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    Memorial Day: A Time for Honor... And Shame

    By Larry Jankens on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 12:46pm | Politics

    Memorial Day is a day that we honor our troops and their sacrifices. However, I think we should also take some time to shame some of the people that put them in harms way by enabling war profiteering for an ill-conceived war. After all, putting outmoded neocon foreign policy ideals and the pursuit of money in front of your own soldiers is something these people should be ashamed of.

    So let’s look at some examples of some shameful activity by our military, not the soldiers themselves, but the jerk-holes who make the big decisions – like the decision to privatize the Iraq war. Put your shaming hat on and get ready to shame it up. (each title has the link to the corresponding source)

    1. KBR’s Embroidered Towels

    Picture yourself as a KBR supervisor in charge of contracts in Iraq. You owe it to your stock holders to give them the maximum return on their investment. You also have no conscience. So of course when you win the contract to make towels for the soldiers and the more it costs to make the towels the more you can charge the government you decide to embroider the towels and quadruple your profits. After all the tax payers are paying for it. Meanwhile soldiers don’t have body army, but why should you care, you are giving your investors maximum return on their investment?

    2. Guard This Empty Truck

    Seth Borstein of the Sun Herald reported in 2004 that at least 12 current and former Halliburton truck drivers were told to drive empty trucks back and forth between US military installations so that the company can charge the US government more money. This is money that could have been spent on patients at Walter Reed, but instead was squandered on enriching Cheney’s buddies.

    3. The Case of the Missing Billions (with a “B”)


    We’ve all made mistakes in managing money, but I’m pretty sure none of us have misplaced 9 billions. You’d have to be a real incompetent buffoon to do that, you know, like a higher up at the Pentagon in charge of Iraq war money. I'd be okay with missing millions (with an m), but billions? Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele from Vanity Fair reported that in 2003 and 2004 over 9 billion dollars were “misplaced.” Whoops. Sorry tax payer. Sorry soldiers who deserve more money for putting their necks on the line. They just “misplaced” your money. No big deal.

    This Memorial Day, take time to honor and thank those who serve in our nation’s military. Also, take time to shame and curse those who run the military like the Oprah Show – You get a billion, and you get a billion, and you get a billion. Our tax dollars should go to compensate brave men and women for protecting our country, not enrich private corporations and waste our money.

    Catch more at: www.lowlifebastard.blogspot.com

     

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    Politics

    Comments

    Larry, the pattern of waste and graft you outline in your three examples is so blatant, so egregious, it's impossible to blame it on incompetence. Consider that the people who lined up to so profitably run the Iraq occupation were basically the same people who had pushed hardest for the Iraq War.

    So why the deliberate waste? There's the obvious reason: the more unaccountable funding pushed through the pipeline, the more there would be to skim and scam a share of -- some through pseudo-legal cost-plus contracts, far more through outright fraud.

    But the last-ditch money flights just as the Coalition Provisional Authority was about to hand over "sovereignty" to the Iraqis suggests something even more sinister. That last $5 billion or so -- hundreds of tons of bills, on shrink-wrapped pallets, virtually shoveled off the backs of pickup trucks -- was money that belonged to Iraq. The CPA (and the Pentagon, State Dept. and White House) made a deliberate decision to "spend" the last of Iraq's remaining reserves held on U.S. soil before the Iraqis were in a position to decide for themselves how, whether and where to spend it.

    That decision effectively bankrupted the infant Iraqi regime, cementing its dependence on both the U.S. military and the contractors and consultants it had brought along for the ride. "Hey, you're now broke, but we'll rebuild your oil infrastructure in exchange for long-term access to the oil that you now need so desperately to sell." Was the Bush administration that cynical, that manipulative, that in the pocket of KBR, Halliburton and Big Oil? Do you really need to ask?


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 6:29pm

    I highly recommend the article you link to at the top of item 3, "The Case of the Missing Billions." It makes me mad, no matter whose money was being tossed away.


    by acanuck on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 6:32pm

    acanuck - The Vanity Fair article is absolutely enraging.  I concure that it is definitely worth the read.  Check this quote, it encapsulates the shameful acts of these folks.

    "Regardless of the war, the administration, or the various sophistries for expending human lives as a matter of government policy, profiteering from it universally offends all citizens, whether they are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, other parties or no shows. Most Americans, regardless of party or ideology, want to believe that any government “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as once put forth by Abraham Lincoln, necessarily must dispense the people’s business and money in a fair, honest and accessible way. As a “developed” democracy, for decades we have established extensive, government procurement processes to ostensibly ensure such full and open bidding for contracts.

    But of course the street reality is much worse. And unfortunately, despite political rhetoric and platitudes about “competitive bidding,” the indisputable fact is that in Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire, massive Defense budget, those companies winning the largest, most lucrative government contracts have been consistently among the most politically influential in Washington. They have expended millions of dollars to hire former Pentagon officials, to finance federal campaigns, to lobby the legislative processes. We are supposed to believe it is merely coincidental that the recidivist recipients of U.S. contracts, some of whom have committed fraud, price fixing or other abuses in the documented past, also just happen to be those who have most greased the skids in our nation’s capital."

    Charles Lewis, the founder and executive director of the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity


    by Larry Jankens on Mon, 05/25/2009 - 6:54pm