Halliburton, the colossal oil field services company that was formerly
run by Black Prince of Darkness, Dick Cheney, was one of the biggest profiteers off of the
atrocious bloodshed during the War in Iraq. Cheney arranged for his
former company and its subsidiaries to get massive government contracts,
and used American servicemen to guard the sites. The toxic nature of
oil work has resulted in the poisoning of untold numbers of our soldiers
and Iraqis alike without their knowledge, even though the company was
certainly aware of it.In 2012, a federal court in Portland, OR,
awarded $85 million in damages to twelve Oregon National Guardsmen who
had been exposed and fallen ill from the cancer-causing toxin sodium
dichromate at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant, Iraq, a site
operated by the Halliburton subsidiary KBR. The 9th Circuit Court threw
out the judgement on appeal, ruling that they had to sue the company in
their own state of Texas.
The case against KBR is being filed
again in Houston, but KBR has retaliated by suing the veterans for
$850,000 in legal fees from the first case, in a retaliatory and deeply
immoral attempt to punish the veterans and silence their efforts to
bring the company to justice.
By burying these veterans in
litigation and possibly crushing debt if the court sides with KBR again,
they will have poisoned US veterans, on the US government’s dime, and
have gotten away with it. It is absolutely reprehensible. The ghosts of
Iraq still haunt our soldiers and our conscience, eight years later.
Corporate privilege in our nation extends much far too far if shocking
travesties like this are allowed to occur in our nation. Cheney,
Halliburton, and KBR have done enough damage and stolen enough money to
our nation as it is. We can’t let them do this to our vets again.
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