Extortion of a Nation…
From Crooks & Liars newsletter 4/30/07:
In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.
The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly. Read more…
So let me get this straight: We’ve spent over $300 billion in Iraq and all we have to show for it is 3,346 American deaths and 26,188 casualties, tens of thousands dead Iraqis, increased terrorism and a deeply fractured Iraqi country? At least the oil companies are raking in record profits, right?
From another angle: Our tax dollars, instead of being used to advantage to solve some of our problems at home, have been spent, along with a mortgage on our country’s future that will likely never be repaid, to kill, maim, and wound many thousands of Americans and Iraqis, further destroy an already devasted country, and pave the way for terrorist enemies to operate freely in a country where they could gain no toe-hold before we arrived.
Why? To give the US a larger presence in the region so we could promote oil field services and construction companies like Halliburton, and the big oil companies themselves, so they could turn around and gouge us with record high prices at the gasoline pump, so they could make record profits, build more facilities and bleed us some more? You want the axis of evil? Look no further than Bush-Cheney. They not only deserve impeachment, but should be charged with high treason and war crimes. They have sold out America and the American people to line their already wealthy pockets. There is no fate too severe for them and their comrades in crime.
[NOTE: I am quite aware that this is a gross oversimplification and a wordy rant. Like a growing majority of Americans, I am frustrated more than ever in my life. I believe very deeply that history, if our future is allowed to have a history, will show the basic charges to be correct. Let us hope that history does not identify these acts and these times as the beginning of the collapse and failure, the final days of, the United States of America.]
4 Comments so far
I hear you, Winston.
All administrations screw up; all make some compromises in favor of political expediency at the expense of our domestic and foreign interests. That said, this administration’s combination of short-sightedness, arrogance, subservience to corporations’ bottom lines, lip-service (disguised as pandering) to the base and incompetence (it must be a combination of these things because no one of these entirely explains what we’ve wit(less)nessed these past 6 1/2 years) is so astonishing in its breadth and depth that it staggers the imagination. Oh: and I left out fear-mongering and moral relativism in my list above.
I know people are counting the days till January 2009, but man! To hold our breath, living till that paycheck arrives and hoping nothing ELSE goes wrong while the interest on all the wrongs going on now continue to compound daily, weekly, etc., is madness . . . though the thin optimistic voice in me says, Maybe that’s a sign of faith in our system, that the next President, no matter his/her party, will set us aright. Maybe. I would like to think we are still strong enough to survive even this–I know that is a large part of Barack Obama’s appeal for me. Everybody else just wants to fix this mess, which is fine as far as it goes. But he believes . . . and I need my faith reaffirmed.
Even after allowing for some necessary over-simplification in order to fit into a blog post, the expression “Crimes Against Humanity” does come to mind applied to the Cheney Administration.
I agree with you totally and although I know they won’t impeach them, if the republicans are truly the law and order ones, they should be demanding they do. There have to be consequences for activites as blatant as these heartless men enacted. It’s hard to believe these are supposed to be the patriots after what they have done to our country. I realize impeachment this late in a term probably would be a waste of time but it sure would have a lot more real morality behind it than the last one over a blow job.
[...] nobody asked…: Our tax dollars, instead of being used to advantage to solve some of our problems at home, have been spent, along with a mortgage on our country’s future that will likely never be repaid, to kill, maim, and wound many thousands of Americans and Iraqis, further destroy an already devasted country, and pave the way for terrorist enemies to operate freely in a country where they could gain no toe-hold before we arrived. [...]