We Are Shocked

by Jim Washburn

Chances are you’ve lived in your home for many years without being electrocuted by it. I go entire years without getting even a shock, and those years included installing ceiling fans, personally rewiring much of this old house from two-prong to three and prying a bagel out of a plugged-in toaster with a butter knife. I don’t have any hard figures on how many people are electrocuted, dead-like, in their homes annually, but I’ll bet it’s precious few, and far fewer when you eliminate the deaths caused by would-be MacGyvers or electro-sex addicts. Even mobile homes are wired to stringent standards.

So just which Americans are getting electrocuted these days? Green Berets in Iraq. Infantry in Iraq. Marines in Iraq. Private contractors in Iraq. All electrocuted, very dead-like, in housing built and wired for them by the former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, who have only been paid $24 billion of our money to see to the needs of our troops over there. At least 18 people have died so far in KBR cook-offs; scores have been injured; many soldiers there report receiving daily shocks in their quarters; and there have been hundreds of electrical fires and several buildings burned to the ground.

You folks out there in the housing industry: Do you know of any domestic electrical contractor who could rack up such a grisly record and still be in business, much less not in prison? The no-bid wonder KBR just keeps on going, and going and going. After years of the Pentagon denying there was a problem, then dragging its heels on it, CNN reports the military has finally issued a “Level III Corrective Action Request” to KBR, maintaining the firm is in “serious non-compliance” with its contract. Though it’s a move in the right direction, it essentially amounts to little more than a bold call for further study. We are shocked, shocked.

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