An inside look at Brown & Root, the kingpin of America’s new military-industrial complex:

“…The military police pried its driver, Fred Bryant Jr., from the wreckage and raced him to a military field hospital. Bryant, 39, died en route, the first KBR combat casualty since the Texas contractor was founded in 1919.

Bryant’s death underscores the U.S. military’s heavy reliance on private military companies, or PMCs, to wage war in Iraq. By most estimates, civilian contractors are handling as much as 20% to 30% of essential military support services in Iraq. Scores of PMCs are active all across the country, but KBR in particular has become indispensable to the global projection of American military might in this unsettled age. ‘It is no exaggeration to say that wherever the U.S. military goes, so goes Brown & Root,’ says P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution fellow and author of Corporate Warriors. Widely known as Brown & Root, KBR is a unit of oil-services giant Halliburton Co. (HAL ) — Dick Cheney’s old company.” —BusinessWeek [via Interesting People mailing list]