Raped by Halliburton

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As if it's not bad enough that private American and other western militias are terrorizing Iraq, and that private companies with ties to the Bush Administration are engaging in massive war profiteering at the expense of both Iraqis and American taxpayers, consider this:

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Make sure to read the whole article. It's horrifying, but at least, at the very least, Ms. Jones got out and is now telling her story. (One key detail: "Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped 'both vaginally and anally,' but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers." Disappeared, huh? How convenient.)

Please note that Halliburton is one of the Bushies' favourite companies (just like Enron). It is now headquartered not in the U.S. but in Dubai. Dick Cheney was the company's CEO from 1995 to 2000. As a preferred and politically friendly (and occasionally no-bid) contracter, it has made billions of dollars off Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well off the Bush's so-called war on terror. In Iraq, its multi-billion dollar Restore Iraqi Oil contract was a massive failure. It has worked for Iran, supporting the development of its oil industry. And it is profiting off post-Katrina reconstruction.

And now we learn that some of its employees brutally gang-raped one of its own, that the woman was threatened, terrorized, and held against her will, and that the company has been covering up the incident for two years.

Quite the company -- and one with some very good friends in some very high places.

(For more, see Steve Benen, Amanda Marcotte, Kyle Moore, Jane Hamsher, and Digby.)