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Our man in DC, David Phinney, has been covering the upstart private security contractor Custer Battles since long before the mainstream media had a clue who they were. Now the company, which has made millions in taxpayer money in Iraq, has been found guilty of federal contract fraud amounting to nearly $3 million. The firm was ordered pay nearly $10 million in restitution.

A review of KBR's bills to the Navy by the Department of Defense's inspector general for work last year restoring damage by Hurricane Ivan suggest Halliburton subsidiary KBR may be charging the Navy too much in labor.

Here are some answers to some common questions about the Custer Battles federal contract fraud trial and its aftermath:

1. Why didn't the US Justice Department join in the Custer Battles lawsuit?

The plaintiffs invited them. After investigating under closed seal, the department decided against it. BUT, I did notice a Justice official sitting in the courtroom quietly taking copious notes on the proceedings.

In the first corporate whistle-blower case to emerge from Iraq, a federal jury in Virginia yesterday found a contractor, Custer Battles L.L.C., guilty of defrauding the United States by filing grossly inflated invoices for work in the chaotic year after the Iraqi invasion.

Armed men in police uniform seized dozens of Iraqi private security guards from their firm's compound on Wednesday, police said, but officials contradicted each other over whether they were arrested or kidnapped.

Last year CorpWatch launched an initiative to redefine the global warming issue as a question of local and global justice. Here is CorpWatch's fact sheet on climate justice.

The revelation that a Dubai-based firm provides security consulting for myriad U.S. operations at home and abroad shows the increasing tendency of the U.S. government to privatize security efforts.

With Pentagon buying likely to slow, firms show off hardware in Singapore.

US Congressman 'Duke' Cunningham sentenced to 8 years, 4 months Former congressman took millions in bribes.

Hugh B. Tant III, a retired general, testifies in a whistleblower trial against the Rhode Island-based company that an invoice seeking a $3.7-million profit for work in Iraq "appeared to be fraud."

ALEXANDRIA, Va. --Rhode Island-based defense contractors Custer Battles were "war profiteers" and "war whores" who filed phony claims for some of the millions of dollars they made in Iraq, an attorney for two whistleblowers told a federal jury during final arguments in a civil lawsuit Tuesday.

"It's not like stealing from a bank, because people's lives are at stake," said attorney Alan Grayson. "They let you down. They let down America. You should do something about that."

Between 2002 and 2005, St. Augustine, Fla., exercise equipment vendor Raul Espinosa watched mystified as, one after another, a series of Air Force contracts he had placed bids on were given to other companies. Of the 14 bids that Espinosa has documented, his company, FitNet International, did not win one. To his surprise, Espinosa learned that some of the competitors he was losing contracts to had never even bothered to bid on them.

Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, a co-sponsor of the new bill, said the legislation would set new standards to "restore integrity to a federal contracting process that has too often been operated in a manner that neither ensures confidence nor that taxpayers get a fair return for what they have paid."

MARK Vaile will press Iraq to buy Australian wheat even if the nation's monopoly wheat exporter AWB is excluded from the deal.

The Deputy Prime Minister, who will lead a mission to Iraq to save hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wheat sales, said yesterday he wanted a "clear indication" Iraq would "consider Australian wheat through another exporter if necessary to go into that tendering process".

A defense contractor admitted Friday he paid a California congressman more than $1 million in bribes in exchange for millions more in government contracts in a scandal that prosecutors say reached into the Defense Department.

Kevin Carter, a Warwick accountant, says he reconciled most of the $12.8 million spent by the company that now stands accused of war profiteering.

Climate Justice means holding fossil fuel corporations accountable for the central role they play in contributing to global warming.

Thanks to Halliburton, U.S. taxpayers are getting an expensive lesson in the costs of private contractors.

The UK has failed to act on promises to plug loopholes that allow the sale of arms to countries with poor human rights records, aid agency Oxfam says. It says that military vehicles were sold to Uganda by a South African subsidiary of the UK firm BAE Systems.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the centre of a growing controversy over its proposed management of U.S. port terminals, is one of the world's most prolific arms buyers and a multi-billion-dollar military market both for the United States and Western Europe.