Outsourcing the War or Haliburton Makes a Killing

More wonderful news from land of the two rivers. The number of civilian contractors outnumber U.S. troops
Nothing shows the crass cowardice of G.W. Bush more than that stark fact. Our commander guy in chief is trying to obscure the real cost of the Iraqi occupation. What catches the eye in the L.A. Times report is that no one really knows how many Security Contractors (that would be Mercenary soldiers) are in Iraq. There is a huge gap between the Pentagons' estimated total and the industries 30,000.

The Pentagon has had trouble with numbers before. Thanks to pressure from Darth Cheney et al, the numbers of troopers needed to occupy Iraq went down from 500,000 to todays 185,000. Civilian casualties, we have no idea, the Pentagon didn't even bother to count the maimed and killed since "shock and awe." The grand total since 2003? No one really knows. The Pentagon has its' numbers which again seem to be a little low. There are four million displaced Iraqis. Seems that UNHCR does not suffer from the math anxiety that afflicts the Pentagon.

So what are the contractors doing? Well, they are filling the breach. Peel back the onion and see what the Pentagon is admitting to. The logistical tail of the Army has been outsourced. This is yet another secret surge. Those enlisted truck drivers, cooks, technicians etc have now become "trigger-pullers." Their former jobs are now being done by civilians who are being payed much more than their enlisted counterparts. It all breaks down when the shootings start though. The civilians are much more likely to bug out when going get tough. The civilians have no solemn oaths to defend, they can always quit.

Again what we have here is a rotten-to-the-core administration trying to hide the depth and scope of its' malfeasance in Iraq. We don't know the number of trigger-pullers-for-pay in Iraq because Darth Cheney and W don't want us to know that figure. This war has been a exercise in cowardly deception from day one. This administration has been all about Kleptocracy and cronyism from day one. The "cost plus contracting" arrangement has lead to staggering amounts of fraud and waste.

Only now, thanks to a real Congress using its power of oversight, are we beginning to see the outlines of this criminal racket. Only now are we seeing the bill of goods sold to us by W and his happy bunch of flim-flam artists. Only now do we see the sociopaths who have enriched themselves via the NeoCons' excellent little war.

Outsourcing has always been a racket. It has always been a way for connected individuals to wallow in the public trough. The unwashed masses have fallen for the canard that Private industry can do the job much better than public institutions. For the most part this is pig-swill. Outsourcing replaces committed public employees with poorly paid freelancers. It replaces union protected jobs with good benefits with yet another McJob that undermines the Middle Class in America. It has enriched the very few and pauperized the rest. In the long run it undermines the very essence of civic governance. Of course this is what the NeoCons want, they want a debilitated government and cowed public to run rough-shod over. All the better ensure their dream of a new Aristocracy, a new Robber-Baron era where the hyper-rich run a hyper-power. What better way of insuring absolute power than a war? What better way to crush the opposition than to impoverish it.

W's dividend-check buddies have made a whopping profit from this war. We the people have gone deeply into hock to pay for it. This has got to be the biggest transfer of wealth in history from 99% of the population to the 1/2 of one percent. It is the working class that have footed the biggest part of the bill. Not only have their wages stagnated or gone backwards, it is their sons and daughters that are being used for cannon-fodder in the "War on Terrorism." It is their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that will get stuck with the debt that W and his fellow travelers have foisted on the USA. So while working-class stiffs and Lower-Middle Class grunts get killed and maimed in hot desert sands, party girls Jenna and Barbara Bush get a little more money to burn thanks to daddies stock options in Haliburton.