Will Blog for Food

Bush's Economic Stimulus Plan: Another Shot of Heroin for an Economy Facing Withdrawal

The Republican plan for for the economy was to keep it afloat by government overspending and overborrowing until the Democrats took over in 2009. Then the whole collapsing mess would be foisted off on them, they would be forced into the position of cleaning up the "malaise" and then they would get the blame for it. The Republicans would wing along in economic high times with tax breaks; the Democrats would be forced into the position of being the belt tighteners. What happened? The merde hit the fan about a year earlier than the Republican game plan called for. So what is Bush's response? Another shot in the arm to prop the economy up for one more year till he's safely out of office. This is exactly what the economy doesn't need: more spending and borrowing. Bush's $150 million package would be money just added to the national debt, along with the trillions he's already added, in a frantic attempt to stave off the malaise and not have it identified with the Republican party.

Bush wants everybody to go out and spend the pittance he's promising every American - $600 for individuals; $1200 for a couple; $300 for each child. This is the Roman equivalent of the "bread" in "bread and circuses." But what do economic advisors who advise individuals, such as Ben Stein and Suze Orman, advocate? Paying down your credit card and/or other debt which is exactly what Americans should do. This, however, will not provide any stimulus to the economy. A good case could be made that exactly what this economy needs is a good recession much as a heroin addict needs to go through withdrawal and not have just one more fix. Bush is offering just one more fix, and the  Democrats are cheerfully going along with it, letting Bush off the hook yet again. Instead, they should saddle him with the economic malaise. Let the recesssion or retrenchment, if you prefer, start now. The sooner Americans, collectively, get out of debt and start saving, the better off we'll all be. The problem is not that we aren't spending enough; the problem is we're not saving enough. And so what if there's an economic slowdown. Much economic activity is simply the meaningless buying of worthless goods fueled by advertising, excessive materialism and conspicuous consumption. Diminishing those impulses would be to the spiritual enrichment of all Americans.

And the problem, at the national level, is  that we're indebting ourselves to China and the Arabs who have issued us a national credit card and are facilitating our running it up to absurd proportions. They're our enablers, and we're their patsys. The irony is that as we are trying to control the world in the name of national security, we are underminig our national security by voluntarily making ourselves into a vassal state of China, primarily, becoming our lord and master. We are borrowing billions in order to spend billions on military adventurism that is only making the US less secure and is acccomplishing nothing in terms of making us safer. The Iraq war is sheer folly from a national security and an economic perspective. The Chinese are co-dependently enabling us to spend billions there fighting some rag tag group, while, at the same time, putting us in the position of being beholden to them and even making more likely a US-China war sometime in the future when they exercise their "right of the master" and make a move to take back Taiwan.

Individuals need to pay off their credit cards with the money Bush is giving away - not go out and spend it on Chinese goods. This will only stimulate the Chinese economy. The same goes for interest rate cuts. More unwarranted stimulus accelerating the falling dollar. Anything to keep the spending spree going until Bush gets out of office! The Democrats should fight for something more in line with Democratic principles like extended unemployment benefits, rebates to seniors on social security who have no earned income, full rebates to low wage earners and a moratorium on mortgage rate resets. Right now they've got Bush by the cajones; they should press their case. Bush has forced his crap down their throats for 7 years; turnabout is fair play. Bush wants a short lived shot of heroin; the Democrats should start now putting the American economy on a sound footing and marginalizing Bush and his foolhardy borrow and spend policies.

On another note, there are four propositions on the California ballot that would allow Indian casinos to add more slot machines with the sweetener that billions more, raked off the profits of these, would go to the financially strapped state. Is this the kind of society we really want? Money spent foolishly by seniors blowing their social security checks in order to provide profits for Indian tribes who then graciously give part of the profits to the state so that it can continue to function? I say no. Let them come by the money  legitimately like by, oh, horror of horrors, dare I say it, raising taxes instead of encouraging, aiding and abetting the foolhardy to piss their money away at Indian casinos. The state shouldn't bail itself out on the backs of the foolhardy; the Indians, it seems, have no such scruples. They just want to increase their profits. That's the American way. And they can argue that turnabout is fair play after Europeans stole their country and long-marched them onto reservations, at least those that didn't die from European introduced diseases. But, nevertheless, we shouldn't allow it to happen - increased facilitation of gambling that is. And the "direct democracy" of allowing propositions on the ballot instead of having these matters legislated by our elected representatives is severely flawed when the proponents of any given proposition can spend millions on TV ads promoting their cause.

"Bush on the Couch" and Andover

Justin Frank has written a book, "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," in which he attempts to psychoanalyze  George W Bush. The problem with this book is that it's just guess work. He relies on secondary sources with no real personal exposure or experience with any phase or facet of Bush's life. He theorizes that Bush was severely scarred by the death of  his  little sister and the way his parents treated the event: no mourning, golf instead. Frank points out that while the senior Bush was a star athlete, succcessful businessman and war hero, George W was generally a failure at all these things.  But while Frank has no experience with any facet of George W's life, I do: his career at Andover, one of the most elite American prep schools. Phillips Academy Andover is the oldest continuously running incorporated boarding school in the United States, established in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr. I didn't attend Andover when Bush was there; I was a few years ahead of him. But I don't think that much had changed by the time Bush got there. It was still an all male, almost military environment at which one had to wear a coat and tie to class, attend compulsory chapel every morning, and call the masters "sir". It didn't become co-ed until it merged in 1973 with neighboring Abbot Academy, hitherto an all girls' school.

When Frank points out that Bush is a man not in touch with his emotions and that he's psychologically stunted, he needn't have looked any farther than Andover. It was an environment devoid of any compassion or empathy, an environment in which to acknowledge a feeling was a sign of weakness, an emotional hell. The three years I spent there were hell compared to any years of the rest of my life before or since. Or stated a different way, the rest of my life has been an absolute heaven compared to the three years I spent at Andover. It was a "Lord of the Flies" environment devoid of the opposite sex, whether as students or teachers. There were no girls, no dating, no girlfriends. It was a closed, almost cult like culture, in which there were rocks (looked up to and admired) and flits (looked down upon and denigrated). Masculinity was everything and to be stunted emotionally was considered to be the hallmark of masculinity. To be rock-like was to have no feelings, no emotions, no weaknesses.

I was a scholarship student having won the prize for the highest marks on the entrance examinations.  You might say I was a professional student having been reared in a home with two educators as parents.  As Mr. Hawes, my housemaster at Williams Hall (actually I was in an out building called Stott Cottage), had written on a report to my parents, "Johnny knows what he's here for." Yeah, I was there to study, work my ass off seven days a week and get good grades. I had no other purpose or function in life. I was to do this in an environment devoid of family emotional support or any support I might have gotten from a normal adolescence which included the opposite sex. Actually for the first two years I achieved a considerable degree of success in my chosen vocation.  Every marking period or quarter they ranked all 180 members of the class from first to last in academic achievement and divided the top ranking students into both a first and a second honor roll. I was first in the class once, made the first honor roll three times and the second honor roll three times.

Even though I came from a poor background, not the rich upper class background that Bush and most of the others came from, life at Andover pretty much sucked for everybody, and I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that almost everyone was affected in a negative way by the cynical and cruel culture which any all male environment seems to degenerate into. Although the campus and facilities there would be the envy of most colleges, it was a dystopia in which the masters (teachers) demanded absolute respect and had little sympathy for their charges. Their goal was to whip them into shape, to make "Andover men" out of them. I was merely a child of 13, not yet having gone through puberty, when I started there. It  reminded me of a comic book I had read where this family made a deal with the devil that they would get to live in this house with every modern convenience. They wouldn't have to do a lick of work and an ATM would dispense $200. every week. (This was in the 1950s, remember.) There was only one catch: they could not ever leave the house. That was the way it was at Andover. Rich kids and kids whose families lived close by could get away for the weekend. I couldn't. I was stuck there in this abnormal environment with no contact with the outside "normal" world. My parents lived too far away. Long distance calling was out of the question in those days unless you were rich, and my Mom and I exchanged letters on a weekly basis, something that seems antiquated and quaint today. I only got to go home at Christmas, spring break and summer vacation. Thank God for that or I wouldn't have survived!

Getting back to "Bush  on the  Couch" - cruelty, cynicism, lack of sympathy and compassion, superciliousness, condescension - these were the characteristics  of Andover culture.  People who were soft in any way were considered suspect. People who excelled academically  were suspect - suspected of being fairies or flits. The word "gay" hadn't been invented yet. The word "flit," insofar as I can tell, was Andover's unique contribution to terms of derogation. I couldn't quite figure out the difference between a fairy and a flit, but it was all Andover mythology anyway, and it had more to do with hurling cruel, hurtful epithets at people as a form of bullying than anything else. In a closed, cult-like culture it took on terrifying implications which seem ridiculous today now that I live in an open culture and am relatively balanced and well informed.

The socially awkward and unsophisticated were suspect. Boys were terrified of being called names that signified that they were anything less than totally masculine and so had to project a hardened, rock-like exterior. Any sign of emotion was considered a sign of homosexuality, effeminacy and weakness. Any creativity or intellectuality was a sign of weakness and fairyhood. No wonder Bush comes across as a non-intellectual. To get by at Andover, one of the nation's elite schools, you had to pretend to be anti-intellectual if you were to get the respect of your peers. You did little work and got by with a "gentleman's" C although you would not like to be characterized as a gentleman but as a rock. You showed your disdain for those trying to achieve high grades to get into a good college because you knew that you family's wealth and your father's contributions to the Yale alumni fund would get you a "legacy" admission. This is the milieu that George W Bush existed in desperately trying to achieve a degree of popularity as a cheerleader, a role he continued to carry out as President of the United States.

It was difficult for me, going through adolescence with no girls available, coming to terms with my heterosexuality at a time when little information was available, largely ignorant of what a fairy or a flit was, wondering if masturbation made me one. With little or no knowledge or available information, I was left to imagine the worst about who or what I was. While excelling academically, I was going to hell in a handbasket emotionally and psychologically. Without a supportive family environment, my self esteem was evaporating on a daily basis. I had no one to talk to about these issues and had to hold it all inside with disastrous consequences.  My parents and teachers thought I must be in wonderful shape since I got good grades, but I was hurting inside and rapidly reaching the boiling point. While I continued to function at a high level, the part of me where I lived, my psychological interior, was becoming a wasteland. These experiences, I'm sure,  were not unique to me although not everyone felt them as severely. Andover, or rather the Andover culture, ruined many a life, scarred others, including me, for life, and sent many kids packing back to their homes and families because they couldn't cope with an environment in which there was no love or compassion or members of the opposite sex. These were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones, like Bush, stayed and graduated.

Let's consider, as Frank and others have done, what the psychological characteristics of the Bush  administration are: cruelty, cynicism, lack of compassion, disregard for the poor and powerless, sucking up to the rich and powerful, selfish pursuit of money and power, superciliousness, condescension - an almost perfect fit for the values of Andover culture circa 1950s and 60s. I hope these attitudes don't prevail at Andover today. Maybe the addition of co-eds was a deliberate change of policy in order to overcome the prevailing negativity at that time. Hopefully, they aren't continuing to turn out emotionally stunted, uncaring rich kids who then go on to the corrridors of power and operate in the same way that many CEOs and politicians do today.

By my third year there (I was what they called an upper middler), I was a sick puppy. I decided I wanted out, and wasn't going to play the game of high academic achiever any longer. What did it matter if I gained entrance to a venerable educational institution but lost my soul - to paraphrase a well-known source. I became a slacker: getting demerits, not wearing ties to class (under my sweater where they sometimes went unnoticed), spending my evenings playing pool. I was determined to become a rock. I made the JV basketball team, a not inconsiderable feat given the hotly contested competition for available slots, and much to the disappointment of some guys who had me pigeonholed as a flit and were openly hostile even tripping me and causing a sprained ankle on the basketball court.

I had always been into music and I formed a dixieland band along  with Jerry Bremer who later became the Viceroy of Iraq in the Bush Administration. Jerry was a good friend to me, one of the few I had there, so I won't be critical of the role he played in the Iraq debacle. I remember him saying he wanted to be an ambassador some day. I wish he hadn't gotten his wish. I played  trumpet; Jerry played drums. We played once in front of the assembled student body before the Saturday night movie. We had a guy named John Smith on clarinet, an easy enough name to remember. We had a Flip Somebody on piano, and I can't remember the other guys' names. Jerry had set up a gig for us in Rye, NY when school was out for the summer. I think it was for a tennis tournement, but the clarinet player's house burned down so we went to Rye and just partied, didn't play. It was fun especially sneaking out at night and underage drinking. Jerry wrote me a letter that summer trying to convince me to return to Andover for my senior year which I didn't answer. But it was a nice gesture, and I thank him retrospectively. I was happy to leave Andover behind me and go to "normal" high school from which I graduated in 1959. I had heard anecdotally about the kid who left Andover and was so unhappy about the place that he requested never to be sent any Andover alumni literature or communications of any kind. He never wanted to hear from or about the place again. Feeling likewise, I did the same thing and have had no contact in any form with them ever since. For many years I could not even bear the thought of or talk about or admit to anybody that I had even gone there.

Scott McClellan Implicates President Bush in Outing of CIA Spy Valerie Plame

Former White House Press Secretary Scot McClellan in a new book due out in April has implicated Bush, Cheney and their Chiefs of Staff, Andrew Card and "Scooter" Libby (who is already in jail on a charge related to the case), as well as Karl Rove in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame who has written a new book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," has maintained all along that her identity was leaked by the highest levels of the US government, an act that is manifest treason in a time of war and absolutely impeachable.

Here is the quote from CNN:

Amid a swelling controversy about the leak of Valerie Wilson's name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. In an upcoming book, McClellan says five administration officials were "involved" in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the involvement of Rove and Libby in the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity. "There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

We have this comment from No Quarter:

If outing a CIA intelligence officer collecting intelligence on our enemy during a time of war is not treason, then what is? George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby to help buy his silence. Why? McClellan’s revelation blows the cover on that sham. Bush was involved. Of course we will now witness the spectacle of Republicans, who delighted in castigating Bill Clinton for his confusion about the meaning of sex, themselves doing verbal gymnastics as they search for the true meaning of “involved”. Horseshit! This is an impeachable offense. George Bush not only helped obstruct justice, but continues to obstruct justice. The President is no longer an idle bystander. He is a participant in a cover up. He knew that Rove, Libby, Card, and Cheney were involved in leaking Valerie’s name. Yet the coward, the man who failed to complete his Reserve duty, went AWOL on his staff. He sent Scott McClellan out to lie to the press. We already knew that Bush was neither honorable nor a man or his word. Despite his vow to remove anyone involved in leaking the name of Valerie Plame Wilson, he kept Card, Rove and Libby safe in the White House until Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald blew the whistle. And even then, Bush refused to do the right thing. He acted immorally and illegally. Why should Scooter come clean when he knows his co-conspirator will get him off? And he did.

But wait. Now Scot McClellan's editor is saying something different.

Bloomberg News’ reports that: McClellan doesn’t suggest that Bush deliberately lied to him about Libby’s and Rove’s involvement in the leak, said Peter Osnos, founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan’s memoir next year.”He told him something that wasn’t true, but the president didn’t know it wasn’t true,” Osnos said in a telephone interview. “The president told him what he thought to be the case.” So Bush is a Moron? He’s not some janitor with an opinion. He’s ostensibly the Commander-in-Chief. And this begs more questions. Who did the President ask for information about this matter? Cheney? Card? Who lied to the President? Notably, no one lost their job even though the President supposedly belatedly discovered that he wasn’t given the straight poop? God save us from these deviants.

So ... Scott McClellan "unknowingly passed along false information." OK, so he didn't lie himself. Evidently he found out it was false just prior to writing his book, exonerating himself. But "five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself." So the President was involved in McClellan's passing along false information, but, according to Peter Osnos, the President's "involvement" was also "unknowing." He, therefore, didn't lie. So someone had given the President false information, the President had assumed it was true, and then told Scott McClellan to get out there and repeat it to the American public. Wouldn't you think that the President would have made damn sure that information of this importance was absolutely true, would have verified it absolutely before telling Scott McClellan to get out there and repeat it?

So who among those five top officials implicated by Scott McClellan knew the information was true (and therefore lied) and who among them unknowingly passed it along? Does Scot McClellan know or is he just whistling Dixie to sell books?

This is a very serious charge to implicate the President and Vice President of the United States specifically in a lie without clarifying and qualifying his implication as to exactly what their involvement was or at least to say he wasn't sure what their involvement was. But no, he comes right out and suggests in the strongest terms that they lied (without using the word "lied") and doesn't elaborate at all on what he means exactly by saying they were "involved." If he meant they were't involved in lying but were involved in some other way, he should have said so. Are we to believe that Scott McClellan and the editors of his book are so dumb that they would imply an accusation directed towards the President of the United States of treason and then not immediately qualify that if it were not true? Parsing the words and the meaning will not cut it in this case. Either Scott McClellan and his editors are guilty of the grossest negligence in writing this book, or the President is a liar and should be impeached. Plain and simple.

Troops Ripped Off by Bush Administration

Wounded troops returning home before the end of their tours of duty are being forced by the Bush Administration to return their signing bonuses. The following is from Bush's Contempt for Our Soldiers:

It’s good, though, that the administration is watching out for every penny of taxpayers’ money, and holding THOUSANDS of soldiers accountable for fulfilling their missions or paying us taxpayers back: Although Bush called Jordan Fox’s mother last May to ask how her son is doing — Fox was sidelined when he was hit by a roadside bomb that injured his back and destroyed his vision in his right eye — his administration now wants the wounded soldier to return the re-enlistment bonus because he didn’t fulfill his obligation by three months.

We have blogged about this before. While Bush pursues photo-ops showing him jogging with the troops, his administration is demanding that wounded troops pay back their signing bonuses. This is the way Bush "supports our troops." When is the American public going to wake up and see that the "support our troops" rhetoric is diabolical claptrap and that the underlying reality is that the troops are just being used as cannon fodder while the contractors make the big money. Would it be too much to ask of our government that, if a soldier is injured to the extent he can't serve out his tour, they would just give him his signing bonus in appreciation of his sacrifice for his country? In fact this should be written right into the contract. Vet's groups should demand it and should alert young men and women who are signing up to make sure those words are in the contract to begin with: "If I'm wounded in the line of duty and can't serve out my tour, I will not have to pay back my signing bonus." Picket the recruiting stations if necessary. More from ThinkProgress.

At the same time contractors, according to No Quarter, have been gouging the US government with impunity. Huge amounts of cash unaccounted for. No-bid contracts. Halliburton, KBR and others have been getting rich off the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. See here and here.

Just days after Stewart Bowen, the Special Inspector General released a new report which explains how KBR has been gouging taxpayers from inside the Green Zone, the Army announced that the company (which was split off from Halliburton this year) will divvy up another $150 billion with two other contractors -- Fluor and Dyncorp -- over the next ten years. The results of Bowen's audit come as no surprise, because they track the kinds of abuses that whistleblowers and others working for the company and the military have said are quite common. For example, one of Bowen's conclusions is that the company lacks adequate inventory controls, and hasn't kept good track of the fuel it is disbursing. That problem should remind everyone of the situation that ultimately led the military to cancel a gasoline contract years ago. In a report on that earlier scam, GAO report found "a pattern of contractor management problems" at KBR, including ineffective planning, a poor materials requisition system and inadequate supervision of subcontractors. At one point investigators working for Rep. Henry Waxman reported that KBR had charged an extra $165 million to transport the gasoline into Iraq. The situation caused an embarassed Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) to stop using KBR and take responsibility for its own fuel supply in April 2004. (A year after it lost the contract, KBR reportedly attempted to disrupt fuel deliveries by other subcontractors.) Now, three years later, KBR seems to be up to its old tricks. The "inadequate controls" over the gas inventory provide another opportunity to cook the books and bilk the taxpayers. All from the comfort of the Green Zone. And who was going to catch them if Bowen didn't conduct the audit? In its 2004 report, GAO criticized military officials for failing to properly oversee Halliburton's work. GAO reported interviewing military officials who "told us that they knew nothing about LOGCAP before they deployed and had received no training regarding their roles and responsibilities." But now that they are promising KBR and the other companies another ten years and up to $150 billion worth of contract work, the Army says hold on, it has found a solution: To beef up its ability to provide adequate oversight, it hired another contractor. I.e., because it isn't competent enough to oversee contractors who are being hired to do the work it used to do (that's the whole point of the logistics contract to begin with), the Army has decided to hire a British-American company -- SERCO -- to oversee the three logistics contractors. If you're beginning to think there's something absurd in all this, you wouldn't be alone. But the Army has apparently anticipated your objections. In section 1.3 of the SERCO contract -- which you can find here -- it says, "It is not the intent of this contract to have the contractor perform inherently Governmental functions, or to have the contractor make discretionary decisions for the Government relating to the program or contract support," even though that's essentially what the contract does! This new arrangement will also make worse one of the big unresolved issues identified by Rep. Waxman and Senator Byron Dorgan over the course of their years of investigations: By adding another layer of contracts, the government has made it all the more difficult for government officials themselves to oversee the actual work. No company can be expected to provide this kind of accountability -- companies are designed to make money for themselves and their shareholders, not safeguard the taxpayers. The buck ultimately stops somewhere in the Pentagon's chain of command where, instead of overseeing the actual work (keep in mind that KBR has some 200 subcontractors working in Kuwait and Iraq) they will spend increasingly more time evaluating SERCO's work. And even then, SERCO has influence over the process. (See page 31 of SERCO's contract -- "Contractors Self-Assessment") All of this outsourcing of government functions is part of a broader pattern that started long ago, but is now epidemic in scale, according to Waxman, who recently updated his review of federal contracting during the Bush administration. The report -- Dollars, Not Sense: Government Contracting Under the Bush Administration -- measures the magnitude of this Wholesale outsourcing of government. The figures are staggering: Between 2000 and 2005, federal procurement spending rose by over 80%, no-bid and other contracts awarded without full and open competition increased by over 100%. The amount raked in by the administration's corporate cronies and other contractors rose from $203.1 billion in 2000 to $412.1 billion in 2006, a new record. Talk about major major major major opportunities to fleece the taxpayers! As Waxman reports, the kind of abuses witnessed in Iraq are now ubiquitous across the entire federal government: He identified 189 contracts valued at $1.1 trillion that have been plagued by waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement. Which is why a new example pops up just about every day. On Thursday, for example, Robert O'Harrow reported that a $2 million no-bid contract given by DHS to Booze Allen ballooned to $124 million. Like the LOGCAP contract (which Cheney's Pentagon first gave to KBR during the Bush I administration), this one was supposed to save us money. Yet as O'Harrow reports, it turns out that the average annual cost of a contract employee has been $250,000 -- almost twice that of a federal employee, according to an estimate recently cited by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The conclusion to be drawn is that Bush and Cheney are rapidy transforming the entire government into a turnkey operation run by their corporate cronies. And ten-year contracts like the LOGCAP one given to KBR will ensure that they don't run out during the next two terms (i.e. last until Jeb arrives?). The outsourcing of inherently governmental work in recent years has reached an extreme level. And whether it's intelligence operations, running security and background checks, providing contract oversight, processing of FOIA requests, even counting our votes -- the corporatization has gone to ridiculous extremes. Although doing so may not illegal, per se, it's one of those huge crimes that is so pervasive that it's hard to perceive.

This report points out the proliferation of layers upon layers of sub-contracting that the military-industrial complex routinely employs in order to run up the cost and profits of "cost plus" contracts. This is standard operating procedure for the military-industrial complex, but the Bush Administration has taken it to new heights. And the Bush-Cheney government has turned over huge chunks of inherently governmental functions to corporate enterprise which amounts to the corporatization of the US government. The Republican notion of public service is to get into government in order to give lobbyists and corporations exactly what they want and then to get out and take a lucrative job with those same grateful corporations.

And the Bush Administration wants more money to pursue this nonsense and give to their rich cronies?

What Congress Should Do: Fund the Troops; Defund the Contractors

A new appro- priations bill for $50 billion to fight the war in Iraq will soon be before Congress. Bush will charac- terize it as support for our troops. If you don't vote for it, you will be accused of not supporting the troops. But wait a minute. This appropriations bill, like the others before it, if you read the fine print, will be about minimal support for the troops and maximal support for the contractors who are as numerous in Iraq as the troops themselves, and they earn 10 times as much as the troops. Couple this with the enormous profits that go to the companies that employ them, and you start to realize that the bulk of the money goes not to the troops but to the contractors. Why has Congress not realized this and made an issue of it? They should submit a bill that defunds the contractors but supports the troops. Bush's propaganda machine will go to work saying they're not supporting the troops. Let's have a pitched battle if necessary. If Bush keeps vetoing similar bills, who is not supporting the  troops?

The contractors in Iraq are a thorn in Iraq's side. They  are accountable to no one by fiats imposed by the US on Iraq. Recently, a Blackwater PSD (personal security detail) shot, killed and wounded a large number of innocent Iraqi  civilians. It's not the first time. The Iraqi government proceeded to kick Blackwater out of the country. However, after "consultations" with the US, they rescinded that order. This goes to show that they are a US puppet government not a sovereign state and besides they are totally corrupt. Who would want to serve in the Iraqi government unless they were getting their pockets copiously lined?

Congress should submit and then resubmit essen- tially the same bill. Stand up for what you believe, Congress- men and women. If it means that the whole war then becomes defunded because Bush keeps vetoing a bill that would provide funding for the troops (but not the  contractors), so be it. The war and US involvement in Iraq would be over. If Bush, as Commmander-in-Chief, wants to leave his own troops there to fend for themselves without adequate funding to get out of Iraq gracefully, let it be on his shoulders that he wouldn't accept funding that would have either allowed the troops to continue on their mission or be redeployed with a minimum of hassle. If the Dems don't stand up to this guy and end this stupid war which is costing several American lives and $300 million per day not to mention numerous innocent Iraqi lives and millions of internal and external Iraqi refugees, they will become political nonentities. They will be irrelevant. Why play for time? For what? To win the Presidency? Show the American people they have some cajones and do the right thing. Stand up to Bush and the Publican neocons. They're total f---ups!

Oh, and by the way, Bush has finally admitted that he plans for the US to have an "enduring relationship" with Iraq. How prescient of him to have started building the "enduring bases" as soon as the US invaded and took over. That and the enormous US Embassy. Why they thought they were going to be leaving as soon as the nasty business was done. At least that was what the American people were led to believe. But no, as it turns out, the best thing is to have an "enduring relationship." Finally, the neocons are owning the intentions they had in the first place: an American power base in the middle east and easy access to huge oil deposits. And Alan Greenspan admits in his book, "The Age of Turbulence," that the US is in it for the oil. Surprise. Surprise! Jeez, I thought it was only to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. They sure had me fooled. They were there for the oil and permanent (some say "enduring") military bases from day 1!

The  Democrats are disappointing because they have done nothing since they gained control of Congress except to wimp out. Why did Harry Reid even allow a vote on that stupid bill to censure MoveOn.org? If the  Republicans controlled the Senate, would they even let a Democrat sponsored bill come to the floor for a vote. You bet not!  The Dems have good ideas, but they need to play hardball as long as the Publicans are playing hardball. They're being too nice to them. And where has it gotten them? You can go back through the history of a lot of nice, well-intentioned, intelligent men who've gone down to defeat at  Publican hands simply because they were too nice, starting with Adlai Stevenson, an extremely capable man who was labeled an "egghead," dismissed and dispatched by the Pubs. And then there was "Happy Warrior"  Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry. Even successsful Democratic Presidential candidates with extraordinary achievements like Franklin D Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were and are still being mocked, castigated, demonized, vilified, derided and otherwise ridiculed. I don't have to go through the whole litany of how these gentlemen were  mischaracterized from being "soft" on communism", the Willie Horton ads, Dukakis in the tank, Swift Boating etc. etc.

Why do the American people fall for such garbage? Why did the German people fall for Hitler?  It is for similar reasons in  both cases. Emotional appeals to fear, hatred, egotism and selfishness seem to trump appeals to logic, reason, understanding, caring and compasssion. The headline in a British newspaper after George W Bush won the Presidency the  second time was "How can 159 million people be so dumb?" In a democracy you're stuck with the average mentality of the average voter, and, as long as the average voter is a son of a bitch, the average President will be a son of a bitch. Unfortunately, human nature is much more susceptible to being appealed to by negative attack ads than by ideas for making the US and the world a better place. Unfortunately, because one would like to believe than human nature is basically good, but history belies that assertion. It is indeed unfortunate. Perhaps we're an evolutionary dead end and another more loving species will evolve some day. But hope springs eternal. Another Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, did the most positive thing of the 20th century for the American people by enacting the Civil Rights act and ending Jim Crow discrimination in public places. And he and the Democratic Party paid dearly for it. They lost the South to the Republicans who have no problem with exclusion and prejudice. Now at least my grandchildren will not have to put up with the crap that Billie Holliday, Miles Davis and other black people had to endure. That's at least a smidgeon of progress for the 20th century. But the US is still a "money talks, shit walks" society and always will be if the Publicans have anything to do with it.

Some think Hillary has the balls, the cajones, to take these scoundrels on. I tend to agree. She's been through it once. The Publicans lost no opportunity to villify and castigate Bill and Hillary from Whitewater to Travelgate to Vince Foster to Monica Lewinsky. I think Hillary knows what's in store for her if she's the Democratic nominee for President, and I think she's a tough enough cookie to back the Publicans off and put them in their place. If someone stands up to them, they, like most bullies, will back down. They're already attacking "Hillarycare."I hope Hillary has her attack ads ready!

The Iraqi Central Government is Corrupt

According to a draft of a secret document prepared by the US Embassy in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is presiding over a corrupt government and is even impeding efforts to fight the corruption. Apparently, it serves the Iraqi government's interests to keep stealing money in order to line their own pockets. A lot of the stolen money is even going to fund the insurgents. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government. The draft reviews the work of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an Iraqi institution that has had little success in stemming the tide of fraud, waste and abuse by Iraqi government ministries which, in many cases, are being run by criminal gangs, thugs and thieves.

According to AlterNet:

The Ministry of Health, according to the report, "is a sore point; corruption is actually affecting its ability to deliver services and threatens the support of the government." Investigations involving the Ministry of Oil have been manipulated, the study says, and the "CPI and the [Inspector General of the ministry] are completely ill-equipped to handle oil theft cases." There is no accurate accounting of oil production and transportation within the ministry, the report explains, because organized crime groups are stealing oil "for the benefit of militias/insurgents, corrupt public officials and foreign buyers."

Several ministries are controlled by Shiite militias including the one of Muqtada al-Sadr. The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is especially corrupt. According to the report, "CPI investigators assigned to MOI investigations have unanimously expressed their fear of being assassinated should they aggressively pursue their duties at MOI. Thus when the head of MOI intelligence recently personally visited the Commissioner of CPI…to end investigations of [an] MOI contract, there was a clear sense of concern within the agency."

Over at the Defense Ministry, the report notes, there has been a "shocking lack of concern" about the apparent theft of $850 million from the Iraqi military's procurement budget. "In some cases," the report says, "American advisors working for US [Department of Defense] have interceded to remove [Iraqi] suspects from investigations or custody." Of 455 corruption investigations at the Defense Ministry, only 15 have reached the trial stage. A mere four investigators are assigned to investigating corruption in the department. And at the Ministry of Trade, "criminal gangs" divide the spoils, with one handling grain theft, another stealing transportation assets. Part of the problem, according to the report, is Maliki's office: "The Prime Minister's Office has demonstrated an open hostility" to independent corruption investigations. His government has withheld resources from the CPI, the report says, and "there have been a number of identified cases where government and political pressure has been applied to change the outcome of investigations and prosecutions in favor of members of the Shia Alliance" -- which includes Maliki's Dawa party.

CPI staffers have been routinely threatened by armed gangs, and snipers have fired into CPI headquarters. Twelve CPI personnel have been murdered while pursuing their duties.

According to an NBC report, "'Untouchable' corruption in Iraqi agencies:"

Supplies and medicine in strife-torn Baghdad's overcrowded hospitals have been siphoned off and sold elsewhere for profit because of corruption in the Iraqi Ministry of Health, according to a draft U.S. government report obtained by NBC News. The report, written by U.S. advisers to Iraq's anti-corruption agency, analyzes corruption in 12 ministries and finds devastating and grim problems. "Corruption protected by senior members of the Iraqi government," the report said, "remains untouchable." One potential problem is in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the report. The report said that "the prime minister’s office has on a number of occasions intervened on cases involving political supporters." An al-Maliki adviser acknowledged to NBC that the problem of corruption in Iraq is "huge," but denied that al-Maliki's office has intervened in investigations. He said the prime minister is working hard to minimize the problem. The draft report obtained by NBC said the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which oversees the country's hospitals, is in the "grip" of the Mahdi Army, the anti-American militia run by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "Contract fraud and employee theft of medicines, food, vehicles are viewed by investi- gators as the greatest problems," the report said, adding that "military sources have reported that the Mehdi Army [sic] finances operations from diverted medicines." Corruption 'widespread' In the Ministry of Oil — the most important agency for Iraq’s economy — the report said "corruption is a major problem" when it comes to refined oil products, such as gasoline and kerosene. The report said corruption in the oil ministry is partly to blame for lines of cars stretching for miles as Iraqis wait hours to fill up their tanks. An entire battalion of Iraqi police "was found to be nonexistent" and corruption in the army is "widespread," with ghost employees and a shortage of supplies, according to the report. The report also cites alleged favoritism and selective prosecution.

It seems that the US is stuck not only with an endless war in which American lives and treasure are being lost with each passing day but also is stuck supporting a corrupt, notwithstanding democratically elected, Iraqi government. Not much has changed since Saddam's day!

The NBC report continues:

The top Iraqi anti-corruption investigator, Judge Rahdi al Rahdi, told NBC that "in many important cases, ministers did not give us the permission to take their employees to court, the prime minister's office did not give us permission to take ministers to court." Rahdi said the total amount of missing money involved in his investigations into government misconduct is $11 billion. Corruption is so serious that it is difficult for the government to function, according to Ali Allawi, a former Iraqi government minister. "There's a serious problem in the Ministry of Oil," Allawi said, "There's a serious problem in the Ministry of Health. There's a serious problem in the Ministry of Trade, and really, there's a serious problem in every government department." Americans 'must grin and bear it' Allawi, who has written a book called “The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace,” said corruption has shattered any faith in government. "In some cases there is ... despair that ... corruption has destroyed the ability of the government to provide services," he said. The draft report obtained by NBC outlines some devastating cases in Iraq, like a "guns for cash scheme with the Mehdi Army" involving a candidate for the head of Iraqi intelligence. On top of the troubles of the current oil minister, the report said a former acting minister of oil was indicted — a case blocked by high-ranking officials. In another case a former minister of transportation was indicted. Last week Bowen issued a report finding the U.S. Embassy had not done enough to combat corruption. Allawi argues that U.S. authorities can do little because of the Iraqi officials with whom they are dealing. "The Americans who are supporting this political class, I believe really have no choice. This is a group they have been saddled with, or supported in power, and must grin and bear it," he said.

More on the endemic graft, fraud, waste and corruption in Iraq can be found here, here, here and here. It seems that the Bush Administration is not even interested in investigating corruption in Iraq. It just wants to continue its propaganda games of smoke and mirrors and empty promises. After all Iraqis are just following a long tradition of corruption in their country and following the example of the Bush Administration which has given cost-plus contracts to American corporartions like Halliburton and Parsons for shoddy workmanship or in some cases for producing nothing of value at all. The Iraqi government, just like the Bush regime, is being run based on private profit for those in power and to hell with the common people. Profits to the rich who happen to be thugs and thieves. It seems the Iraqis have learned their lessons well at the knees of their US patrons. And who has ultimately to pay for this folly of supporting a corrupt government in the name of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq? The American people who pay with their lives, the Iraqi people who pay with their lives and the American people again whose government treasury is being plundered on a daily basis and thrown down a rat hole.

Why the Surge is Working ... for Osama

Finally, after we've been waiting with bated breath for three months for General Petraeus' report (he's supposed to tell us if the surge worked or not), we will soon find out if we are supposed to continue the Iraq War or if a withdrawal is in order. What? Does anyone really believe that Bush will do anything but continue the Iraq War regardless of what Petraeus or anyone else says? And does anyone really believe the Democrats will do anything other than go along with him? Bush has built his Presidency and his legacy around this war. He may not be able to win it in the time remaining to him, but, at least, he doesn't want to lose it. He'll leave that to the next occupant of the White House. Then he'll proceed to build his library where right under "George W Bush, President of the United States" in large letters will be the motto (in slightly smaller letters), "He Stayed the Course in the War Against Terrorism." So you think he'll go down as the worst President of the United States? Don't bet on it. His spinmeisters will be better funded than yours, and the spinning won't stop once he's out of the White House and some sober minded historians logically dissect his Presidency. No, his historians will go on spinning ad infinitum and in perpetuity. Don't think the spin and the propaganda will stop January 1, 2008.

In "Why the Surge is Not Working," by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, he says:

Ignore for a moment that many in the media are misrepresenting the actual casualties–US and Iraqi–in Iraq. The real goal of the surge was to create enough security so that the political process could move forward and the sectarian rift be bridged. So how is that going? Not well. Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times are front and center in doing what good journalists do. They report the facts. The Newsweek piece, Baghdad’s New Owners, confirms my earlier prediction that we would see a decline in civilian casualties in Baghdad because of the “success” of the ethnic cleansing. As you drive the Sunnis out of their neighborhoods there are fewer Sunnis to kill. Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow write: Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually “has increased the IDPs to some extent.” Also worth your time is Tina Susman’s piece in today’s Los Angeles Times. The so-called success in Al Anbar does nothing to address the fundamental issue of reconciling Shias and Sunnis. In fact, the arming of the Sunnis and their willingness to cooperate in protecting their home turf is simply self-preservation. The Sunni tribes recognize that they will be fighting the Shias and must be armed and ready to do so. According to Susman: Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved. The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration and Iraq’s Ministry for Displacement and Migration. Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions. Last month, as many as 400 people were killed in a bombing in a village near the Syrian border, the worst bombing since the war began in March 2003. In July, 150 people were reported killed in a village about 100 miles north of Baghdad.

Simply put, there has been no political progress in Iraq, and the country has been drifting towards Joe Biden's solution: a Shiite province  in the south, a Sunni Al Anbar and a Kurdish province in the north, hardly a unified Iraq. Sure, the Sunnis in Al Anbar decided to kick Al Quaeda out because they got tired of the civilian casualties they were causing. So the Sunnis in Al Anbar allied themselves with the US. This is General Petraeus' "progress." Iraq is still a disaster with a huge refugee crisis. There are large numbers of both internal and external displaced persons as Iraqis move to Syria and Jordan to escape the violence. Sunnis are concentrating in Al Anbar and Shiites are concentrating in the south. Kurds are staying put in the north where they have practically formed a separate de facto Kurdish state already.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) report struck a pessimistic note as it said only 3 of the 18 benchmarks that the Iraqi government was supposed to accomplish on accouint of the surge had been met. So many Sunnis have dropped out of or have boycotted the Shiite dominated Iraq central government that it no longer has any pretense of representing Iraqis as a whole. And then the US has redefined what a civilian casualty is or isn't. Reportedly, if an Iraqi is shot in the front of the head, that does not represent sectarian violence whereas if he's shot in the back of the head it does. By twiddling with the statistics, the US can make any kind of a case it wants including that sectarian violence is decreasing. That doesn't square with most independent accounts. The Washington Post reports in an article entitled "[GAO] Report Finds Little Progress on Iraq Goals":

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved." "Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

But whether or not Bush continues to fight the war in Iraq (my bet is he will ride it out until the end of his administration because the Democrats won't stand up against him), it is clear that al Quaeda is achieving it's goal of bankrupting the US. So Bush's vanity in not wanting to lose a war (as if there's anything to be won or lost except oil) is the driving force that is playing right into Osama bin Laden's hand. Bin Laden's latest video, which was derided, pooh-poohed and barely quoted from by US media, contains a message which does not represent the ramblings of a madman or a megalomaniac but instead a shrewd assessment of the geopolitics of the Iraq war. It outlines in stark terms the fact that for every dollar al Quaeda has spent in its struggle against the US, the US has spent a million in its fight against al Quaeda. The most important point to understand (and this is irrespective of bin Laden's comments) is that this war, like any war, is really won or lost not on the battlefield but in terms of economics. And in those terms the US invasion of Iraq is a total disaster.

Bin Laden cuts to the chase:

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing and nothing is too great for Allah. That being said, those who say that al Qaeda has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that al Qaeda is the sole factor in achieving these spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results. And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States even if the intentions differ. And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (when they pointed out that) for example, al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America in the incident and its aftermath lost-according to the lowest estimate-more than 500 billion dollars, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars [spent by the US] by the permission of Allah besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan with Allah's permission. It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind will be convinced.

Bush' egotistical pursuit of winning the Iraq war is playing right into bin Laden's hands!

Funding Our Contractors: The Appropriations Bill

The recently passed and accepted Appropriations Bill (which the Democrats wimped out on) was supposedly about supporting the troops. Guess again. It's more about supporting the war support corporations such as Halliburton and Blackwater than it's about supporting the troops. The shadow army of private military contractors (also known as a mercenary army) numbers some 120,000, almost as many as active duty US troops. These contractors, however, receive about 10 times as much as the US troops in financial remuneration.

Where does this money come from? Why, from the Appropriation Bill just recently passed by Congress, that's where. Of the $124.2 billion, $13.5 billion went to fund the troops, that is, to pay their salaries. $50.4 billion went to the profits of Halliburton, Blackwater and the like and to pay the salaries of the shadow army they hire, otherwise known as private  contractors a euphemism for mercenaries. Heck, Bush could run the entire occupation just with mercenaries regardless of whether the troops are withdrawn or not.  These mercenaries  are accountable to no one - no military justice system nor American nor Iraqi court of law. So while the Congress debates about withdrawing the troops, timelines, surging the troops, troops this and troops that, the reality is that the war and the occupation are doing just fine, thank you, because the mercenaries are providing all essential functions.

In addition, $25.6 billion goes for procurement which means to the profits of defense contractors that supply the MRAPS, helicopters and stuff like that. Also noteworthy is that the President did not request one red cent for Homeland Security or Veterans' health benefits not to mention such trifles as Low Income Home Heating Assistance or Childrens' Health Insurance! Here's a direct quote from the Appropriations Bill:

The Administration continues to try to secure the homeland on the cheap. Too often, they rely on paper security, trying to improve security by paying contractors to write reports and by setting minimal standards for improving security. The President did not request one dime in the supplemental for securing the homeland.

Why, who needs secure borders when we're fighting them over there so they can't even get over here! Sort of like the advertisement for ant control: "Kill them outside your house before they get inside your house." Our borders are like sieves, but it would be a gift of political expediency for the Bush Administration if, God forbid, the homeland were attacked again because then everybody would rally around our President and his approval ratings would soar upward from the abysmal 28% he now enjoys or maybe he doesn't enjoy those low approval ratings that much. Another attack and he could stand tall in the saddle, gaze out to the horizon and proclaim, "We're going to get those guys!" or words to that effect. There's nothing like revenge! The Bushies must be wondering why they aren't "bringing it on." After all we're practically inviting them by ignoring border and port protection not to mention nuclear facility and chemical plant protection. Oh, we'll leave it up to private corporations to do that as they see fit in their infinite wisdom.

According to the Salon article, the President can have the rent-a-guns do their own "surge" without any accountability whatsoever to the American Congress or the American people. Now we know what Dick Cheney is talking about when he says he "works in the shadows." The Congress isn't so much "supporting our troops" as they are supporting Bush's privatized army of unaccountable mercenaries!

From the beginning, these contractors have been a major hidden story of the war, almost uncovered in the mainstream media and absolutely central to maintaining the U.S. occupation of Iraq. While many of them perform logistical support activities for American troops, including the sort of laundry, fuel and mail delivery and food-preparation work that once was performed by soldiers, tens of thousands of them are directly engaged in military and combat activities. According to the Government Accountability Office, there are now some 48,000 employees of private military companies in Iraq. These not-quite GI Joes, working for Blackwater and other major U.S. firms, can clear in a month what some active-duty soldiers make in a year. "We got 126,000 contractors over there, some of them making more than the secretary of defense," said House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman John Murtha. "How in the hell do you justify that?"

Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are two voices crying out in the wilderness and evidently the only two who are willing to tell the American people the truth about what's really going on with this war in Iraq, the war on truth and the war on the American people.

Bush Threatens Veto for a Lousy, Measley $6 a Month Raise for US Troops

While private contractors working in Iraq driving trucks, pumping gas and doing KP duty earn upwards of $100,000 a year, the troops, who earn about $1300. a month or $15,600. a year were denied a $6. a month raise. So it begs the question: is this appropriation bill that Congress is wrestling with Bush over, money to support the troops or money to support Halliburton, Blackwater and Dyncorp and their hires who make $100,000. a year? Please remember that Halliburton et al are reaping massive profits from their no bid contracts to supply "war services." Isn't this really where the money's going ... not to the troops?

According to ThinkProgress:

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, President Bush has threatened to veto a House defense bill over a provision that raises the pay for U.S. soldiers by 3.5 percent, instead of the 3 percent preferred by the White House. Last night on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Todd Bowers — an Iraq war veteran and director of government affairs for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America — broke down the White House’s position in dollar terms. Bowers explained that the difference between a 3 percent and 3.5 percent pay raise is the difference of six bucks a month for the average servicemember. Bowers said: [The average servicemember] gets $1300 a month. You got expenses that you have to cover for. You got to take care of family members, car payments. It essentially adds up. This 3% raise would give them approximately $29 extra dollars, alright. Point five percent gives them an extra $6 dollars. We’re talking about $6 for someone that is serving over in Iraq and Afghanistan that is away from their families. It’s not too much to ask.

At the same time, according to US News & World Report the troops are being ripped off to the tune of $75. a month for internet access:

After we reported here yesterday that soldiers on large bases can purchase Internet access from a private contractor for around $70 a month, allowing them to circumvent the Department of Defense's ban of YouTube.com, MySpace.com, and 10 other popular websites from their servers, several readers wrote in questioning why the access is so pricey compared with rates back home. (We're hearing today that the figure is $75 a month.) Beth in Kentucky asks, "Do the soldiers with Internet access on base know how badly they are being ripped off? $75 for Internet access? My broadband service costs half that. We don't pay them enough to begin with, we give them low-rent hospital care when they come home, and now, we can't even give them a decently affordable internet service? What no-bid contractor got a hold of this one?" U.S. News Pentagon reporter Anna Mulrine did some asking around and found out that Internet access at Iraqi bases is provided by a company called Jackal Wireless, which operates a service called "Operation Internet Freedom" in Baghdad International Airport and several other bases in Iraq.

Bush has also shorted funds for troop health care:

The Bush administration, already accused by veterans groups of seeking inadequate funds for health care next year, acknowledged yesterday that it is short $1 billion for covering current needs at the Department of Veterans Affairs this year. The disclosure of the shortfall angered Senate Republicans who have been voting down Democratic proposals to boost VA programs at significant political cost. Their votes have brought the wrath of the American Legion, the Paralyzed Veterans of America and other organizations down on the GOP.

Notice that the Senate Republicans were not displeased that the vets were being shorted only that their role in the shorting was made public. So much for these hypocrites. But then we've known all along that they (the Republicans) were hypocrites. They wrap themselves in the flag and "support our troops" rhetoric while, at the same time, profiting themselves and their cronies from war. But every time they want more money for Bush's insane war policy, they phrase their request in terms of supporting our troops while in actuality they are supporting the war services corporations and ther highly paid "shadow army" who get $100,000. a year for pumping gas, driving trucks and pulling KP duty. That's where the real money's really going. The trigger pullers make $15,600. while the private contractors make upwards of $100,000. We  the tax payers are paying for no bid profits and huge salaries but not for our troops!

Military analysts say the private security arrangement allows regular military troops to concentrate on fighting. But they are concerned that the lucrative pay offered by private contractors -- often more than $100,000 a year -- is depleting the ranks of the special forces. There are other contractors who support the U.S. military in Iraq. Halliburton, the largest civilian contractor, has a Web site which currently lists more than 450 openings in Iraq. When the company threw a job fair last week in Houston, Texas, hundreds of applicants showed up. "You know, there's not that many jobs," said driver Bobby Johnson.

Also:

FACT — PENTAGON WORKING ON PROPOSAL TO TRIPLE COSTS OF MILITARY HEALTH INSURANCE (TRICARE): The Penatgon is proposing to “triple some Tricare insurance costs for military retirees and their families.” “Increases would be substantial — as much as $1,200 more a year by 2009 — with no end in sight because the plan calls for annual rate hikes in 2010 and beyond that would match inflation.” Bush has also chintzed the troops on body armor: FACT — THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S FAILURE TO PROVIDE BODY ARMOR HAS COST LIVES: The New York Times reported that a “secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor.” Body armor “has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field.” Additionally, the Pentagon has refused to reimburse troops who purchased their own armor. [New York Times, 1/7/06; AP, 9/30/05]

There are almost as many private contractors (100,000) in the private shadow army as there are troops (140,000). Take a look at the Appropriations bill for $125 billion. The President asks for zero, zip for Veterans' Health. The Democratic Congress proposed $1.8 billion. Bush proposed zip, nada for Homeland Security. Congress proposed $2.25 billion. Operations and Management accounts for some $50 billion. This is what goes to the war profiteering corporations to provide the shadow army of private contractors making over $100,000. a year. Procurement of $25 billion also goes to the "traditional" defense contractors. So the lion's share of the budget does not go to pay the troops. They are the peons, the cannon fodder, the trigger pullers. Four times as much as the troops get goes to the shadow army for war profits and $100,000 a year salaries. The troops who used to provide their own support personnel are increasingly just used as trigger pullers. Twice what goes to the troops goes to defense contractors for procurement.

We have blogged before about how stingy the Bush Administration is to the troops when they come home injured, denying them health care, disability and even making them pay back their signing bonuses! So when Bush makes a pitch to support our troops, he is really asking for money to support our war service corporations such as Halliburton, Blackwater and DynCorp. He is asking for huge amounts for private contractors making upwards of $100,000. a year, and he is asking for large amounts for traditional military-industrial complex corporations. Oh, and by the way, could he please have some chump change for the troops doing the actual fighting? The current poverty rate in the US for a family of three is $16,600. That means that our troop families consisting of a husband, a wife and one kid are living below the poverty rate! And Bush threatens a veto over giving them $6. a month more than what he has proposed!

Democrats: Don't Wimp Out!

The current appropriation bill that Congress is sending to the white House is a step in the right direction. Of course, as we all know, Bush has already promised a veto. I hope the Democrats then just don't cave in and send him what he wants: the money without a deadline for withdrawal. That would be caving. If they need to play a game of chicken with Bush so be it. These guys have to start getting serious. It's all about not backing down to the administration with the most disastrous foreign policy in history. They need to fight him in every way they can including ultimately not sending him the money at all to continue a failed policy which results in numerous deaths and mutilations on a daily basis.

Congress should make Bush back down to them. Take back democracy for Christ's sake. They are not fighting hard enough. It looks like they are assuming the role of a secondary branch of government. It looks like they are assuming the role of a submissive to Bush's dominant. They shouldn't let this happen. Now is not the time to pussyfoot around, not the time to be namby-pamby. They need to stand up to Bush: use the same tactics he uses. Take him on!

This war is not just about Iraq. It's a war between the two political parties, and so far the Democrats have let the Republicans win because the Republicans have been playing hardball for years while the Democrats have been trying to make nice. They need to get rougher and tougher than the Bushies and the only way to do that is to use every bit of power at their disposal just as the Reps have used every bit of power at their disposal with the result that we practically have one party rule and the Constitution has been gutted. Get serious, Democrats.

Bush obviously wants to ride the Iraq situation out to the end of his term. The war is not his to win but it is his not to lose. Listen, Democrats, make him take the responsibility for losing it. Otherwise, when you take the Presidency in 2008 and settle the Iraq thing, the Republicans will say that you lost the war in Iraq. Better to settle it now under Bush's watch and make Bush the loser. Otherwise, they're going to pin the loss on you. Not that it is an issue of win or lose, but that's just the spin they'll put on it. And they'll say Bush fought valiantly to the end of his term to save us from terrorism and blah, blah blah.

I hate the thought of the Bush library which will be a shrine to how gloriously Bush fought the War Against Terrorism to the last day of his Presidency only to have the Democrats take over and lose it. I hate the thought of all the billionaires who will contribute millions to honor Bush's legacy of fighting the War Against Terror which he would have won if it hadn't been for those confounded Democrats. The Bush library will be funded by millions and millions of dollars more than the Clinton library or the Nixon library or the Reagan library or any other library because Bush has done so much for all the rich people that they will show their gratitude by contributing to a veritable monument to George W Bush who valiantly and gloriously fought and struggled to the end of his Presidency. Think of all the glowing multimedia displays. It's sickening, right? Democrats, don't let this happen. Rove et al will make you out to be wimps, losers. You've got to get down and dirty just like them. If they want to fight in the gutter, give it to them. Candy-pansy ass Bush-Rove-Cheney will cut and run at the first sight of their own blood. Of course, they don't mind spilling the blood of others

The Bush team wants you in a double bind, of course: If you don't vote to fund their war, you're not supporting the troops. If you do vote to fund their war, they'll drag it out to the end and label you as the party that lost Iraq and the War on Terror. It's not enough to just get out of this double bind. Turn it around and put them in a double bind. If Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney want to accuse Harry Reid of treason for saying the war in Iraq is already lost, call them treasonous for being lying, murdering, Constitution-gutting sons-of-bitches. If the Republicans want to call you unAmerican, call them unAmerican. Use exactly the same kind of language on them that they use on you or else you're conceding that ground to them. You're looking like they're right. Use psychology, for Christ's sake, like they do!

Congress, you don't need to concede to Bush over war funding. Earmark any money you appropriate specifically for supporting our troops including armored Humvees, night vision goggles, medical care and veterans' benefits upon their return home etc. Appropriate funds for a month or two. Make Bush come back again and again for more money. Finally, if you have the guts, cut off the money spigot altogether and appropriate just enough to bring the troops home. Let Bush and Cheney go apoplectic. Drive them nuts. Demean them as they have demeaned you. Denigrate them as they have denigrated you. Swift boat them like they swift boated you. Willie Horton them like they Willie Hortoned you. They will lose no opportunity to defeat you both at the ballot box and also in terms of the politics of personal destruction. You've got to do the same to them.

The real issue, of course, is what's right, what's the less murderous policy, what will stabilize the middle east, what will save American and Iraqi lives and treasure. But, mark my words, the Republicans are positioning themselves to propagandize that the Democrats lost the war in Iraq. Don't just be policy wonks. Don't just have good ideas. The only way to fight this is to take it to the limit now. Use your power, Congress, to end this war under Bush's term or you'll live to regret it.