Make sure you SIG HEIL and WORSHIP the WARFARE STATE, huh?
Update: A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff
"Despite electrocutions, a new contract; KBR faulted in soldiers' deaths" by Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press | February 7, 2009
Yeah, SUPPORT the TROOPS, right.
WASHINGTON - Defense contractor KBR Inc., which is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two US soldiers in Iraq, has been awarded a $35 million contract by the Pentagon to build an electrical distribution center and other projects there.
I say we stick the auditors and awarders fingers in a socket and see what happens.
The announcement of the new KBR contract comes just months after the Pentagon, in strongly worded correspondence obtained by the Associated Press, rejected the company's explanation of serious mistakes in Iraq and its proposed improvements.
Translation: the military doesn't give a shit about you, grunt, so why do you continue to fight, die, and take orders?
A senior Pentagon official, David J. Graff, cited the company's "continuing quality deficiencies" and said KBR executives were "not sufficiently in touch with the urgency or realities of what was actually occurring on the ground."
"Many within DOD [the Department of Defense] have lost or are losing all remaining confidence in KBR's ability to successfully and repeatedly perform the required electrical support services mission in Iraq," wrote Graff, commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency, in a Sept. 30 letter.
And yet they STILL GET the CONTRACT!!! Zzzzzzzttt!
Graff rejected the company's claims that it wasn't required to follow US electrical codes for its work on US military facilities in Iraq.
Are they INCREDIBLE or what?
KBR has said it would cost an extra $560 million to refurbish buildings in Iraq used by the US military, including Saddam Hussein's palaces, which among other problems are based on a 220-volt standard rather than the American 120-volt standard.
They steal that in a day, so what's the big deal?
KBR announced last week it won a new $35.4 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to design and build a convoy support center at Camp Adder in southern Iraq. It will include a power plant, electrical distribution center, water purification, and distribution systems, wastewater and information systems and road paving.
Oh, about the WATER: Iraq for Sale
Also see: Occupation Iraq: KBR and the Indiana Guard
Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, called the new KBR contract inappropriate. Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said he has formally asked the Corps of Engineers whether it was confident KBR could accomplish it.
Nothing but congressional fart mist as the FUNDING CONTINUES UNABATED! --more--"
So HOW MUCH has been WASTED and LOOTED so far, 'murka?
"US is warned not to repeat waste, fraud in Afghanistan; Watchdogs cite lessons of Iraq" by Richard Lardner, Associated Press | February 3, 2009
WASHINGTON - Waste and corruption that marred Iraq's reconstruction will be repeated in Afghanistan unless the United States transforms the unwieldy bureaucracy managing tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, government watchdogs warned yesterday.
The United States has devoted more than $30 billion to rebuilding Afghanistan.
This as they SHIT ALL OVER YOU and REBUILD NOTHING HERE!!!!
Yet despite the hard lessons learned in Iraq, where the United States has spent nearly $51 billion on reconstruction, the effort in Afghanistan is headed down the same path, the watchdogs told a new panel investigating wartime contracts.
Translation: MORE WAR LOOTERS are going to GET PHAT on TAXPAYER DOUGH!
"Before we go pouring more money in, we really need to know what we're trying to accomplish [in Afghanistan]," said Ginger Cruz, deputy special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. "And at what point do you turn off the spigot so you're not pouring money into a black hole?"
That's the POINT!! And it is the BLACK-HOLE of DEEP-POCKETED WAR LOOTERS to where that taxpayer loot is headed!
Better cooperation among federal agencies, more flexible contracting rules, constant oversight and experienced acquisition teams are among the changes urged by the officials in order to make sure money isn't wasted and contractors don't cheat.
I have an idea: How about ENDING the LYING WARS?!!!
That should SOLVE the PROBLEM rather nicely!
Cruz, along with Stuart Bowen, the top US official overseeing Iraq's reconstruction, delivered a grim report to the Commission on Wartime Contracting. Their assessment, along with testimony from Thomas Gimble of the Defense Department inspector general's office, laid out a history of poor planning, weak oversight and greed that soaked US taxpayers and undermined American forces in Iraq.
But SOMEBODY got RICH and KICKED IT BACK in CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS!!!!
Bowen, who has made 21 trips to Iraq since he was appointed in October 2004, said the United States has financed a wide array of projects in Iraq - from training the Iraqi army and police to rebuilding the country's oil, electric, justice, health and transportation sectors. Some of these projects succeeded, Bowen told the commission at its first public hearing, but many did not.
Violence in Iraq and constant friction between US officials in Washington and Baghdad were also major factors that undercut progress. A 456-page study by Bowen's office, "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," reviews the problems in an effort the Bush administration initially thought would cost $2.4 billion.
The US government "was neither prepared for nor able to respond quickly to the ever-changing demands" of stabilizing Iraq and then rebuilding it, said Bowen. "For the last six years we have been on a steep learning curve," he said.
Even though they said they were before selling you this abominable and treasury-emptying occupation. Hey, who cares that they LIED YOU INTO a WAR, huh? Just FUND IT, or you DON'T SUPPORT the TROOPS!!!
--more--"
Meanwhile, back to Iraq:
NEW YORK - Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion US-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior US military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.
Up above it said $51 billion; WTF?!!!
Court records show that last month, investigators subpoenaed the personal bank records of Colonel Anthony B. Bell, who is now retired from the Army but who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 when the small operation grew into a frenzied attempt to remake the country's broken infrastructure.
Which we just happened to have smashed with our illegal invasion. Great set-up for war-looting, huh?
In addition, investigators are examining the activities of Lieutenant Colonel Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004, according to two federal officials involved in the inquiry.
It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, and both said they had nothing to hide from investigators. Yet officials say several criminal cases over the past few years point to widespread corruption in the operation the men helped to run.
As part of the inquiry, the authorities are taking a fresh look at information given to them by Dale C. Stoffel, an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in late 2004.
JUST GETTING AROUND to it NOW, huh?
And DO I EVER SMELL a COVER-UP KILLING!!!!!!!
Before he was shot on a road north of Baghdad, Stoffel drew a portrait worthy of a pulp crime novel: tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper sacks that were scattered around the Green Zone, the nerve center of the US government's presence in Iraq, two senior federal officials said.
ALL TRUE!!!! It was WIDELY REPORTED at the TIME!!!!
Stoffel, who gave investigators information about the office where Bell and Hirtle worked, was deemed credible enough that he was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with officials and Stoffel's lawyer, John H. Quinn Jr. There is no evidence that his death was related to his allegations of corruption....
Does AmeriKa's MSM think we will suck up whatever shit they throw out there with a straw? Yeah, that had nothing to do with his execution, sure.
The reconstruction effort was intended to improve services and convince Iraqis of American good will, but it largely managed to do neither.
Well, the MASS-MURDER of nearly 2 MILLION IRAQIS and DISPLACEMENT of nearly 5 MILLION may have had something to do with it.
As for the intentions, I think they were to PAD WAR-LOOTERS COFFERS right from the get-go. If AmeriKa truly cared about the Iraqi people, we would NOT have INVADED THEIR NATION and DESTROYED IT over a BUNCH of BULLSHIT LIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The wider investigation raises the question of whether American corruption was a primary factor in damaging an effort whose failures have been ascribed to poor planning and unforeseen violence.
And yet the U.S. HARANGUES the REST of the WORLD over CORRUPTION!!
No wonder our SHIT-STINK NATION is REVILED in so many places: NO ONE likes a SHIT-STINKING HYPOCRITE (especially a MASS-MURDERING ONE)!!!!
The investigations, which are being conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Justice Department, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, and other federal agencies, cover a period when millions of dollars in cash, often in stacks of shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills, were dispensed from a loosely guarded safe in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.
Just GRAB and GO!!!!
--more--"
They are never going to find that money, readers. It's gone!
But the WAR NACHINE will come up with MORE TAXPAYER DOLLARS to fund a BLOATED EMPIRE!!!
"PORTLAND, Maine - The two shipyards building the Navy's next-generation destroyer held private ceremonies this week signaling the start of construction, but the future remains cloudy for the stealthy warship that doubled in price long before shipbuilders began bending steel.
Yeah, we can ALWAYS COVER WAR-LOOTERS COST OVER-RUNS -- but SCREW YOU and your HOMES, HEALTH, and KIDS, Amurka!!!!!
Funding has been allocated for the DDG-1000 Zumwalt that's being built at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works in Maine and for a second ship at Northrop Grumman's shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. But funding for a third ship is still in question, and the future is also uncertain for the Navy's long-term plans for future destroyer purchases vital to keeping the two Navy shipbuilders busy.
Deep cuts to the Navy's six major shipyards, which employ 54,000 workers, could fly in the face of President Barack Obama's economic goals. Already, there's a lobbying effort afoot to spare the Air Force F-22 Raptor program, which supporters say provides 95,000 American jobs....
Yeah, let's see HOW MUCH TAXPAYER MONEY we can WASTE on an EMPIRE built on LIES!!!!! Let's all WORSHIP the WAR MACHINE!!
Officially, the ships are supposed to cost roughly double the $1.3 billion price of a Burke destroyer. But estimates for the first two ships now run as high as $5 billion....
Five BILLION APIECE? Can BANKRUPT AmeriKa AFFORD THAT?
The American Shipbuilding Association contends more money must be allocated to shipbuilding if the Navy is to reach its goal of a 313-ship fleet....
To FIGHT WHO, exactly? Somali pirates?
--more--"
Is it just me, or does the tone of "poor little war-looters" grate on you, too, readers?
Meanwhile, something more important than money is going to be lost (figures the Globe gives it a brief):
"Guard battalion trains for return to Iraq
Maine's largest Army National Guard unit will be training aggressively this year in preparation for its return to Iraq in 2010. The 133d Engineer Battalion is scheduled to spend three weeks this summer in Germany, where it will build simulated Iraqi villages as part of its training.
How about building some REAL ONES back here in America, huh?
There will be a lot of younger faces that weren't with the unit during its initial deployment to Iraq five years ago. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dwaine Drummond, said his biggest concern is the loss of technical experience resulting from the retirement of soldiers with decades of construction experience (AP)."
That's not my biggest concern.
Related: Boston Globe Buries the War Dead
And just HOW are they going to PAY for all this, readers?
"2-cent stamp price increase set for May" by ASSOCIATED PRESS | February 11, 2009
Where do you think all that extra $ is going? Postmen's pensions?
Ha-ha-ha-ha!!
WASHINGTON - The US Postal Service announced yesterday that the price of a first-class stamp will rise to 44 cents on May 11.
I wouldn't mail a letter if my life depended on it.
Related: Neither Snow Nor Rain....
That gives plenty of time to stock up on Forever Stamps, which will continue to sell at the current 42-cent rate until the increase occurs. They will remain valid in the future regardless of rate increases.
"The Postal Service is not immune to rising costs which are affecting homes and businesses across America today," said Postmaster General John Potter. "Even with the increases, the Postal Service continues to offer some of the lowest postage prices in the world."
Yeah, you guys are great -- especially the crop of gold-brickers I know.
Postage rates go up annually in May, with the new prices announced in February. The overall change is tied to the rate of inflation in the year before. While the new 44-cent rate covers the first ounce of first-class mail, the price for each additional ounce will remain unchanged at 17 cents. Postal officials estimate the increase will cost the average household $3 a year.
Of course, you can afford to toss that at a lying, looting government!
Buffeted by rising costs and declining mail volume, the Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year and, unless the economy turns around, is headed toward much larger losses this year.
Yeah, the poor post office!
And they are still losing money? Maybe we should get rid of them!
--more--"
