Pentagon Investigates Contracts Worth 6 Billion under Criminal Review

The story is from NYT, but can be viewed on TruthOut without sign in.



It's astronomical amounts and double of what previous been admitted by the Army. At the hearing, a panel of high-ranking Defense Department officials described a war-zone procurement system in disarray.

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To me it seems all the human faults are at play here. From greed, lust to gluttony, driving the desire for the easy buck. To sloth, wrath, envy and pride, skilfully manipulated, making it swallowable to the public.

I am afraid the general public just don't know for real. If they should happen to get a glimpse, it's beyond their comprehension and easily diverted with non-stories ...about Britney or whatever is up.

But they do care about their taxdollar, they care alot, cause it's the real holy cow of American politics.

It then seems a little odd, yeah to me way out of proportion, that war spending some estimates now put at 720 million dollars a day can go on, not unnoticed, but noticed by the very few, who in turn get rediculed and mainly silenced by mainstream media.

No, people care about their taxdollar going to illegal immigrants and security for a foreign head of state, they with lies and twists of history and truth have been trained to see as an enemy. Goebles couldn't have done better.

The master manipulation is the twist of proportions, the fragmentation of a context and putting it back together to fit the agenda of the scoundrels.

I understand that quite clearly, but I don't understand so many people buy it, and if not, seemingly stick up with it. Least of all under the current economical situation.

Fellow American Brothers and Sisters, don't put up with it.
Arise, raise your head to the truth before it's too late.


[edit on 23-9-2007 by khunmoon]

I for one am appalled at the amount of money the Australian Govt has spent in having troops in Iraq...We have less than 2000 personnel in Iraq, yet this has cost us almost a billion $$ since the war began...

I mean, we have next to zero commonwealth govt debt ( the govt runs a token debt market worth a few billion $$ in order to keep institutional investors happy)
Our state govts recently have run up debts at a few billion $$ a piece for infrastructure, but that is long term debt and no biggie....

My point is, why spend a billion dollars over a couple years to support an action that doesn't benefit my country and that's based on a personal friendship ?

It is totally insane...Imagine how much good this money could have done spent on education and health ?

Sure its small beer compared to what the US spends/has spent, but I do wonder how much good the govt could do with that money if we weren't there...

We are only there because of a personal friendship between the US president and the Aust prime minister, nothing more....

Peace

The problem is, the corporations scooping the huge contracts in the war zones have highly placed political clout, which is how they get the contracts in the first place. So many big snouts in the trough and all the big players get their "get out of jail free" cards should some tiresome bean counter or reporter look too deeply into the spending.

There should be oversight of ALL government spending, after all it's OUR money they throw around. I have looked at past government spending here in the UK on some of it's projects and the blatant over-inflation of pricing by favoured vendors beggars belief. I have even come across this at work where a favoured vendor in the US was being awarded projects in India and China, but basing the labour costs on US domestic figures even though they were sub-contracting out to local providers... and these were being signed off in the US... unbelievable
Having seen the fiasco of the CPA and the missing $9B USD that is still unaccounted for, and still nobody accountable or behind bars, I see this being pushed to the backburner in favour of Britney's latest vehicular shunt

These issues should be front page news and the people, the taxpayers, should see this out in the open but I can't see it happening anytime soon.

Unless this Majority Democratic congress do the right thing this will be big, but as we have seen in previous claims of wrong doings with the war in Iraq and Haliburton involvement and scandals wasting tax payer money nothing will be done and Haliburton will keep getting their fare share of this war thanks to Vice president Cheney.

Corruption pays off.

Corruption pays off. It sure does when you are protected by government.

Read this, I've never read the like. DoJ don't want to prosecute.

Bush Administration, DOJ Blocking Iraq Fraud Suits

Peter Keisler, the acting US attorney general, covered up evidence of alleged widespread contracting fraud in Iraq by preventing whistleblowers' complaints from being investigated, according to a prominent fraud attorney.

Alan Grayson, an attorney who has represented scores of whistleblowers in suits against companies that were awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts related to Iraq reconstruction, blamed the Bush administration for the lack of government action on Iraq fraud.

In an interview with Truthout, Grayson said Keisler has purposely delayed investigations into Iraq contractor fraud because of Keisler's political allegiance to the Bush administration. Keisler has refused to prosecute whistleblower lawsuits because Bush "does not want more bad news coming out of Iraq," Grayson said, adding "to have an entire class of cases treated this way is truly unprecedented. I've been doing this for 20 years and I've never seen it before."

--my emphasis--

Somebody tell me, when was the American Presidency turned into a dictatorship? Please! I must have missed it.

The other thing that strikes me as odd over this issue is...

US wheat farmers have recently launched a class action in the US against the Australian Wheat Board, alleging its under the table payments to the Iraq government as part of the food for oil system unfairly affected US wheat farmers...

When I look at the numbers proposed in this post, as to the amounts paid by the AWB, are the American serious ?

Gimme a break...The US has always been in the top three subsidised agricultural nations on earth...And they bitch about the AWB trying to get a break for Aussie farms while in other industries, US companies have ripped the system for $6 billion, with up to $88 billion under audit ???!!!!

We are talking $300-400 million AUD Vs AT LEAST $6 Bill USD and potentially a lot more...

Maybe the US farmers need to drop their action...Lets face it, like the Australian government and wheat growers are going to accept some bogus decision in some US court...

Game on US...You are going to notice a lot of difference in the FTA between the US and Australia when we have a change of govt....The new govt isn't going to lube up, roll over and spread 'em like the Howard Government has done to the US pharma industries...