Mark Adams, The Lib
March 12, 2006 11:25 AM PST
Don't be so simplistic. It's not about which team you're on. it's about corruption and crony capitalism.
As for me, I had never heard of Haliburton until I saw a 60 minutes expose of their flaunting the laws that forbade American companies from doing business with Saddam Hussein by setting up a dummy mail box in the Camen Islands.
It also came as a surprise to me that it was our policy to award such sweetheart deals. Wasn't it the joke that our astronaughts sit on a million pounds of high explosives in a vehicle made up of a couple hundred thousand moving parts -- all built by the lowest bidder.
Christ I can't get a pot hole fixed in front of my house without three contractors submitting bids to city hall. Yet it's ok to give billions to a company with a proven track record of "losing" money, overcharging, and downright incestuous connections with high government officials?
Don't even.
As a law abiding taxpayer you should be concerned if not disgusted by the evidence trail nobody in our government will investigate. We put wiretaps on Shakers' phones because they are (ooh, what a surprise) vocally anti war, but we can't conduct a proper audit of Haliburton? Puh-leeze.
if that shoplifter Claude Allen can get condom dispensing aids awareness groups audited half a dozen times, merely for the sake of harassment, you think we could spare a couple of bean counters to look at Haliburton's books?
Is that too much to ask? Wake up. Your government was bought and paid for years ago, but even Duke Cunningham held out for the best bid.
There's not been such rampant corruption, on such a blatant scale, since the Harding administration. So far this White House has one senior aide idicted for obstruction, another senior aide arrested for theft, and one aide convicted -- the head of procurment whose job it was to oversee those no-bid contracts -- for fraud. This is historically unprecedented, but you feel quite content to think, "ho-hum, silly dem."
Can you name a single president whose Deputy National Security Advisor for the most contentious area of the world, the Middle East, was a convicted felon? Elliot Abrams, previously convicted of lying to Congress now is paid to brief Congressmen on the war. Outrageous.
What will it take to get you people to stop playing the team identity game and act like responsible citizens who demand no less than honesty in our system of government.
Honestly, what will it take. Does Cheney have to shoot someone in front of witnesses or something? Does Rove have to squash one of John Kerry's kid's hampsters? Does Bush have to fiddle with a guitar like a resurrected Nero while a US city is destroyed?
What on Earth will it take? |
