No Mo $$ = No Mo War

Calling for the cutting off of funds to the military in Iraq is not "not supporting the troops." Even military families are demanding the cessation of funding as a way of stopping the war; see this press release from Military Families Speak Out:

February 5, 2007 – Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) members today called on Congress to support our troops and honor the fallen by voting against President Bush’s request for a supplemental appropriation that would allow the U.S. military occupation of Iraq to continue. Military Families Speak Out, an organization of over 3,200 military families opposed to the war in Iraq, is the largest organization of military families opposing a war in the history of the United States.

“President Bush is now requesting funds to continue an unjustifiable war that is taking the lives of three U.S. troops and countless Iraqi children, women and men each day,” said Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out and stepmother of a Marine who served in Iraq. “Now is the time, and Congress is the vehicle, by which this horrific war can finally end. We call on Congress to support our troops by voting against the funds that would allow this war to continue. To do otherwise would be to abandon our loved ones and the people of Iraq to the unending and worsening violence of this misbegotten war..."

Stopping funding would also be a way of stopping corruption. There was a story on the cover of the New York Times yesterday, Sunday, about concern over corruption in the use of government contractors in Iraq (“Questions of Propriety and Accountablilty as Outside Workers Flood Agencies”). It was the typical palatable, cold cereal of a story. If you want to get a handle on the whole, great big stinking pile of manure, check out "Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers," another documentary from Robert Greenwald (the same guy who made Outfoxed, about the Fox News empire). It was released last year, is now available on Netflix and Amazon and in some video stores.

It isn’t anything we don’t already know—big corporations make money off war, while children die and taypayers shoulder the bill—but it’s laid out in a way that can leave you feeling very exposed to the truth. There’s whistleblower testimony, first-hand accounts from soldiers and contract workers. If you’re already involved in the struggle to end this foul war, it’ll make you fight that much harder. If you’re not, yet—see you at the next march in Washington, or wherever this struggle takes us.

The film makes very plain the price we're paying for the revolving door between the government and corporations which act as contractors for the military. "Conflict of interest" is an understatement; it's an Escher painting of a pig sucking on its own teats. Meanwhile the government can say they’ve “cut big government"; but they haven’t. These contractors over-charge by billions, meanwhile giving millions upon millions to the political machines of their (mainly Republican) cronies. So when Vice President Dick Cheney gets on the news and insists we’ll stay the course in Iraq, he’s talking as the former head of Halliburton/KBR, which since the Iraq war began has reaped megabucks in no-bid contracts.

But first let’s talk about CACI. The article in the Times mentions how, in June, when complaints over incompetence and fraud by government contractors began flooding government agencies, the government went and hired another contractor to process the complaints: CACI International, which itself had narrowly avoided suspension from federal contracting.

What the Times doesn't mention, unfortunately, because the public needs to know, is that CACI “interrogators” have been accused of torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Former employees, prisoners and a brigadier general whistleblower, Janis Karpinski, have publicly denounced CACI interrogators for their sadistic practices, which included abuse of prisoners' genitalia. Many of these prisoners were innocent working-class men who were picked up in routine sweeps. As there is no oversight of these contract workers in Iraq, you won’t see any of them going on trial or even being investigated.

CACI, founded in 1962, has its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Its proximity to the heart of the military industrial complex would seem no accident. On its web site, www.caci.com, the company presents itself as a sort of unofficial wing of the military, which essentially it is, but one without accountability. “Ever Vigilant” its motto. Its icon is the American eagle. It has a close relationship with Homeland Security. Since the beginning of the Iraq war, CACI has received 60 billion dollars in taxpayer money for "U.S. Army Intelligence Services." The head of CACI, J.P. London, has earned $22 million in salary.

CACI has been accused of providing bad intelligence which has the potential for putting U.S. servicemen and women in danger. TITAN, another company which provides translators for the military, has been exposed for providing untrained translators who often are not proficient in the languages they claim to know. These are the people our government has hired to grill supposed insurgents on their activities. The heads of TITAN, like CACI, are former military men and women, senior retired military personnel.

"When I came back from Iraq, what was so heartbreaking," Aidan Delgado, a SPC Army Reservist, says in "Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers," "is that we weren't always the good guys. It was so disillusioning for me. I had grown up with this dream of America and what America was and when I saw that dream at Abu Ghraib and what it had become I felt heartbroken. I felt like I didn't know what it was to be an American because I saw what I thought America was destroyed and disgraced."

When the Iraq war began, Halliburton/KBR was imediately on the scene, taking on roles formerly performed by the U.S. military. A soldier in the film talks about spending his time training KBR employees to fix simple radios, a job he already knew how to do and which it was his job to do. Military personnel are being "outsourced" for the benefit of companies like KBR. "If you don't know KBR, you haven't been to Iraq," says another soldier.

American working men and women go to work for KBR in Iraq because they need to feed their families, pay for their homes. They also think they're going to "help re-build Iraq," which none of these companies has managed to do very well, despite the exorbitant cost to the American taxpayer. ($45 for a can of Coke?) KBR has also been accused of not protecting its workers. In 2004, a convoy of KBR trucks came under fire and several truckers were killed; they were in the middle of a war zone without any sort of of military training or weaponry. KBR has also been accused of not providing clean water to American soldiers (they run the water plants); 63 of 67 tanks tested were full of contaminants including malaria. This is the water U.S. soldiers drink and bathe in.

Since the Iraq war started, Halliburton stock has quardupled in value. Its CEO, Deavid Lesar, has reaped $47 million in salary since 2001. Vice President Dick Cheney's office coordinated KBR's contract in Iraq; this is well known. And yet there has not been a single hearing about it in Congress.

What I always wonder is how conservatives can justify the awarding of these no-bid, sole source contracts, when it would hardly seem to represent their dream of a free market. It also makes for bad business practices, which in the end hurts American servicemen and women. Soldiers in Iraq sleep on cots that make them sick, they're so germ-infested, while KBR executives and their secretaries live the good life, driving around in lavish cars, Cadillacs, Escalades.

One can only imagine what the average Iraqi thinks of our wonderful American democracy, seeing how we treat our own soldiers versus how these fat cat executives live high in the midst of the war. Or how Iraqis feel about the fact that we are importing American workers to rebuild their country (badly) instead of hiring them to do it.

Senator Leahy of Vermont has been one of the few Congresspeople to speak out against this infuriating and immoral situation. His bill to stop war profiteering was shot down. Let's let the new Congress know we want it to stop. There should be investigations; probably some people should go to jail. It will take a big movement; the first step is knowing the truth.