Kellogg Brown and Root was one of the many unpatriotic, traitorous corporate welfare recipients connected to Dick Cheney, who made billions from crony-ist federal government contacts under the Bush Administration during the Iraq War. These corrupt contractor firms were responsible for many deaths and terrible wounds among both Iraqis and US soldiers and civilian workers, including the incident in which one was electrocuted in a shower by faulty wiring in 2008. Now these treasonous jerks, already having ripped off US taxpayers for billions of dollars, have recklessly and knowingly exposed a dozen of our brave soldiers to a nasty carcinogen in the line of duty while in Iraq, failing to inform them or provide protective measures.
Now, I always reserve some doubt about causality in these situations, and an environment like the on in Iraq is full of uncertainties and risks. But whatever the ultimate effects of the sodium dichromate exposure, KBR was clearly negligent and extremely arrogant to basically put the soldiers in such danger and then keep them in the dark about it. Yet another example of the real effects of privatization, as practiced by Republican Tea Party conservatives (and some of their British counterparts) lately: massive fraud, negligence, arrogant disregard for our soldiers and multibillion dollar ripoffs of US taxpayers, that are still going on.