Explanation of why soldiers cannot call home: AT & T monopoly.

[LittleApple81]

Remember when the US forced an Arab company to stop providing cellular phone service (which was up and running and, apparently affordable) for Iraqis because they wanted the US monopolies to come in?

Read the article. It is good. Especially read the last quote, not related to the phone problems but rather telling:

Finally, in response to one of last week’s letters, Sa’ada Abu Bakr, of Amman, Jordan, replied to E. Wiitamaki of Missoula, Mont., who wrote that “the U.S. has shed a lot of blood ... trying to have some kind of a peaceful world.” Peaceful for whom, asked Bakr. Not for the people whose blood the U.S. is shedding.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/987615.asp

[Deja Q]

1. I could just cry

It just gets easier and easier to get sick these days.

One part of me wants to ignore the media, but on the other hand I'd miss out on these tidbits reminding me of how evil America has become, is, always was, in whatever form. It's just a depressing blur right now.

The US has shed a lot of blood. And heaven help us when the day of reckoning comes. Thank you Bush, you petulant degenerate bastard... you allowed it all when you didn't create the conditions for it to thrive in.

[wryter2000]

2. Actually

I used to work for a Bell company when it *was* a monopoly. Before there was competition in the telephone industry. It worked very, very well because it was regulated within an inch of its life. The amount of profit it could make was even pre-determined by the PUC. The break up of AT&T only served to make all the telephone companies as bad as the rest of corporate America.

[Metrix]

3. Your headline doesn't explain much

"Those calls using MCI were heavily subsidized by the government." Why does MCI even have a government contract? Remember Worldcom? Remember accounting fraud, the destruction of billions of dollars of shareholder value, being allowed to emerge from bankruptcy early to go back into competition, all sins forgiven, with companies that did not commit fraud? Plus, MCI has no experience in building cell phone networks.

The Iraqi regional company wouldn't have done anything to solve the problem of affordable calls home for soldiers. Where does the blame belong? Just another example of the lack of planning for this mess coming out of the Pentagon.