Memos May Link Cheney to No-Bid Iraq Contract
Why doesn’t this surprise me? In retrospect, invading Iraq seems to have been a very bad idea indeed. But at least this mis-conceived military adventure has been prosecuted with inefficiency, corruption, arrogance and incompetence.
God bless the young men and women who are charged with the conduct of this war on a day-to-day basis. Given the quality of the leadership they’ve been given, each day certainly has to be an uphill struggle. My heart goes out to them and nothing would make me happier than seeing each and every one of them come back home alive and intact.
A few months back, a career civil servant named Bunnatine Greenhouse appeared on the PBS News Magazine ‘Now’ to describe how she had been intimidated and demoted for calling attention to questionable practices surrounding no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton-KBR for the reconstruction of Iraq.
More on Ms. Greenhouse from The Washington Post can be found here
So while an enormous amount of money was allocated and spent to date on Iraqi reconstruction, Iraq remains largely in shambles, with no infrastructure to speak of, and we taxpayers can be assured that a significant amount of the money allocated has disappeared down the rathole of waste and corruption created by the Bush Administration.
When it comes to warfare, some amount of waste and even fraud might be excused in the name of expediency. But the current campaign in Iraq is expensive, wasteful and ineffective.
The recent success of Hezbollah against the Israeli army, arguably the best conventional force in the world, is chilling and thought-provoking.
What we’re currently doing doesn’t work. Maybe we should try doing something else.