It's not clear why this person is going after Halliburton insteadof/in addition to the 4 persons responsible. Why a civil case against Halliburton? Because Juries throw out the big bucks, I guess.

PS: in the US, if 4 union members had raped this woman at the request if their union boss, the union would be legally sheilded from any prosecution for any wrongdoing, so long as the union could make the case that raping the woman was in the pursuit of legitimate union goals.

Halliburton does not have a policy of telling its employees to gang rape women. Many unions do have a policy of intimidation or violence against targets of opportunity.

I can't decide if Franken is trying to do this for the right reasons and is just dimwitted about the legal realities of this kind of sitution, or if he's grandstanding against Halliburton with an appeal to emotionalism.

thrash;291757 wrote:
This is a legal mess.

What legal jurisdiction do you suppose applies to a US civilian working for a US company who is employed by the US military as a contractor, but everything happens overseas where if there is any government at all, it certainly isn't the US government?

There should be a way for this woman to get some justice, but it's not clear that suing the company is even the right answer, even if it happened in the US. It's not like the company raped her -- 4 assholes did. Ideally, the employees would face criminal charges in Iraq, but I am sure uncle sam has some sort of indemnification so that anyone in Iraq on official OIF business can dismember nuns or something and get away with it.

Stewart does a good job at tugging on the heart-strings here, but its a legally tricky problem space.

I think what Stewart was saying is that by making someone sign an agreement that says that they won't sue anyone if something happens overseas is ridiculous, its basically saying "What happens in Iraq, stays in Iraq...if you go, please realize that some of the guys in our company will rape you and we don't give a damn about it because company rules change when we cross borders."

What legal jurisdiction do you suppose applies to a US civilian working for a US company who is employed by the US military as a contractor, but everything happens overseas where if there is any government at all, it certainly isn't the US government?

There should be a way for this woman to get some justice, but it's not clear that suing the company is even the right answer, even if it happened in the US. It's not like the company raped her -- 4 assholes did. Ideally, the employees would face criminal charges in Iraq, but I am sure uncle sam has some sort of indemnification so that anyone in Iraq on official OIF business can dismember nuns or something and get away with it.

Stewart does a good job at tugging on the heart-strings here, but its a legally tricky problem space.

63vette;291743 wrote:
Its just sad. Vote out every incumbent and start with a clean slate. Democrats and Republicans, just vote in the new guys and get these career crooks out of our government.

This is something I would be solidly behind. While we're at it, can we please set term limits on the new guys?