#1 Must on Dem agenda: Stop War Profiteering!!!

[judy]

I am giving this its own post, as it must be said and repeated over and over again.

War profiteering has created more unemployment and hatred, has done more to ignite sectarian fighting, than the invasion and the occupation itself. This is where the country has really been stolen from the Iraqis, along with the hard earned money of American taxpayers. And don't count on Baker/Hamilton to fix this. They are probably there to make sure it keeps going, at whatever cost.

In 3 years, and after billions and billions, the infrastructure is still non existent, and there are still no jobs for Iraqis. It is a huge scandal. War profiteering is illegal according to international law, and pulling all these no-bid contracts should be the first priority of the new Congress. Such a move, would go a long way toward establishing a new found good will, and would allow for an easier pulling of the troops later on. After all, one of their main jobs is to protect the profiteers. Pulling troops before you pull the profiteers means nothing.

Also, if the Iraqis are working on rebuilding their country (at a fraction of the huge costs of Halliburton, KBR etc.) they will have less time to wage civil war against each other.

Remember: for the profiteers, the Iraq war has been a huge success! If they don't get pulled first, there is no solution indeed...

[WatchWhatISay]

1. We need to make sure that a distinction is made

between funding the troops needs and funding the defense contractors income statements

[nealmhughes]

2. They have to answer why neither the electricity nor the water is yet flowing.

They have to answer where the $9Billion missing dollars are. They have to answer where all the Katrina dollars are.

The confounding of "patriotism" with venality is the most disgusting aspect of the entire adventure, save the unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation to denationalize its oil, disbanding its armed forces and killing untold thousands directly and in the resulting continuing chaos that GWB and his Merry NeoCons bestowed upon us and the people of Iraq.

We have lost our basic rights under the ancient Common Law and archaic statute. Our homes are not our castles. The modern equivalent of lettres de cachet are in force, and our state is bankrupted...

Thank you, Mr. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, the Congress, and the people over at the Heritage, AEI, and PNAC. You have destroyed our belief in democracy by your unfettered lust for lucre and power.

[slaveplanet]

3. I believe destruction

of a secular and progressive(by ME standards) Iraq was the main goal of the Iraq invasion after controlling the oil.

That is why they rejected Saddam's capitulations directly before the invasion, and pulled out all stops to cover the fact there could be such a notion. It was a so-called "War" but there was never any enemy Army, no problem, just rebrand it and call it a "new kind of war". They wanted the place to be a thirdworld dustbowl and make sure the contracts were no-bid to be sure they wouldn't do their job. They've never had any intention of ever letting it rise again...same goes for Lebanon, If they rebuild they will be reattacked.

[davidwparker]

4. If that is #1, then close on its heals at #2 is correcting our voting system.

[keepCAblue]

5. Don't expect Feinstein to put a stop to war profiteering...

...she wouldn't want to hurt her hubby's business

[leftchick]

8. yes

and I am sure many more that we have not been able to ferret out. Yet.

[judy]

11. Unfortunately, I agree...

and I also think that Baker/Hamilton will do everything they can to make sure profiteering does not stop, no matter the cost in present or future human lives.

[joemurphy]

6. Easy Solution: Stop war profiteering by stopping the war. n/t

[judy]

10. But I do think it is the other way around.

The war is going on because the profiteers are stealing jobs, assets, and most everything from the Iraqis. With around 80% unemployment they have a lot of time to fight against each other, to make car bombs, collect mortar shells and practice shooting. Giving reconstruction back to them (see Riverbend post below) would go a long way to stopping the war, and bring some fashion of good will back into the equation.

[LouisianaLiberal]

7. From Riverbend's blog, August 28, 2003

Yesterday, I read how it was going to take up to $90 billion to rebuild Iraq. Bremer was shooting out numbers about how much it was going to cost to replace buildings and bridges and electricity, etc.

Listen to this little anecdote. One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

Something you should know about Iraq: we have over 130,000 engineers. More than half of these engineers are structural engineers and architects. Thousands of them were trained outside of Iraq in Germany, Japan, America, Britain and other countries. Thousands of others worked with some of the foreign companies that built various bridges, buildings and highways in Iraq. The majority of them are more than proficient- some of them are brilliant.

[judy]

9. Thank you for posting this, it is very important

A lot of the anger and frustration comes from the fact that all the jobs have been taken away from the skilled people in Iraq.
I had read this post by Riverbend a long time ago, and I think it is quite symbolic of what is going on. I was outraged when I read it, and I am quite surprised now that profiteering is not more of an issue. Especially since the troops are mainly there to protect the contractors.