December 22, 2004 - The count of the dead at Camp Marez has been revised. It now stands at thirteen American soldiers, four Americans employed by Halliburton, three Iraqi Halliburton security personnel, four members of the Iraqi National Guard, and one person identified only as “a non-US person”. The military spokesmen put out the early word that the camp had been struck by a rocket attack and reported that a total of four rockets or mortar rounds had struck the camp. There was speculation that the hit on the mess tent was just a matter of luck – good luck for the insurgents and bad luck for the men and women eating lunch that day. It was a good way to minimize the implications of the explosion; ascribe it to pure dumb luck and move on. Then you don’t have to answer questions as to how it could have occurred. It would not be the first time that the military shaded the truth to keep the truth from the American people. It is an old military principle: everything is FUBAR so CYA.

Somehow it seemed too pat an explanation; randomly targeted missiles fired at the camp. There was even detail; one hit the mess tent; one hit just outside but caused no casualties; and two overflew the camp and landed in the desert. But almost as soon as the military’s story hit the news pages it started to unravel. A shadowy insurgent organization posted messages on Arabic language web-sites around the world. Ansar al Sunnah claimed credit for having conducted a successful “martyr operation” – a suicide bombing in the most secure allied installation in Northern Iraq. The group gave details, named the bomber who it claimed had been working at the camp, and said that he had detonated plastique concealed under his clothes.

Even as the military PR machine in Baghdad was selling the Lucky Strike theory the evidence on the ground in the mess tent was telling a different story. Damage to the kitchen equipment showed patterns of perfectly round holes consistent with round shot used as shrapnel in an explosive device. Witness accounts did not include the unique sound of an incoming mortar round or rocket. Finally ABC News broke the story of the discovery of a torso with the unmistakable signs that it had been wearing a suicide vest or explosive laden backpack – the “non-US person”.

It was not a rocket attack. It was not a mortar barrage. It was one person who gained access to the camp and struck at the largest concentration of troops he could target. The question that the military PR machine was trying to avoid with its elaborate tale of a four round barrage is, how did security break down? How did a member of a resistance group gain access to a supposedly secure US forward base? How was it possible for a bomb to be smuggled onto the base and into the mess tent? It is one more set embarrassing questions for the Defense Department to answer. Men and women who served three decades ago remember similar questions and similar incidents that always left the same question unanswered.

We can speculate as to the answer. Halliburton and its local subcontractors ran the mess tent under its no-bid contract. Every penny of cost saved means bigger profits banked in The Caymans. Out-sourcing the menial jobs of serving meals and clearing tables to local cheap labor makes good business sense and, if nothing else, Halliburton has perfected the art of squeezing the last cent of profit out of our no-bid taxpayer dollar. In a country in chaos security clearances are impossible. You pay a Dinar and you take your choice and you hope you stay lucky.

This time the luck ran out.