port at Umm Qasr -- secured and controlled by British troops -- to Stevedoring Services of America.
It awarded another $ 7.1-million-contract for personnel support in a post-conflict Iraq to Washington-based International Resources Group.
The Army Corps of Engineers said last month it had awarded an oil well firefighting contract to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root without putting the deal out to tender.
The company was given the contract because it had already been asked by the Pentagon to draw up plans for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq, the Corps said.
The lawmakers questioned whether USAID and the Army Corps of Engineers had acted properly and within the scope of their authority.
Specific concerns over the treatment of Halliburton were also raised.
Cheney, who was chief executive of the company from 1995 to 2000, still received deferred compensation from the group.--- Al Jazeera with agencies