I thought PMC stories couldn't get any worse...

But it seems they have. It's one thing to have lethal faulty wiring, or large-scale corruption, or have some employees who commit war crimes.

But for some reason, this particular story got to me the most.

(Photo: I feel this is symbolic of the coalition soldiers' struggle in Iraq. Who is the enemy?)

I can believe the chemical-polluted water given to over 200 American soldiers, sickening though that is. I'm not surprised that the food gave some people salmonella; and, even though I drew a blank as to how it got there, I'm not surprised there was shrapnel in the food. It's the kind of corner-cutting and bad service you'd expect from a company unaccountable to any kind of law.

What did leave me shocked, horrified and struggling at first to believe it, was the allegations of re-using the ice on which corpses, some of which may have been dead US soldiers, had been stored. It was served as water to the troops.

I wonder how much money that saved KBR. Really. These people talk about how they support the troops. They don't care about the troops, as if that wasn't already obvious. This is potentially emotionally traumatising as well as disgusting. Drinking little bits, maybe, of your buddy who was killed last week. But hey, if the bottom line is happy, KBR are happy.

Thankfully the Iraqi government recently declared legal accountability for the PMCs, because I guarantee you Cheney/Bush wouldn't have done it in a million years, especially with Cheney's Halliburton connection (anyone wanna impeach?) The PMCs don't seem so keen on work in Iraq now.

So instead, these lovely people are looking into contracts in fighting Somali piracy. And if the Indian Navy destroyed a civilian boat thinking it was a pirate vessel, just imagine what these loose cannons could do.