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Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

The senator, Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said at a hearing that Maj. Gen. Jerome Johnson, who was commander of the Army Sustainment Command until last year, made inaccurate statements to the Senate Armed Services Committee about problems with water supplied to American soldiers in Iraq by KBR, the largest defense contractor in Iraq.

The Bush administration has disclosed that U.S. advisors in Iraq played a key role in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies. The no-bid contracts are expected to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil companies.

The US has accepted that foreign contractors in Iraq will no longer have immunity from Iraqi law under a new security agreement now under negotiation, says the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari.

The Army official who managed the Pentagon's largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

A poorly run Pentagon program for providing workman's compensation for civilian employees in Iraq and Afghanistan has allowed defense contractors and insurance companies to gouge American taxpayers, a House committee said Thursday.

For the first time since the war began, the largest single Pentagon contract in Iraq is being divided among three companies, ending the monopoly held by KBR, the Houston-based corporation that has been accused of wasteful spending and mismanagement and of exploiting its political ties to Vice President Dick Cheney.

FENCELINE: A COMPANY TOWN DIVIDED premieres nationally on P.O.V. Tuesday, July 23, 2002 at 10:00 pm (check local listings) on PBS. Produced by LOGTV, Ltd. in association with the Independent Television Service. ITVS and National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) Co-presentation.

Court documents and interviews with whistleblowers shed light on persistent problems in the operations of private military and security company MVM, Inc., a top provider of secret security to U.S. intelligence agencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amid all the polemics over the use of private military and security contractors by the U.S. government there are two words one rarely sees, but they lie at the very heart of the debate: "inherently governmental."

One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was "a disaster waiting to happen."