Overcharging?

Fascinating Knight-Ridder article by Seth Borenstein about truckers working for Kellog,Brown&Root in Iraq, twelve of whom claim that the Halliburton subsidiary had them drive empty trucks back and forth across dangerous desert country and then billed the government for the hauling:

"The 12 drivers, all interviewed separately over the course of more than a month, told similar stories about their trips through hostile territory.


"Thor," a driver who quit KBR and got his nickname for using a hammer to fight off a knife-wielding Iraqi who tried to climb into the cab of his truck, said his doctor recently told him he might lose the use of his right eye after a December attack. Iraqis shattered his windshield with machine gunfire and bullets whizzed by his ear. Glass got in his eye, and he broke two bones in his shoulder, he said.


His truck was empty at the time.


"I thought, `What good is this?'" he recalled. "