[Mb-civic] Re: 'One Huge US Jail'

[Rhaerther at aol.com]

To give an idea as to what conditions are in the Afgan POW camps a St. Pete  
Times article from several weeks ago follows.  A few days later a letter to  
the editor from a WWII POW was printed, in the German POW camp he was interned  
in POW's cleaned the latrines.  You'll understand why I think the  military 
should follow that concept instead of paying Halliburton too much money  for 
the same task after reading this former Halliburton employees' account of  
deception and lies.
 
Richard Haerther
 
Dirty deal
 
Copyright Times Publishing Co. Mar 15, 2005 
Correction (3/21/05): A March 15 story incorrectly identified  where a 
Treasure Island man was sent to work. Antony Lineberger, who had signed  up to drive 
fuel trucks for Halliburton subsidiary KBR, was stationed at  Kandahar Air 
Field, Afghanistan. About 13,000 other contracted employees and  military 
personnel live at the base. 
On his first day at work, they issued him body armor. They  taught him how to 
duct-tape his helmet to keep out deadly gas. They told him  about pit vipers 
and poisonous spiders, warned him about microscopic sand fleas  whose bite 
could kill him. 
They made him choose a code word in case he got captured. 
But no one told him about the toilets. 
Antony Lineberger left Treasure Island six weeks ago to drive  fuel tankers 
across Afghanistan. He had been trying to get a job with  Halliburton for more 
than nine months. 
After 14 years of hauling fuel to boats around Tampa Bay, he  longed to see 
the Middle East, have a little adventure, make some real money,  help out his 
country. 
The 42-year-old registered Libertarian had cut off his waist-  length 
ponytail, given up his apartment, stored his furniture, sold his share of  the family 
business and left his old dog with a friend. 
He even married a former roommate so someone would get the  death benefits if 
the worst happened. 
On Jan. 23, the St. Petersburg Times ran a story about  Lineberger, "Detour 
to Danger." 
He planned to stay in Afghanistan for at least a year. 
Camp Stronghold Freedom is a U.S. military base in Kandahar,  Afghanistan. A 
former Taliban outpost, it is now a tent city occupied by 3,000  people, 
mostly American soldiers and the workers who support them. KBR, a  Halliburton 
subsidiary, has shipped hundreds of employees to the 8 square miles  of sand. 
While American troops flush out insurgents, KBR workers cook  the soldiers' 
meals, wash their uniforms and transport whatever they need. 
Lineberger had signed up to be a heavy truck driver, ferrying  gas between 
military bases. He agreed to work 12-hour days, seven-day weeks. He  figured he 
could make $85,000 a year, about four times what he earned in  Florida. 
He knew it would be hard. He thought he could hack it. 
He arrived in Kandahar with seven other civilian recruits on  Saturday, Jan. 
29, one of the coldest days anyone can remember. The 30 mph winds  sliced 
through his new orange parka, slapped sand against his tan face. He  shielded his 
eyes and shouldered his sleeping bag, following the others out of  the supply 
shed. 
The roads were rocks. The air was brown. Fine sand, like baby  powder, blew 
in thick clouds. "So dusty I can only compare it to living inside a  vacuum 
cleaner bag," Lineberger e-mailed his sister. "My eight-man tent leaks so  much 
wind you could fly a freaking kite in it." 
The smell, he said, was the worst part. The guys who had been  there a while 
had a name for it. "Feces breeze." 
It wafts in off the lake. 
On his second day at work, they showed him his bunker. A cargo  container, 
buried in the sand, rimmed with sand bags and what looked like worn  mattresses. 
"Don't worry," they told him, "we only get rocket attacks here  every six 
months." 
They told him he would be working the overnight shift: 5 p.m.  to 5 a.m. He 
showed up for his shift a half-hour early. He wanted to check out  his truck, 
look at his map and learn his route. He found his name on the list,  under 
Services Department. "Antony Lineberger: Driver - SST." 
He didn't know what that meant, so the guys who had been there  for a while 
enlightened him. SST: S-- Sucking Truck. 
More than 400 portable toilets rim Camp Stronghold Freedom.  Every night, two 
1,000-gallon tankers drive around, sucking out the waste. Then,  two men have 
to hose down the toilets and restock the toilet paper. 
Before that night, Lineberger had never even been inside a  portable toilet. 
At RibFest, in St. Pete, he used to hike a mile to find a  proper bathroom. 
Now here he was, wearing yellow dishwashing gloves and goggles,  trying to 
keep the waste from splashing his face. 
And since he was the new guy, Lineberger had an extra  responsibility. He was 
supposed to drop in the urinal cakes. 
That was a treat compared to what they flung at him the next  night. 
On his third day at work, they took him to the brown lake. The  honey dippers 
unload there, pumping their waste into a sand pit the size of a  football 
field. Except for the urinal cakes, no one chemically treats the  liquid. 
He told them he was supposed to be driving fuel tankers. That's  what he 
signed up for. His recruiter had promised. 
Well, see, said the guys who had been there a while, those  recruiters aren't 
really a part of Halliburton, or even KBR. They're just  headhunters, paid by 
the number of people they enlist. Nobody in Afghanistan has  to honor their 
promises. 
Didn't Lineberger read Page One, Section One, of the Foreign  Service 
Employment Agreement? 
Yes, he said. He was sure he had. He had read a 3-inch binder  full of 
information, signed dozens of forms. 
"You agree to perform services of the job classification  shown," the first 
paragraph states, "and other services within your capability  as requested by 
Employer." 
Camp Stronghold Freedom didn't need any fuel truck drivers just  then. What 
we need, they told Lineberger, is laborers. 
They were laughing. 
"Tonight," they informed him, "we're taking you on another  route." 
The tanker truck bumped around the rocky rim of the base, past  the PX, by 
the portable Wendy's, behind the mess hall where 100 men were  shivering, 
waiting in line for dinner. 
Lineberger watched a bombed-out building slide by the passenger  door. He saw 
more metal shipping containers, bigger bunkers. He had never been  to this 
part of the encampment before. 
A half-mile past the last lines of tents, rows of barbed wire  fencing 
appeared, rolling across the desert. The truck stopped outside a chained  gate. "You 
go on inside," Lineberger said the guys told him. "We'll hand you the  hose." 
Bewildered, Lineberger climbed out of the tanker. A military  police officer 
appeared and unlocked a tall gate. He stepped aside so Lineberger  could slide 
through with the hose. Lineberger followed the guard along the  fence, 
through another locked door. 
When the guard opened the enclosure, dozens of dark eyes  swiveled to stare. 
A room full of bearded men in orange jumpsuits were squatting  on the floor, 
scowling. 
This was a Taliban POW camp. More than 60 prisoners are held at  Camp 
Stronghold Freedom. 
For every two dozen men, there is a portable toilet. But no one  uses it. 
Out of protest, out of custom, out of disrespect for their  captors - for 
whatever reason - the Taliban men refuse to sit on the camp  toilets. "They squat 
over them and miss the hole with about half of it,"  Lineberger e-mailed his 
sister. 
Six inches of human waste was caked around the seat, smeared on  the bowl and 
walls. Lineberger stood there, pointing his hose at it, trying not  to puke. 
"After I would suck it, I had to spray it and would get covered  in poop," he 
e-mailed his sister. "After the first time I did it, I was in shock  and 
didn't talk the rest of the night. Didn't eat after that either. 
"It was like being on Fear Factor for a 12-hour shift, 7 days a  week." 
Or it would have been, if he had lasted that long. 
On his fourth day at work, he went to Human Resources and  begged for another 
job. Any job. "I came here to drive," he said again. 
They told him to be patient. Check the postings on the bulletin  board; new 
slots are opening every day. Maybe when a driver goes on vacation, we  can use 
you, they told him. 
Lineberger asked around. No truck drivers were due to head home  for months. 
"I started going into shock. I got shaky and sweaty," he  said. 
In Iraq and other war zones, Halliburton hires local workers to  do service 
jobs, like cleaning the bathrooms. But Afghanistan is too unstable;  no one is 
sure whom to trust. So the dirty work goes to whoever is  available. 
"We operate in a war zone where things are constantly changing,  so KBR 
cannot guarantee that an employee will perform the duties for which they  were 
originally hired," KBR spokeswoman Jennifer Dellinger said in an e-mail to  the 
Times. 
That fourth night, after being refused by Human Resources,  Lineberger threw 
up on his way to his shift. He threw up again outside the POW  camp. He made 
himself go in. 
Pale and nauseated, he uncoiled the hose, threaded it through  the barbed 
wire, followed the guard past the crouched prisoners. He stood there,  staring at 
the throne he was supposed to hose down, trying to hold back what was  left 
in his stomach. 
"I went to college," he kept thinking as human waste misted his  goggles. "I 
did well on my SATs. 
"I'm in MENSA." 
He walked off his shift that night. Hiked back to his tent,  threw his gloves 
into the trash. On the edge of his cot, by the beam of a  flashlight, 
Lineberger finally did what he probably should have done before he  left home: math. 
He was earning $2,700 a month, plus a 5 percent foreign service  bonus, plus 
25 percent danger pay, minus insurance and travel advancements,  divided by 84 
hours a week . . . 
"You only make $15 to $20 per hour," he wrote his sister just  after dawn. 
"No way I am taking a bath in Taliban poop every night for  that." 
On his fifth day at work, he turned in his body armor. He gave  back the duct 
tape. Shredded the pamphlets about deadly sand fleas. 
On his sixth day, he boarded a cargo plane. 
He had survived in Afghanistan almost a week. 
"It's embarrassing to be back here, to have to explain to  everyone what 
happened," Lineberger said last week. "I wanted to see the world.  At least 
Afghanistan. Part of a village, even beggars. Something besides  porta-potties." 
He's back on his old route, delivering fuel to boats along the  gulf beaches. 
He has moved back into his dad's Treasure Island bungalow,  retrieved his old 
dog, Prince, from his friend. ("Prince" was his code  word.) 
As for his wife, well, he's not sure what's going to happen.  She didn't 
expect him to come home so soon. She married him, mostly, in case he  died. 
He might not stick around here anyway. 
"There's a 17,000-acre tree farm in Honduras, and a friend of  mine is 
looking for someone to run it," Lineberger said, his green eyes  gleaming. He'd have 
a company car, a house in the shade, plenty of waves to  ride. No body armor 
or code words. Just a little adventure. 
He wants to go somewhere without tents or prisoners or barbed  wire. 
Somewhere without cold or blowing sand. Somewhere with forests and plants  and 
sparkling water all around. 
Somewhere that isn't brown. 
Lane DeGregory can be reached at (727) 893-8825 or  degregory at sptimes.com. 
FOR MORE 
To read our Jan. 23 article about Antony Lineberger, please  click on 
_http://www.sptimes.com/links_ (http://www.sptimes.com/links) 
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