 Hi, my name is Pratap Chatterjee and I'm the Executive Director of CorpWatch. I've traveled to the Middle East and to Central Asia more than a dozen times since September 11, 2001, spending more than 16 months on the ground in the region to investigate military contractors. I've visited Iraq four times and Afghanistan four times and traveled as a journalist mostly in the red zones, accompanied generally only by a fixer or a translator. In addition, I've also embedded with the US military and visited bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and I've written two books on the subject, Halibutton's Army and Iraq Inc. The activities of the contractors are investigated range from low-skilled tasks like janitorial kitchen and transportation services to essential military logistical support functions like weapons maintenance and security protection. But by far and away, the biggest by revenue and employee numbers was Halibutton of Houston, Texas, who was once Dick Cheney and he quit that job just before he became Vice President of the United States under George Bush Jr. Halibutton's former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, often known as KBR, has grossed over $30 billion since it won a tenure contract in late 2001 to supply US troops in combat situations around the world. By the end of the 80 years of the Bush administration, the company claimed that its cooks had served more than 720 meals, its drivers had logged over 400 million miles on the road, and its workers had treated 12 billion gallons of potable water for the troops, or so they claimed. At the height of the war, there were 50,000 KBR employees or one KBR worker for every US soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq. The main function of these workers was to build and to maintain military bases, to make sure that soldiers were fed, their clothes were washed, and their showers and toilets kept clean. And while many stories have been written about the kind of salaries that some of these Halibutton employees make, $80,000, $100,000, and much more, in reality, most of the company's workers made a lot less, mainly because they were hired from countries like India and the Philippines, where a starting salary of $300 a month was considered a fortune. And it is actually very important to understand that these workers did not enjoy the same quality of life. And in fact, their lives were much harder than they expected when they left their countries thinking that they would make a fortune in the Middle East. To give you an example, I spent a lot of time with Fijian truck drivers who made hundreds of dangerous truck trips from Kuwait, in which they would drive large 18-wheel refrigeration trucks that carried all manner of goods, destined for US soldiers and bases in Iraq. But these truck drivers didn't get to sleep in the tents that they helped supply. They did not get to use those showers. They had to sleep in the trucks, and they were paid $2.50 an hour. While these employees were being exposed to mortal danger and they were underpaid, documents from the Army Corps of Engineers showed that KBR was charging the government double the market price for importing gasoline into Iraq from Kuwait. They also overcharged the US government for medial supply to troops at five military bases in Iraq and Kuwait. The company has also been charged with providing soldiers with unplurinated shower water and shard electrical work that caused a dozen soldiers to be electrocuted and killed. Take, for example, Staff Sergeant Christopher Lee Everett from Huntsville, Texas, who was killed in September 7, 2005 at Camp Takadem in Iraq, while he was power washing sand from the underside of a Humvee. On January 2, 2008, Staff Sergeant Ryan Masseth of Shayla Township in Pennsylvania was electrocuted to death while sharring his barracks at the Rathawaniya Palace complex in Iraq. You must understand that since 9-11, we've undergone eight years of invasions and occupations under Bush, followed by eight years of covert wars and assassinations under Obama. And today, we are less secure than ever before. And as we begin, perhaps the most uncertain and most dangerous period of US history since World War II, it behooves us to take a look back and figure out why and how we embarked on this path. The Middle East looks likely to explode in coming years, and the fall lies with us for lighting that powder keg. We don't need Nuremberg trial, but we at least need a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission in order to diffuse this anger, seek just solutions and move forward. And exposing the profiteering from this war is perhaps one of the most important tasks that we can undertake.