Another KBR Rape Case

THE NATION– It was an early January morning in 2008 when 42-year-old Dawn Leamon, a paramedic for a defense contractor in southern Iraq, woke up to find her entire room shaking. The shipping container that served as her living quarters was reverberating from nearby rocket attacks, and she was jolted awake to discover an awful reality. “Right then my whole life was turned upside down,” she says.

What follows is the story she told me on Monday in a lengthy, painful on-the-record interview, conducted in a lawyer’s office in Houston, Texas, while she was back from Iraq on a brief leave this week.

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand–but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Leamon would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp’s military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. “Because then, all of a sudden, if you’ve done exactly what you’ve been instructed not to do–tell somebody–then you’re in danger,” Leamon says.

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Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images North America

SD UNION TRIBUNE– Northrop Grumman Corp. on Wednesday said its first-quarter profit rose almost 50 percent, boosted by higher sales of military products like aerial drones and a larger contract for a satellite-based tracking system.

The No. 2 defense contractor seems largely insulated from the recession, which has hurt earnings at other U.S. manufacturers like Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc. and rival Lockheed Martin Corp. It appears Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ proposed fiscal 2010 defense budget, which begins Oct. 1, will not cancel or hurt any of Northrop’s ongoing projects for the military.

The Los Angeles-based company also raised its 2009 outlook, reflecting a pretax gain of up to $70 million in the second quarter from a legal settlement with the U.S. government.

Northrop Grumman said its full-year forecast is now $4.65 to $4.90, up from previous guidance of $4.50 to $4.75.

The results were a contrast to Lockheed Martin, which reported a 9-percent decline in first-quarter profit on Tuesday as a result of growing pension costs. The rival continues to devote more cash to a pension plan that has been hurt by sharp declines in the stock market. For its part, Northrop Grumman is considering kicking in up to $500 million to cover its pension costs in 2009, beyond its required contribution of $126 million for the year.

“Northrop Grumman is off to a solid start in 2009,” said CEO Ronald Sugar, on a call with Wall Street analysts.

In the latest quarter ended March 31, the company earned $389 million, or $1.17 per share, up from $264 million, or 76 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Continue reading about Northrop Grumman’s Profit Increase.

Photo by flickr user purple slog

war contractors

Another KBR Rape Case

Northrup Grumman Profits Up 50%