AN INDEPTH LOOK AT THE LEVELS OF CORRUPTION AMONG THE IRAQ WAR “CONTRACTORS AND THEIR FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES”
For some time now - probably as long as American men and women have been fighting and dying in the hellhole that is Iraq - courageous blogggers and other progressive media types have been trying to clue the folks here at home to the horrors being endued on a daily basis by our troops at the hands of the companies selected by the Bush administration to provide support services and to rebuild infrastructure destroyed in Exxon/Mobil’s little war.
But sadly, not enough of us have been listening. If we had, we would have heard the unsettling stories of our sons and daughters in uniform being forced to eat spoiled food, of them not having ample potable water to drink, and then being mercilessly nickel’d and dime’d out of their own pockets for the basic supplies of war.
Yes my friends, with proper media coverage the story would not only now in year six only be beginning to, as they say in the business, “gain traction”.
Well, no matter. The good news is that the word is finally out in a way that can no longer be ignored – splashed as it is, in exacting detail, in the pages of the latest edition of Rolling Stone.
At this point, I should probably warn you that reading this article will make you mad – madder than you have been in some time. But it will also prove to you, once and for all, that impeachment is the only way to go to punish the corrupt bastards responsible for this travesty.
No longer will they be able to hide in plain sight behind God and the family unit, and this is good. Real good. I can smell the funeral pyres being lit.
God save the Republic.
-LIB
THE GREAT IRAQ SWINDLE
Rolling Stone
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.
You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.
Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you’ve been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good — four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.
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