NEWS

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

BAGHDAD, Feb 19 (Summary of Reuters Article) - A senior Pentagon official said Halliburton is falling short in its commitments to supply the troops in Iraq and rebuild the country's oil infrastructure. "There is no doubt that more needs to be done. We have to make sure that we can provide the services as quickly as they are needed," Dov Zakheim, under secretary of defense, told Reuters. Halliburton's KBR unit is the biggest contractor for the U.S. military in Iraq with more than $8 billion in deals covering everything from doing laundry, building bases and providing meals to repairing oil infrastructure. "I would not give them a perfect score but I would not give them a terrible score either. It is a very tough job, and managing this type of operation in this difficult security environment is not easy," he said. Commanders in Iraq have complained that KBR failed to provide sanitary services and blast-proof barriers.