Why would you allow a thief to live in your house and rob you and your family blind? Sadly, it's actually happening and you are allowing it with hardly a whimper of protest. Why would you not stand up to protect your family’s future, stop this thief and bring him to justice?
The huge expense of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow seem eerily familiar to the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that lasted 10 years and put Russia in dire financial straits. Russia is still in recovery. That war was also a failure. Now the US has been sucked into the same quagmire and will likely suffer the same results. This can mean nothing but trouble and hard times ahead for the average American.
The Bush administration has ran to the bank over and over to borrow billions upon billions of dollars to finance this war and has used the war as an opportunity to reward themselves and their corporate partners in crime who are robbing this country and its citizens blind. They are also destroying our military and our national security in the process. Bush and his administration will go down in history as the most corrupt and the worst this nation has ever had. And he will smugly flip his middle finger at us as he and his gang of greedy corporate madmen ride off with the biggest treasure ever amassed by a criminal cabal and thieving horde.
The stories of corruption, hundreds of millions of dollars missing and over-billing by Haliburton and other contractors is mind-boggling. Continuous cost overruns on every project, bribe money, inflated overcharging and other extremes are going unchecked and unaccounted for by the Bush administration and the military. There are reports of warehouses in Iraq that contained pallets loaded with shrink wrapped hundred and thousand dollar bills that have disappeared without a trace. Haliburton has reportedly constructed a plant to produce cola drinks for the troops and is charging American taxpayers $45 per six-pack. Haliburton or another contractor is charging our government $99 to launder a small bag of clothing that could easily be washed by the troops for three dollars. That's just two tiny examples of corruption and theft.
And get this: Haliburton and the other contractors must have security while they steal from us, so our own tax dollar financed military provides free security along with employees of another Bush-buddy contractor, Blackwater, who reportedly has about 40,000 security personnel on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, a sizable mercenary army that is not subject to any law or military command.
And consider this. These free-range, private contractors, most of them managed by recently discharged career military officers, are hiring away our troops as their enlistments come up. This is depleting our military of trained and experienced men and women who simply quit the military and go to work for these criminal enterprises at five to ten times what they were being paid to do the same jobs they were previously doing while serving in the armed forces. This drain on experienced troops has caused the military to lower admission requirements for new enlistees thus affecting the quality of our military overall. These replacement troops must be trained and are being moved quickly through the training process which is an abbreviated training regimen that allows improperly and poorly trained troops to be sent to combat zones imperiling not only their own lives but those of the career military who must rely on them and the civilian population as well. In turn, the morale of those in uniform is taking a big hit as they watch their once fellows-in-arms now working along side them, doing the same jobs, but banking a hundred to two hundred thousand a year instead of the $25,000 to $35,000 they are being paid.
When will sanity return to this nation – or will it ever? Are we doomed at the hands of these greedy madmen in office, both Democratic and Republican, who parade and posture as American patriots but are instead nothing but unconscionable criminals? Are they nothing but low-life thieves living in our house and systematically robbing us and our children of our future, our freedom, and the opportunity to live the American dream?
Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq
New U.S. data show how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of the war-torn nation.
By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer
July 4, 2007
The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
For the complete report go here.
