Halliburton has become the favorite whipping boy of those who despise American corporations. Perhaps no other company has garnered as much unjustified negative attention in recent times. So the critics' silence lately is deafening. What shut them up? Six employees of a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, are missing and one is believed to have been kidnaped by hostiles near Baghdad. Four bodies were discovered near a shallow grave where the incident took place. CNN has a wrap-up and update of the hostage situation in Iraq.
The Sunday Herald says that Halliburton said "that about 30 staff and subcontractors working for its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) have been killed in Iraq out of more than 24,000 staff and contractors who work for KBR in the Iraq-Kuwait region."
It's a tough and thankless job they do. The Houston Chronicle has a worthwhile article on the subject:
Those contracts to do billions of dollars worth of work to rebuild Iraq's energy sector and support the troops there no longer look like cozy arrangements, as the death toll stands at about 30 employees of Halliburton and its subcontractors, according to the company."The emphasis now is on the human tragedy, not any corporate tragedy," said Garth Jowett, a University of Houston communications professor. "People are just thinking that you can't make fun of Halliburton."
Coverage no longer plays up details like the company formerly being run by Vice President Dick Cheney, or the company's no-bid contract to rebuild oil production.
The change has been noticed inside the company.
In a show of support, more than 1,000 people have sent messages to the company Web site since Monday thanking and encouraging its employees in Iraq and Kuwait, spokeswoman Wendy Hall said.
"We have had plenty of equal-opportunity critics," she said in a prepared statement. "Our goal is to make sure that soldiers have food and everything they need to be more comfortable in a war zone."
Houston has had the advantage of being the staging area for employees headed to Iraq.
"We're the ones who see them as real people," Jowett said.
They are there trying to help the Iraqi people, so it's a tragedy if they can't all come back home.
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