I've spent most of my adult life in procurement and contracting, some of which was with federal contractors. The shit going on in Iraq just makes me want to shoot someone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle
Wasn't there a thread a while back where the fuel thing came up and several posters on here insisted that the 600% mark-ups were proper, despite the fact that there are some of us on this board who have at least some idea what we're talking about when it comes to procurement?
Haven't read the article yet, but I just wanted to point out that your avatar is a perfect visual aid to this post.
1) Paul Bremmer should be hung for treason. Seriously. 2) I had no idea people still read Rolling Stone. They are silly thinking that they are "breaking" the Go Team! as a new band. 3) Matt Taibi is still unreadable.
This is the stuff that makes you want to throw up. If this had been Bill Clinton's administration, he would have been impeached (and removed from office - and if he had indeed done it, I would have gladly booted him from office) but in this new century of chicken shit politicians unwilling to risk their political careers to take a stand that matters, we get the weak-backed Democrats just trying to keep their incompetence under the radar long enough to sneak Hillary or Obama into the White House. A strategy that will ultimately bite them in the ass. The great Bush lie is that 9/11 changed everything. And it did, but not in terms of our national security, but in how the purse strings of the federal government were opened to looters and political appointees to rake in insane profits and ride off in the sunset unscathed by oversight and consequences. The perfect crime. If this is what complete privatization looks like, then count me out. In its execution, it's indistinguishable from the opposite end of the spectrum, Communism. Ultimately, the state becomes completely corrupted by the power holders in the Government and the connected stake holders in industry, accountability vanishes, and the citizens are stuck with a massive mess to clean up. The system is broken.
You're forgetting the real issue: we've prevented homos from ruining the sanctity of my marriage. Who cares about this other stuff?
It can only be a swindle if Bush knew that there were no WMD's in the first place. Oh, wait. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sidney_blumenthal/2007/09/turning_truth_into_lies.html
Hooray for capitalism! I guess this gives the GOP base an answer to "If Bush ran it, crime wouldn't pay.".
This is not privatization, this is just government as usual. What's new about politicians rewarding their friends?
Hooray for the "first CEO administration" then? what a disgusting and unpatriotic way of doing business by these contractors in the article....and what a bunch of corrupt SOBs are those in the Bush administration who would not even dare prosecute them despite all evidence...and which was shown not just in the article, but also on a thread that was posted not that long ago....
Naomi Klein's 2005 Harper's essay is mandatory reading and worth looking at alongside the RS piece: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197
Bottom line: This is the republican legacy. I can't wait for the dems to hammer them on this. Crap. I forgot; the dems have spina bifida - they can't pick up hammers.