I take my dress shirts to a laundry. They just never look right when I wash and iron them myself, and ironing takes me forever. So I don’t mind paying $2.75 per shirt to get them done. Besides, I only wear dress shirts when I visit clients and make presentations, and that’s not that often.

Then I read that Halliburton bills the government $100 per load of laundry in Afghanistan.

There are numerous instances that demonstrate some of the fraud, waste, and overcharging that occurs by private contractors. For example, KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, bills the government nearly $100 per load of laundry, and charges about $45 for a 6-pack of soda.— Wyatt Merritt

Just examine your last pay stub, find the federal tax deduction, and calculate how many six packs of soda you have bought in Afghanistan. At Costco, you can buy a 6-pack for a couple of dollars. That’s about what Halliburton paid for that 6-pack. Then they shipped it to Afghanistan. That cost about as much as it costs the Chinese to ship our T-shirts to the U.S. — very little.  The rest is profit. Then think about your pay stub again, and how much of your federal tax deduction went to Halliburton profits.

Now do you still wonder why we are so anxious to put “boots back on the ground in Iraq?”