Shocking

The Iraq War will almost certainly go down in history as America's first privatized war. Jobs once done by the military themselves, from housing and food service to vehicle maintenance and security for ranking officers, were instead contracted out to private corporations. And all too often, we have seen how the Pentagon put even egregious profiteering ahead of the safety of their own troops.

KBR, once a subsidiary of Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton, was given the job of building and maintaining tens of thousands of structures for American soldiers serving in Iraq. The New York Times is today reporting that the electrical work in KBR-built facilities was so shoddy that during a six-month period from August 2006 through January 2007 almost three hundred electrical fires took place. Even worse, more than a dozen soldiers have been electrocuted and many others have been injured.

It now appears that both KBR and the Pentagon knew more than a year ago that the wiring work - frequently subcontracted to Iraqi companies with reputations for cheap labor and a rather lax attitude towards quality control - was substandard and dangerous. At one building complex in Baghdad, soldiers got electrical shocks on an almost daily basis. KBR electricians say they continually complained to company and Pentagon management that the wiring was a disaster waiting to happen, but their reports were ignored.

And even worse, the Pentagon did nothing even after Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth was electrocuted in January while taking a shower. They started paying attention only when his family sued KBR to get answers and Congress got involved.

Even today, problems continue - just last month, an electrical fire in Fallujah gutted ten Marine barracks buildings. The displaced soldiers were forced to write home and ask for donations to replace their destroyed personal belongings.

It is a national disgrace that our soldiers, who have already given so much, are forced to fear for their lives - not from a military enemy, but from war profiteers allegedly on their own side. It's even more of a disgrace that Pentagon brass are so wedded to the commercial side of the military-industrial complex that they barely lift a finger to protect their own people.

This cannot be allowed to happen again. The use of private contractors in war-fighting must be reined in.