Today was the first official day of IAVA's Storm the Hill 2009. IAVA has brought 17 Veterans from across the country to speak for Iraq and Afghanistan Vets and Present IAVA's Legislative Priorities for this year. You can find all of t IAVA's new issue reports and our 2009 Legislative Agenda here.

Today the 5 teams hit the hill and began what will be 4 epic days in the hall s of congress. We are meeting with the members of both VA committees, Armed Services Committees, and the freshmen Senators and Representatives. As we progress through out the week, we will be updating our progress and events in real time. Go to www.stormthehill.org to see events as they happen.

Last year IAVA was at the forefront of the historic Post 9/11 GI Bill. The final push for the New GI Bill began with Storm the Hill 2008 and ended with a full college education for veterans of Global War on Terror. This year we are pushing for better full implementation of the GI Bill, mandatory and confidential mental health screening for all veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and cutting the disability claims backlog in half.

However, above all else this year, IAVA is joining with other Veteran's Organizations to push for full and advanced funding for the VA. If we fund the VA one year in advance, we can ensure that as Congress battles over the budget and inevitably passed it late, care at our nations VA hospitals and clinics continue uninterrupted. Advanced funding will increase staffing and reduce wait times for care. With your support, and the leadership of those in Congress, we can make this happen.

WASHINGTON – Defense contractor KBR Inc. has been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The announcement of the new KBR contract came just months after the Pentagon, in strongly worded correspondence obtained by The Associated Press, rejected the company's explanation of serious mistakes in Iraq and its proposed improvements. A senior Pentagon official, David J. Graff, cited the company's "continuing quality deficiencies" and said KBR executives were "not sufficiently in touch with the urgency or realities of what was actually occurring on the ground."

"Many within DOD (the Department of Defense) have lost or are losing all remaining confidence in KBR's ability to successfully and repeatedly perform the required electrical support services mission in Iraq," wrote Graff, commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency, in a Sept. 30 letter.

Graff rejected the company's claims that it wasn't required to follow U.S. electrical codes for its work on U.S. military facilities in Iraq. KBR has said it would cost an extra $560 million to refurbish buildings in Iraq used by the U.S. military, including Saddam Hussein's palaces, which among other problems are based on a 220-volt standard rather than the American 120-volt standard.

KBR announced last week it won a new $35.4 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to design and build a convoy support center at Camp Adder in southern Iraq. It will include a power plant, electrical distribution center, water purification and distribution systems, wastewater and information systems and road paving.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the new KBR contract was inappropriate. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said he has formally asked the Corps of Engineers whether it was confident KBR could accomplish it and whether the Corps had any alternatives.

"This is hardly the time to award KBR a new contract for work they've already failed to perform adequately, and which put U.S. soldiers at even greater risk," Dorgan said in a statement. "Ultimately, contractors must be held accountable, and so should those who continue to award these contracts."

As of June 9, 2008, 81 American and Foreign KBR employees and subcontractors have been killed, and more than 380 have been wounded by hostile action while performing services under the company's government contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait.

HOUSTON—A lawsuit against two military contractors claims the companies' mistakes led U.S. soldiers to believe an American truck driver working for the contractors might be an insurgent steering a bomb-laden truck onto a U.S. military base.

In a lawsuit filed in Houston this week, Kristen Martin accused Halliburton Co. and KBR Inc. of the wrongful death of her father, truck driver Donald Tolfree, who was killed at a Camp Anaconda checkpoint, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, in February 2007.

The lawsuit does not blame the military, instead casting responsibility on the companies' practices.

Tolfree, of St. Charles, Mich., was told he would be protected by U.S. soldiers at all times. Instead, because of negligence and fraud by Halliburton and KBR, Tolfree was killed by U.S. troops, said Guy Watts, Martin's attorney.

"He was recruited in Houston, oriented in Houston and assured of his safety in Houston," Watts said in explaining why the lawsuit was filed here.

Heather Browne, a KBR spokeswoman, said while the company has sympathy for Tolfree's family, it is neither liable nor responsible for his death.

Halliburton spokeswoman Diana Gabriel said her company has not been served with the lawsuit. But if it is related to KBR work in Iraq, Halliburton should not be named in the case, Gabriel said.

KBR, a major engineering and construction services company, was split off as a separate public company from Halliburton in 2007.