Dead Soldiers?

Fuck ‘em.

This via the Sydney Morning Herald (from the NYT) horrifies me.

On the surface it’s about fraud and waste, which are dry, green-eyeshade kinds of crimes. Boring. The sort of thing you go after Capone over when you can’t nail him for murder.

Slightly beneath the skin it's about the single most consistently defining characteristic of the Republican Party. Hypocrisy. Because this is also the story of the same people who bellow like you had booted their kitten through a box fan every time the Evil Government asks them to kick to help out childen or poor people, or brown people or old people.

When we ask for tax increases to help the weak or the sick or helpless or just plain unlucky – basically anyone who isn’t them -- these Compassionate Christian Conservatives loudly bitch around the block and back again about the folly of “throwing money at the problem.”

Well, in George Bush’s War it would appear that that is exactly and literally what they are doing: keeping rooms stuffed with shrink-wrapped brinks of hundred-dollar-bills just laying around. But I guess using taxpayer “C”-notes as bathmats and ass-floss is A-OK in Iraq, ‘cause, um, it's about Democracy.

Or Freedom.

Or Terrorism.

Or something.


But fat-assed, dim-wit Republican jackals and hypocrites pissing away our national treasure behind the lies of their Dissembler-in-Chief is nothing new. And doing it to the applause of the trained-seal rank-and-file is nothing new either.

The GOP droogies are so entirely lobotomized that if Dubya announced tomorrow that the only thing that can keep us safe is stripping the remains of the dead of their jewelry and gold fillings, shipping the loot in bulk directly to Jack Abramoff, and then burning their bones in a torchlight parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, there’d be a run on lighter fluid and backhoes in every Red County in the land.

But that’s not what is heartbreaking.

See if you can figure out what it is about this story that should make you unspeakably furious.

Audit finds Iraq awash in fraud and waste
By James Glanz
January 26, 2006

A NEW audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into lockers and filing cabinets, and a US soldier who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq.

In another example, three Iraqis plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital lift that had been improperly certified as safe.

The audit, released by the office of the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction, expands on its previous findings of fraud, incompetence and confusion as the US occupation poured money into training and rebuilding programs in 2003 and 2004.

The special inspector reports to the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

Agents from the Inspector-General's office found that the living and working quarters of US occupation officials were awash with shrink-wrapped stacks of $US100 bills, colloquially known as "bricks".

One official kept $US2 million in a bathroom safe, another more than $US500,000 in an unlocked locker. One contractor received more than $US100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool but only polished the pumps; even so, local US officials certified the work as completed.

Agents examined more than 2000 contracts, ranging in value from a few thousand dollars to more than $US500,000 - about $US88 million in all.

The report says that in some cases the agents found clear indications of potential fraud and that investigations into those cases are continuing. The audit paints a portrait of abandoned rebuilding projects, non-existent paperwork and cash routinely taken from the main vault in the city of Hillah without even a log to keep track of the transactions.

It is likely to raise more questions about how the provisional authority accounted for huge expenditures of Iraqi and American money.

"What's sad about it is that, considering the destruction in the country, with looting and so on, we needed every dollar for reconstruction," said Wayne White, a former State Department official now at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
Instead, Mr White said, large amounts of that money may have been wasted or stolen.
Others had a similar reaction. "It does not surprise me at all," said a Pentagon official who worked in Hillah and other parts of the country.

He predicted that similar problems would turn up in the southern city of Basra and elsewhere in the dangerous desert wasteland of Anbar.

This is a heartbreaking and horrifying story because every brick of hundreds is vehicle armor this Administration said cost too much.

Every brick of hundreds is body armor this Administration said it could not afford.

Every brick of hundreds is a missing leg.

Every brick of hundreds is a stump where an arm used to be.

Every brick of hundreds is a dead Marine.

It’s just that stark and just that simple.

And if you can read this story and not be want to see this Administration rotting behind bars for pulling shit like this every single day, you aren't fully human.

If you can can continue to support an Administration that so clearly does not support our soldiers, you’re a disgrace to this nation and as genuinely supportive of the troops as syphillis.