[lit-ideas] A very good, very short, and very disturbing article

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-stop-saying-ir_b_66165.htmlNew
Rule: Stop Saying Iraq is Another Vietnam, it's Another Enron
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-stop-saying-ir_b_66165.html>Bill
Maher <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher> Posted September 27,
2007 |02:07 PM (EST)
 ------------------------------

Iraq is Enron, and President Bush is Ken Lay. He's fighting a war with phony
accounting tricks. The Bush administration fudged the numbers to get us into
Iraq, and cooked the books to keep us there. "The surge" is simply another
in a long series of inflated stock quotes. This past weekend Marcel Marceau
passed away at age 84. Doctors say he went quietly. Thus proving that evil
thrives when good men stay silent. And just like with Enron, the good men
and women who are blowing the whistle on Iraq contractor fraud are being
vilified, fired, demoted, and those are the lucky ones.

Last Friday morning the Senate Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing
entitled "The Mistreatment of Iraq Contracting Whistleblowers," just in time
to make the Friday news dump. According to the committee more than $10
billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction and military support contracts is
unaccounted for. In other words, for every six dollars spent in Iraq one
dollar is in question. And folks, it's a war-zone, you're dealing with a
culture known for its haggling skills, so you've got factor in a little
skimming, but this is ridiculous. If you stole that much money from the
Mafia you'd be dead.

Vicente Fox may have called President Bush a "windshield cowboy," but Bush
has certainly turned Iraq into a wild, wild, west. And here's another one
from the War in Iraq's this-is going-to-make-you-vomit file. Some Iraq
contract whistleblowers have been vilified and fired, others have been
detained by the US military and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques.


Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, was working for an Iraqi-owned outfit called
the Shield Group Security Company. Vance said he witnessed Shield Group
selling guns, land mines, and rocket-launchers to Iraqi insurgents, American
soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry workers.
Vance described Shield Groups as "a Wal-Mart for guns." Vance reported this
to the FBI, and instead of a pat on the back, he got 97 days at Camp
Cropper, a military prison outside of Baghdad. In fact, Saddam's Hussein's
old crib. Vance was placed in solitary confinement, subjected to
head-banging music blaring from dawn to dusk, and interrogators screaming
the same questions over and over again in his face.

Also testifying at the hearing along with Vance was Barry Godfrey, a former
KBR employee (KBR+Halliburton=Cheney) who claimed that he was fired after
complaining to his supervisors about fraudulent overcharges.

Also testifying was Bunnatine Greenhouse. Greenhouse is the former
highest-ranking civilian contracting official at the Army Corps of
Engineers, so I'll dispense with the "Greenhouse having gas" joke. But
Greenhouse was removed from her position when she tried to crack down on
"casual and clubby contracting practices" at the Army Corps of Engineers.

Also testifying was Robert Isakson who was a co-plaintiff in a "qui tam"
lawsuit (a whistleblower lawsuit) against Custer Battles. No, "qui tam" is
not that stuff that Chinese people do in the park, it's shorthand for the
Latin Phrase "qui tam pro domino quam pro seipso," which dates back to 13th
century England, and means, "He who is as much for the King as for himself."
Today, a "qui tam" lawsuit is one brought under the False Claims Act by a
private plaintiff on behalf of the Federal or State Government. Isakson won
the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud against Custer
Battles. However, the verdict was overturned by the judge, who ruled that
because the CPA was not part of the US government, the "qui tam" statute did
not apply.

Meanwhile the Bush administration has not litigated a single case against a
contractor alleged to have defrauded the US Government in Iraq. Apparently,
like terrorism, this isn't a law enforcement issue either.

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