The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone
In Iraq, private contractors are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up. Estimate: War in Iraq could cost up to $9 billion monthly, says CBO
How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.
It isn't just Halliburton and Blackwater and a few of their subsidiary companies. It is also several companies set up just in time to cash in on the Iraq bonanza.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.
few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors. You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: "We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that "during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member's shirt." The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.
Mean while back in the US the Corps of Engineers is rebuilding substandard flood walls just like the ones that failed NOLA when Katrina hit. And the best part is that we are paying for it all.
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The wasteful war
How could not anyone see that in wars,there is profit to be made. No one understans that than President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Why should this be an surprise when our soldiers are dying for an country that not only doesnt want us but were still protecting that wasted thing called oil. Not one american soldier should not be killed for freakin oil that our inept President wants protected than anything else. So far weapons that were sent from america and into Iraq and Afghanstan have been stolen, although the Pentagon does not want to admit that and why should any idiot with no intelligence in Washington want us to know since were more smarter than the President alone much less the Pentagon. However there are companies willing to sacrifice their employees for their need for greed(Haliburton comes to mine, so does Dick Cheney). This war has not only been wasted in trying to turn a country into a democratic country but it also proves that al-maliki is a corrupt official in Iraq and its okay for our brain dead President.
Profiteering Worse Than You Think
If you are lucky enough to have access to Free Speech TV you may have seen that $22 BILLION of Iraq reconstruction funds have somehow slipped through Haliburton's hands and into their pockets. "Unaccounted for" says the Congressional oversight team. Meanwhile the once world-class Iraq medical facilities are reduced to blowing O2 into the mouths of preemies using makeshift tubing. No incubators, lifesaving meds, or the most basic necessities for patient care.
A father of a preemie was sent out to buy meds on the black market to save his infant daughter's life. Two hours later he rushes in, meds in hand, only to find out his baby died a few minutes before. This grieving father then searches for the right size cardboard box to put his baby in for burial. The doctors were crying with him out of total frustration. Gee, do we wonder why they hate us??
I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the committee that discovered the money went missing was disbanded at once by Bush and funding for subsequent oversight was no longer available. Haliburton, with incredible arrogance, requested more millions right after this damning report and got it. No questions asked!
Why did we vote in a Democratic Congress? Did we stupidly think they may insist on moral, ethical behavior by this administration?? Wow, were we fooled! If this Congress does not impeach and convict Bush and Cheney for high crimes and treason then we taxpayers who have blindly supported this unholy war deserve the frightening consequences of our inaction.
If you don't now have access to Free Speech TV or Link ask your cable or other carriers to get it. Dish TV carries it now. You will never hear the truth on network TV. (Unless you're worried whether Paris Hilton spends time in jail or not.) You know, this administration's foreign policy would make ME a terrorist and I'm just a nonviolent granny. Right now, that is....
Welcome to the site marianne
I hope that you stick around and read some of the posts. Most of our posters are pretty well informed, but I am sure that you can help inform those who aren't:)
One "mature woman" to another, nice to have you with us.
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