Okay, I know bashing the contractors like Black Water working over in Iraq has become a pet project for the media lately. Even so, consider this. A woman claims she was drugged, raped and then threatened by her employer, KBR, while working over in Iraq. The government and KBR then allegedly took steps to cover it up.

While I might have been tempted to dismiss this as 'too crazy to be true' at first, a couple of things about this story that aren't being disputed strike me as odd:

-Her local congressman, whom her father contacted to try to help her when she was supposedly imprisoned by her employer is behind her (and he's a Republican).

-The Congressman's first step was to contact the State Department over in Iraq, who in fact did retreive her from a locked container which was being guarded.

-The employer in question, KBR, is insisting on the right to private mediation with sealed records and no judge.


Then again, a couple of other things strike me as odd:

-The woman was 20 years old at the time. What was she doing working for an oil services industry in a war zone?

-If the story is true, why would the State Department have gone and gotten her? If the government was really interested in helping KBR cover up a gang rape, wouldn't they just have come back to her congressman and said they couldn't find her?

Something smells very fishy here on several levels, and if it's true, well, shame on KBR and their employees. And shame on our government, for helping them cover it up. And if it's not true, shame on her, and shame on her congressman. Does anybody know what the hell is going on over there?

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