KBR Employee Arrested On Sexual Assult Charges

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A former employee of military contractor KBR Inc has been arrested in Texas and charged with sexually assaulting a woman at an airbase in Iraq, federal prosecutors said on Friday.
According to a now-unsealed indictment from October 8, 2008, David Charles Breda Jr. is charged with assaulting the woman at Camp Al Asad while working as a civilian defense contractor for a subsidiary of Houston-based KBR, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement.

The arrest follows the high-profile case of Jamie Leigh Jones, who has sued KBR and former parent Halliburton Co, alleging she was drugged and raped by fellow KBR employees in 2005 and accusing the companies of tolerating abusive behavior. No criminal charges have been filed in her case.

Breda, 34, appeared before a judge on Friday after his arrest by Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents on Thursday at a Houston-area barber college, the U.S. Attorney's office said. He faces a up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the charge of abusive sexual contact, it added.

"KBR does not condone or tolerate illegal behavior. Each employee is expected to adhere to the company's code of business conduct. When violations occur, action is taken," a spokeswoman for the engineering and construction company said.

KBR's conduct as a military contractor has been called into question by U.S. lawmakers as well as some investors. In May, KBR and Halliburton were sued by a pension fund accusing them of lack of oversight after a series of scandals that the fund says destroyed value.

Earlier this week, KBR lost out to rival companies in the award of two military contracts for Afghanistan.

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It was good to see an editorial in the New York Times this morning blasting KBR for trying to give its people bonuses, in light of the recent revelations about its shoddy electrical work in Iraq.
Namely, it was found that 90% of its work there was faulty.

I have followed this issue closely since January 2008, when a Green Beret, Ryan Maseth -- the son of Cheryl Harris, now my friend -- was electrocuted. I've written about it often here. You may recall: The military claimed at first that he had carried a hair dryer into a shower, all his fault. Turns out: It was a lie. Cheryl kept fighting and her efforts led to probes by the press, the Pentagon and Congress.

She has sued KBR. Many other cases of soldier electrocutions have since come to light. KBR whistleblowers have surfaced. And let's not forget the Cheney connection.
Here's an excerpt from the Times' editorial. In a final graf, not included here, it refers to the Ryan Maseth case.

Read More Here: For Memorial Day: How KBR Killed U.S. Soldiers

Freshman Democrat Alan Grayson Opposes Obama's War Policy

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In a recent article in The New York Times, Congressional Democrats are quoted for their unease with President Obama’s seemingly open-ended commitment in Afghanistan. The most out-spoken among those in the article was Alan Grayson, a freshman from Florida. Regarding Democrats who are expressing outright opposition to continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Grayson said:

“There is no need in the 21st century to do this, to make us safe,” Representative Alan Grayson, a freshman Democrat from Florida, said of the continuing American-led wars. “This is a 19th-century strategy being played out at great expense in both money and blood in the 21st century, in the wrong time at the wrong place.”

“It’s wrong,” Mr. Grayson added. “That’s why I am going to vote against it.”


What an unusual concept it must be for Republican’s to grasp, that just because you share the same political affiliation with the president, it does not mean that you march blindly in his or her footsteps. Grayson was the subject of a 2007 article in Vanity Fair where David Rose wrote about an ambitious lawyer named Alan Grayson, who at the time was suing KBR and other defense contractors in Iraq for alleged fraud on behalf of whistleblowers and American taxpayers. Grayson ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2006 He ran again in 2008, and this time was elected to represent Florida’s 8th district.

Read Full Article Here

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/05/an-interview-with-antiwar-freshman-democratic-congressman-alan-grayson.html