Iraq Still for Sale
The war had been outsourced, privatized, and the likes of Kellog Brown and Root were not so privately robbing the country blind with cost-plus contracts. Based on this bright idea, the more a company spent, say, on that Hummer for the boss running the ice cream concession for the troops on leave in Kuwait, the more that company made. Or rather, and looked at from the publicus side of the ledger, the more the taxpayer paid.
Back in early 2006, Ben was talking to anyone who would listen about how he had discovered contaminated water on at least three Army bases in Iraq, water supplied by KBR, with the kind of stuff in it that you have to magnify to convince yourself it could kill you. But few people were listening, and certainly not the executives at Halliburton/KBR to whom he reported the problem. At the time, Halliburton said there is ``no evidence to substantiate allegations made by these former employees.''
But, as there is a fairly crisp logarithm about the Iraq War in all it's facets, namely, that every problem having "no evidence to substantiate it" eventually finds that the evidence does point to the problem having been real, Ben Carter, of course, has now been vindicated.
A just released Pentagon report by the Inspector General maintains that "soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry [remember that $100 bucks] at five U.S. military sites in Iraq." And that KBR's water quality "was not maintained in accordance with field water sanitary standards."
Ben Carter has been vindicated, but it took a hard slog. In Ben's case, the documents confirming his assertions were not shredded, but only hidden from sight, denied a hearing. And even as the evidence is laid out before them, KBR executives continued to claim that their hands, if not those of the soldiers they poisoned, are clean.
For Ben Carter, who lost a twenty-year old son just prior to joining the KBR water crew in Iraq, the emotional connection with the men and women he was supposed to be protecting--not from IEDs, but from one-celled animals--was instant and profound. "I hadn't anticipated seeing him in a lot of the marines' faces.These marines and army soldiers, they're just kids. 19, 18, 20 years old. And I could see in their eyes that they've got a lot to learn. And they trust, but sometimes that trust isn't what they expect. They trust that when people are there to do what they're getting paid much more than the young marine's getting paid, they trust that job is getting done. And they're not wise enough to the world, to the corporate world especially, to know that that trust doesn't matter when it comes to money."
There's that algorithm again. If the Bushies say trust us and KBR with your money and your lives, best to put your hands in your pockets and head in the opposite direction, and fast. As we see with this Inspector General's report, often the evidence for malfeasance winds it way to the public ever so slowly. So it just might be that before your day of reckoning, before it is revealed that what you believe to be true is in fact true, you could be broke, have died waiting, or both.
Iraq was for sale, and it still is. The missing and ripped-off billions in this three-trillion dollar war, are now making their entrance into public consciousness, meandering toward their public hearing, as evidence to be weighed into the balance sheet of this awful and unnecessary act of imperial hubris.
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Anyone need more extremely monstrous distractions yet, added to the blatant treasonS? The only functional element in this administration is the "milk-the-public machine" so Bush can fund his evil "base" (aka put food on his family) who then can offer to 'pay' for any future election Bush Crime Family INC. needs to buy, that is, it is AMERICA on sale!. Clearly, that's why impeachment is essential, once pardons are "off the table".
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a remarkable man. He attained the highest defined rank in the United States Army ... General of the Army, FIVE stars. Then, in an entirely separate effort, he became Commander-in-Chief.
This is the man who coined the term "military industrial complex" and sternly lectured us about "its grave implicatio
This man was truly a qualified expert in the field. He knew all about military strategy, and he knew all about politics, and he knew the deleterious effect of money on both. He warned us all, repeatedly.
Right now, we have a nation that, to fund next year's budget, will be "borrowing from itself" $95,129.38 every SECOND ... and diverting the lion's share of it ... not to a city that's still in ruins 2.5 years later ... not to tens of thousands of crumbling highway bridges ... not to millions of uninsured families trying to keep themselves and their aging parents out of the poor-house ... not even to the troops ... to the families of well more than 5,000 dead and 30,000 "walking dead" ...
... to themselves. More money, "borrowed," in a second, than many a family will make in a year.
Many another country has followed this primrose path to its own destruction and ruination. The United States of America can certainly be counted as the same -- and as the nation which self-destructed in the least amount of time in history. If that's the way the citizens of this country are content for it to be, the historians of our future will dutifully record it, and turn the page.
.... and AMERICA FOR SALE?
Good post but it is even more important that attention be paid to what all the money leaving these shores has wrought...
http://pac
The foreign controlled money is coming. Much of it attached to governments antipathetic to America. Time for rules.
Rules? Silly person... my company is "multinational" so I am playing both sides. And so much money to be made ... why, every thing that I touch turns to gold ...
The Democrats control Congress. They should be held accountable for not exercising their oversight duties.
Mot really. Just by a slim margin. But then the rules were changed & you had to have a biggaer majority to pass a bill through. Plus blue dogs & other factors. Dems need a real majority with a Dem. president in order to create CHANGE.
I would agree with that also.
The only problem with the bias of your accusation is that there are Republicans in the Congress too. Enough to prevent a vote which would exercise the kind of oversight you subversively lament about.
subversively lament? What does THAT mean, pray tell.
Let us reemember that Brown & Root (of KBR) did so very much to bring us the war in Vietnam.
This whole privatized war idea is a crock of shit, and if you are defending the practices by these contractors you must be profiting dandily from this scam. This is a major piece to the military-industrial complex. There is nothing that these contractors are doing that the military (that used to do these jobs) could do better. We downsized the military to supposedly save costs on the defense budget - what a joke, the contractors that replaced those military personnel cost 10 times as much and are less efficient. Our government needs to give these jobs back to the military (which will need to expand) and get rid of the private contractor. During peace time, the Military could efficiently draw down by placing excess personnel in reserve status as it works today.
I WOULD ASK EVERY AMERICAN TO ASK A MILITARY SERVICE MEMBER ABOUT THE WORK OR SERVICE THEY RECEIVED FROM CONTRACTORS SUCH AS HALLIBURTON AND KBR TO LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW MUCH FRAUD WASTE AND ABUSE IS OCCURRING!
Remember the $172 hammer or the $600 toilet seat? That's exactly what your getting from this privatized war.
Men can turn into swine very quickly at the sight of the dollar sign! The dollar sign still represents power, even though less with each passing day. It makes me sick to see how Iraq is bein mismanaged by rutless individuals seeking own gain! No clean water for the children yet! Minimal amount of electricity. If this were happening in the U.S., there would be marches on the streets! And think, Iraq has much more money to spend than we do! Which indicates that Iraq has fallen into the hands of swine! I wonder if Mr. Cheney agrees with me.
Try this again ... my earlier comment got lost.
There's a sad irony to this story.
With their cost plus contracts KBR missed a chance to make larger profits. They could have listened to Mr. Carter and imported the necessary equipment to do the job AT MASSIVE COST, and charged the U.S. Government double. The Pentagon would have paid without a battin' an eye.
The biggest rip-off of the U. S. occupation of Iraq is that the U. S. become a de facto member of the oil cartel OPEC as of March 2003. The U.S./Iraqi delegate has always voted to cut back oil production. The U. S. has cut back oil production from the pre-occupation level of Hussein. The U. S. is helping OPEC with intelligence and enforcement powers.
The resulting skyrocketed price of oil is impoverishing not only here in America, but all around the world. The big beneficiaries are the dubious regimes on the Persian Gulf, plus Russia, Venezuela, and US domestic producers.
Congress should investigate and stop the U.S. helping any cartel anywhere in the world. The Presidential candidates should speak up. Right now, they ALL support U.S. in OPEC.
There's a real irony here.
The way the cost-plus contracts are made, Haliburton KBR missed the chance to make even greater profits providing clean water. Every dollar they spent getting the job done they could of got a dollar and ten cents return.
Why didn't they just buy the equipment and ship it to Iraq? The more it cost them to do it, the more profit they'd have made.
and, no matter what happens we Americans seem to pay no never mind as our kentucky brothers love to say. Our minds are bot big enough to understand the concept of 3 trillion which most people will never know what it is, that is the saddest part and one that the administration knows and explotes.
It would be nice if we could bring all these crooks to justice before Bush leaves office, but he would just pardon everybody. Justice will have to wait till a president pledges allegiance to the USA and not to some right wing agenda.
Don't count on it. They've already relocated over-seas to Dubai and Qatar. They'll all be somewhere where there's no extradition treaty with the U.S.
And ol' georgie boy 'll be joining them post-haste as soon as he leaves office. Won't even stop in Crawford to pack an overnight bag.
Besides, we've got his daddy's example. Pardon all the potential witnesses against you just before you leave office ... whether they've been convicted or not.
That's never going to happen. KBR & Halliburton have already relocated their operations to Qattar or Dubai. All the rest of the crooks will be safely ensconced somewhere that has no extradition treaty with the US before Bush/Cheney leave office.
And ol' Georgie boy will be joining them post haste as soon as he hands over the keys. Betcha' he don't even stop off in Crawford to pick up an overnight bag.
But at that we've got the example of daddy Bush. He'll pardon any potential witnesses against him before he leaves office. The only thing to wonder about is what kind of acrobatics it's going to take to manage issuing himself a pre-emptive pardon.
And that's assuming he won't manage to start WWIII in the next 10 months and find out he's gotta' declare marshal law and stay in power... all "for the good of the country" of course.
Funny thing JBS....I was thinking the same thing. Especially the part about declaring marshall law and staying in power. I don't think there will be an 08 election.
Lincoln warned us, Eisenhower warned us. Seems like the right decided it was manifest destiny rather than something to guard against. At least somebody learned from history, but it wasn't the good guys.
The job of the Congress is to oversee the operations of the government. Why aren't the leaders of both houses screaming about this taxpayer ripoff?
I have personally heard Nancy Pelosi publicly state in no uncertain terms the corruption that has reached the highest levels of this administration. Thing is, it takes more than a slim majority to do something about it.
Could someone explain to me the meaning of the phrase " a fairly crisp logarithm"? Did they mean "a fairly crisp algorithm" which is only slightly less nonsensical in this context? What kind of reporting is this?
Possibly from information theory. Or Computer Science ... or inferential statistics.
Basically it's saying there's some mathematical formula that explains why regarding the Iraq War, every time a problem has the message "no evidence to substantiate it" attached, it in fact always eventually substantiated.
This could be expressed as a logarithm.
Possibly from information theory. Or Computer Science ... or inferential statistics.
Basically it's saying there's some mathematical formula that explains why regarding the Iraq War, every time a problem has the message "no evidence to substantiate it" attached, it in fact always eventually substantiated.
This could be expressed as a logarithm.
Or it may be algorithm which means simply a recipe for responding to data input.
IF bushco & KBR == "trust me";
THEN
hang onto wallet;
run away;
I believe it's algorithm. Spell check got spun.
A "crisp" algorithm would be a simple, concise recipe as opposed to a fuzzy algorithm.
IF bushco-KBR
THEN (don't trust, hand on wallet, head for exit);
"Bushies..
Texas, not just the Republican party...
Bush and co...
Bush and his supporters
Unless we yank them out of the White House..."
Not being able to bring yourself to ID the real enemy, not having the balls to say what's obviously true, means the players who are really doing the things you're whining about are employing you, getting you to work for them for nothing.
Pretending it's Bush and Cheney that's done all this means you get to pretend that the next Presidential Occupant isn't involved.
Deeper and deeper.
The idea that someone capable of running this massive scam would expose himself at the level of Cheney's visibility is disgustingly naive. He's an employee, just like Bush.
There's no real call for change here. You guys just want better snacks in the cafeteria.
And cleaner water.
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Posted March 13, 2008 | 09:42 AM (EST)