In the short term its a certainty the Army could do the job cheaper. Grunts get paid a fraction of what contractors get paid, plus there is a big overhead/mark up for a civilian contractor. When the contractor starts padding the books on everything then it gets really expensive. The famous example in Iraq was one of Halliburton's subs was grossly overstating the number of meals they were serving in the mess hall.
The only factor that works against using soldiers is they are kind of expensive in the long run thanks to some of the benefits.
The bigger problem with using contractors is you create an army that isn't self sufficient and it causes a lot of problems. Using contractors to drive trucks in supply convoys in a war zone is bad. They should be driven by soldiers with weapons and thoroughly protected by the Army's assets.
Having your army fed by local subcontractors is especially stupid. Many troops are being fed by Saudi and Kuwaiti contractors who are presumably Arab and Muslim. If the insurgents infiltrate a few of their own in to these messes it would be extraordinarily easy to incapacitate an army without firing a shot.
" I'm not sure where exactly you got the idea that the UN had any sort of power to revoke of grant exemptions for things like this, the UN is realy nothing more than a forum, despite the best efforts of some."
Uh, try Google news. Its been in the news since mid May when the exemption renewal came up. I saw in the news a couple days ago China had decided to abstain which may prevent the U.S. from getting the exemption renewal.
The International Criminal Court is on somewhat shaky ground but it is the court of last resort for prosecuting war crimes at the moment.
Its certainly true that the U.S. can always resist surrendering its citizens to the international court but at present the international court can't charge Americans thanks to the U.N. exemption. The exemption has a time limit, 2 years I think and its up for renewal.
If the exemption isn't renewed, and thanks to Iraq it appears unlikely it will be, then the international court can potentially lay charges against American's as war criminals especially as in this case where there appear to be no clear jurisdiction for bringing charges against these civilian contractors. I'm not saying it would happen since the U.S. is the 800 pound gorilla at the U.N. but its a sad comment on how far the U.S. has fallen that it is the world's leading candidate for war crimes charges.
It may true that it is not clearly defined but the Constitution does explicitly require the Congress to pass a declaration of war before the President can wage one. The Iraq resolution was not a declaration of war. Again the DOJ established the CIA agent can't be court martialed because there is not a declared state of war.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0204a.asp
This has some good quotes from Madison who was there. I particularly like this one:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."
Sorry man but you've been sucking the Bush propaganda machine's teat a little to long.
"Any objective observer knows Saddam probably gave money and material to Al Qaeda"
Please provide a reference to any evidence to support your claim. I'm not aware of any. The only known Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the war was in a part of Iraq on the Iranian bored Saddam didn't control. Al Zarqawi is the other link the Bush administration is pushing but most of if not all of his activities have been in post Saddam Iraq. A terrorism expert on the news last night, who seems to be in the know, suggested Zarqawi isn't even part of Al Qaeda and is pursuing his own agenda.
Saddam backed Palastinian groups, hated Israel and he was a troublemaker but he is a secular socialist and is the antithesis of the Islamic fundementalists.
Nearly half the U.S. people still think Iraq was responsible for 9/11 thanks to the Bush/Fox machine. Saudi Arabia was the one the U.S. should have invaded if you wanted to avenge 9/11.
"Bush never made a connection between Iraq and 9/11"
Wrong again, revisionism on your part and theirs. Maybe Bush didn't say it but his administration did during the run up to the war. They insisted one of the lead 9/11 hijackers met with Iraqi intelligence in Eastern Europe, As I recall it was Atta. The 9/11 commission has evidence that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt he was in the U.S., using ATM machines which took pictures of him, when this meeting was supposed to have taken place.
"And Bush didn't alienate the world"
Once again every international poll I'm aware of says you're wrong. Bush is the most reviled U.S. president in modern times outside the U.S.. Spain threw out its government for supporting Bush. The Britush hammered Blair's party in the last local election and will throw him out for supporting Bush when he comes up. Australia appears poised to throw out their government for backing Bush. The Polish foreign minister flat out said it last summer, they were in Iraq to get a cut of the oil contracts. At least he was honest.
If the CIA and FBI hadn't abused their power they might not have been reined in so it is their own fault. Now that they are being given massive new funding and all the constraints are being taken off there is a near certainty they will return the massively abusive behavior they were famous for in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, or actually they will probably reach a whole new level with the tools of modern technology and the "War on Terror" as an excuse.
This is a civilian contractor we are talking about here. If you read my post you would see that civilian contractors apparently can't be court martialed except during times of war and the Congress has unfortunately not declared war in Afghanistan or Iraq so they can't be court martialed. This offense happened in Afghanistan so U.S. domestic laws against torture, which also enforce the Geneva rules, don't apply.
There should be a new rule, the U.S. should stop waging wars unless the Congress has the guts to actually declare war. It would fix a whole lot of evils. For example instead of passing a weak kneed authorization for the wars in Iraq or Vietnam Congress should have to actually declare war. When faced with this gravest of constitutional duties they might have come to their senses, do their jobs, investigate, contemplate, and decide if there is a reason to go to war. Iraq and Vietnam might not have happened as a result and the U.S. might be a lot better off.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident used to push the U.S. in to Vietnam was largely a U.S. fabrication. South Vietnamese patrol boats attacked North Vietnam, they fought back, there was a U.S. destroyer in the area that was apparently never fired on but Johnson claimed that it had been and used it to sucker Congress in to endorsing the disasterous escalation in Vietnam without declaring war.
And of course in Iraq the Bush administration fabricated the case for WMD's and ties between Iraq, Al Aqaeda and 9/11, launched a war that has alienated most of the world, resulted in war crimes and was once again not a declared war.
Its only fair since the DOJ is apparently turning in to a global law enforcement agency, and will apparently be tasked to prosecute DOD and CIA contractors for torture in order to deflect attention from the people in the White House and Pentagon who probably ordered the torture in the first place.
An interesting case is the CIA contractor who apparently beat an Afghan detainee to death and was charged with assault this week. He is apparently being prosecuted under the Patriot Act, by the DOJ, in a really disturbing interpretation and extension of this already overly broad laws reach. The article being used was supposed to be for foreign terrorists who attack U.S. government facilities overseas but they are apparently reinterpreting it to cover a U.S. citizen, and government employee, attacking a foreigner at a government facility overseas.
The DOJ apparently had to stretch it this way or CIA and DOD contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan could quite literally get away with murder. The problem:
- Civilian contractors can be court martialled but only if congress officially declared war which it hasn't in Afghanistan or Iraq - There is no way the U.S. will turn its citizens, especially a CIA or DOD employee, over to Afghanistan or Iraq which are the only entities with jurisdiction -The U.S. has managed to exempt its citizens from prosecution by the international courts who prosecute war crimes wherever they occur. The U.S. blackmailed the U.N. in to this exemption by threatening to withdraw troops and support from peacekeeping operations in the Balkans in particular. China supported this, and helped pass it, but as of yesterday no longer will because of the obvious war crimes the U.S. is committing. - The DOJ doesn't normally have jurisdiction outside the U.S. though it is rapidly taking upon itself the right to prosecute anyone for crimes anywhere, and become the worlds first truly global police force. The Bush administration is trying or has already given the DOJ the right to prosecute U.S. citizens who commit sex crimes anywhere in the world which is another huge extension of the DOJ's power. You can no longer count on escaping the long arm of the Bush administration by moving out of the U.S.
In an interesting twist it is quite possible the Bush administration was intentionally using civilian contractors to perform interrogations and torture, they've hired a lot of them, because they knew they couldn't be charged thanks to this long series of convenient exclusions.
It may only be because the Bush administration is under heat to make it look like they didn't approve torture in the first place, that they've been forced to go to these new extremes. So they turn to the Patriot Act to find a way to prosecute these contractors who were probably doing what the Bush administration wanted them to do in the first place when they tortured detainees.
If this use of the Patriot Act it upheld the DOJ gains broad new international law enforcement powers. If its not upheld CIA and DOD contractors guilty of torture and murder are given a get out of jail free card, at least until the UN cancels the U.S. excemption from international war crimes prosecution.
Another interesting fact about this case is the CIA contractor is being prosecuted under the patriot act in a really disturbing interpretation and extension of its reach. It was supposed to be to charge foreign terrorists who attack U.S. government facilities oversees but they are apparently reinterpreting it to cover a U.S. citizen attacking a foreigner at a government facility over seas.
The DOJ apparently had to stretch it this way or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan could quite literally get away with murder. The problem:
- Civilian contractors can be court martialled but only if congress officially declared war which it hasn't in Afghanistan or Iraq - There is no way the U.S. will turn its citizens, especially a CIA employee, over to Afghanistan or Iraq which are the only entities with jurisdiction -The U.S. has managed to exempt its citizens from prosecution by the international courts who prosecute war crimes wherever they occur. The U.S. blackmailed the U.N. in to this exemption by threatening to withdraw troops and support from peacekeeping operations in the Balkans in particular. China supported this, and helped pass it, but as of yesterday no longer will because of the obvious war crimes the U.S. is committing. - The DOJ doesn't normally have jurisdiction outside the U.S. though it is rapidly taking upon itself the right to prosecute anyone for crimes anywhere, the worlds first truly global police force. The Bush administration is trying or has already given the DOJ the right to prosecute U.S. citizens who commit sex crimes anywhere in the world which is another huge extension of the DOJ's power. You can no longer count on escaping the long arm of the Bush administration by moving out of the U.S.
In an interesting twist it is quite possible the Bush administration was intentionally using civilian contractors to perform interrogations and torture, they've hired a lot of them, because they knew they couldn't be charged thanks to this long series of convenient exclusions.
It may only be because the Bush administration is under heat to make it look like they didn't approve torture in the first place, that they've been forced to go to these new extremes to find a way to prosecute these contractors who were probably doing what the Bush administration wanted them to do in the first place when they tortured detainees.
Maybe you would care to share with us the "whole story" preferably with some references instead of just libeling Waxman. Is the "truth" secret or maybe you are just blowing smoke and there aren't any "parts" that tear up my side of the story or your so lame you can't back up your BS.
Waxman is a pretty tireless crusader against fraud, waste and abuse all over the government, its not like he is out to just get Halliburton. If you are a taxpayer you owe him a small debt of gratitude those his efforts are almost completely lost in the massive pork and corruption that currently infects the U.S. government.
Please explain where the math is wrong. I didn't say it was 10K for a person for a night, it was 100 people at $100 a night. I think the whole point is, and the army apparently agreed, is that it isn't exactly right to take a huge staff on an extended assignment, alongside soldiers living in tents, thinking you rate putting your entire staff in a five star hotel for the duration, at the tax payers expense. Halliburton/KBR signed up to work for the Army, alongside the Army, they get paid well for it so they should be living like the Army lives and like the Army tells them to.
All in all its more than a little excessive. Rent some god damn apartments if nothing else.
They just don't make war profiteers like they used to.
Every picture of them I've seen they are carrying machine guns, better than the M-16's the underpaid grunts next to them are carrying and they have the best body armor, better than most of the grunts had for the first year in Iraq. I'll grant you they don't drive M-1's or or fly Apaches but I wager they are packing the same weapons they packed when they were SEALS, why would they carry anything less.
Blackwater is doing exactly the same thing Army grunts are doing in Iraq know, guarding people, places and supply lines. Thats what Army's do when they are in occupation mode, the grunts just get paid a lot less and there aren't enough of them.
I'll say it again to you and every other anonymous coward chicken shit, chicken hawk I didn't criticize Halliburton for making money in that post, I criticized the original poster for pretending like they Halliburton was there to rebuild Iraq out of some noble desire to help Iraqis have a better life. I'll say it again KBR would bulldoze Iraq if the Army told them to and the profit margin was right. I'm just calling a spade a spade.
Most businesses aren't making money in a war zone. There is a huge difference. Most businesses aren't helping a government invade another countries under false pretenses. Most businesses aren't making money helping kill, and now torture, people.
You are putting words in my mouth at least as far as that post goes. All I said is call a spade a spade. Halliburton, KBR and Bechtel are in Iraq to make money, nothing more, nothing less.
But, when it comes in the form of war profiteering making money is a sin. It creates a profit motive for war which makes war more likely not less. It makes it more likely people are going to be killed and killing people for no reason is a sin. War profiteering makes it more likely, not less, that false pretenses will be used to start wars. Is it an accident Dick Cheney, KBR's ex CEO was the #1 cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He, no doubt, had numerous motives for starting the war in Iraq but the fact his company is making a mint on it adds a really disturbing edge.
If the Army told KBR to bulldoze Iraq they would do it just as eagerly as rebuild it if the profit margin was right.
Stop either being naive or thinking everyone who reads your post is. Halliburton is in Iraq to make money, money, money, nothing more, nothing less. They could care less about rebuilding Iraq unless its in their contract that they have to. Their KBR subsidiary follows the Army around like a poodle where ever they go trying to rake in as much money as possible off all its wars and police actions. And its a lot of money, thanks to Dick Cheney in particular who, as Secretary of Defense, reorganized and downsized the Army so they are now totally dependent on KBR to drive to do things like their trucks and cook. Brown and Root was war profiteering in Vietnam 40 years ago.
I suppose its possible some Halliburton employees are idealists who are there to rebuild Iraq for the Iraqis....gag....sorry....thats so ridiculous I can't even say it with a straight face. They are there for the money too.
Guess it depends on who you are or maybe exactly where you are. There are apparently hearings coming up on Halliburton's fraud, waste and abuse in Iraq. Here are some examples the Republican's are trying to suppress.
Apparently Halliburton's financial staff in Kuwait are staying in the five star Kempinski Julai'a Hotel and Resort. The tab is $10,000 a night. A 100 people apparently ran up a one million dollar bill in 3 months. The Army tried to move them to tents but they refused.
Some other examples apparently from ex employees and whistleblowers:
"Abandoned $85,000 trucks because of flat
tires and minor problems."
"Paid $100 to have a 15-pound bag of laundry cleaned as part of a million-dollar laundry contract in peaceful Kuwait. The price for cleaning the same amount of laundry in war-torn Iraq was $28."
"Spent $1.50 a can to buy 37,200 cans of soda in Kuwait, about 24 times higher than the contract price."
I like the truck story the best. If true it appears the Iraqi insurgents can decimate the U.S. supply lines by throwing sharpened jacks in the road in front of Halliburton's convoys. Once the trucks are abandoned they are most probably looted, stolen or burned.
War profiteering is always ugly and if you go in to one of these war zones as a contractor that is basically what you are.
The problem with war profiteers is that when you have companies like Halliburton and its subsidary Kellog Brown and Root(KBR) who make a fortune off wars they have strong motivations to encourage and promote wars. KBR has been profiting off war since at least Vietnam when it was Brown and Root. I see another post that indicates they are doing the same thing in the Balkans.
It really disturbing when you have a Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, who rewrites all the Pentagon's rules and moves half the jobs formerly done by soldiers, like driving trucks and cooking, to contractors so KBR can an even better profit since the Army is now totally dependent on them. Cheney, as his reward gets a cushy job as Halliburton/KBR's CEO where he cashes in on his generosity as Secretary of Defense. He then returns to government as VP where he was the #1 cheerleader for a war waged under false pretenses where his old company is raking in billions in sole source contracts. Cheney denies he arranged the contracts. Well he didn't have to. KBR always gets all the Army's war zone logistics contracts and have for a long time.
Another disturbing example is Blackwater. Blackwater consists mostly of ex green berets, rangers, seals and delta force. Uncle Sam spends a fortune to train them. At the first opportunity they get out and join Blackwater where they make 6 figure salaries. They are mercenaries, plain and simple. The mercenary army is the single largest army in Iraq, after the U.S. and larger than the British contingent. The four mercenaries killed in Fallujah that started the month long war there were from Blackwater (Blackwater being the term for SEALS attacking from the water at night).
War profiteering really and truly stinks. It helps propel nations in to wars, for bad reasons, that get a lot of people killed.
We should be particularly alarmed about about the spread of anti-American hate speech going on in the world... it's perfectly fine to be critcal of what we do here, but there comes a point where "dislike" crosses the line into "hatred", and it's those who have been brainwashed into thinking that free governments need to be banished from the world that we are fighting against as terrorists. Simply put, if there were less people in the world spreading hate against us, there'd be less terrorists for us to have to defend against."
I don't suppose it occurred to you that maybe the U.S. is doing things that makes people really hate you, though its your government more than the people, but the people are culpable in supporting that government with votes, tax dollar, soldiers and going along with it. I think I should point out people don't hate you for what you do "here" assuming as in the U.S. They hate you for what you are doing "there" by constant intervention, invasion, manipulation or occupation of their homelands.
You seem to be saying people hate the U.S. only because they've been "brainwashed" in to it. You seem to be echoing the Bush administration line that the people attacking the U.S. are attacking it because of its "Freedom" which simply isn't the case.
The number one reason the Arab world hates the U.S. is because it has for more than a half century backed Israel at every turn, against the Palastinians, an arab people suffering under a brutal occupation if they are still in their homeland or who are scattered around the middle east and the world, often in squalid refugee camps, in a diaspora like that inflicted on the Jews so long ago. Here is a little history. The Palastinians certainly have some bad people and done some bad things but the Arab world is always going to hate the U.S., with reason, until the U.S. finds a balanced position and helps compel an equitable peace there, equitable being defined as one where both sides are equally unhappy, and one isn't living under the thumb of the other. A few weeks ago when Bush took it upon himself to give parts of the West Bank to Israel, acting like he even had the authority to make concessions on behalf of the Palastinians, he pushed a bunch more Arab moderates in to the hands of the extremists who hate the U.S.
Another reason many Arabs hate the U.S. is because the U.S. put troops in the middle of their holyland, Saudi Arabia, after the first Gulf War and has been propping up brutal and corrupt dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. U.S. troops are infidels in this region, they are Christians, Jews and liberated women. The people in the region react to them about the same way Americans would react if an Arab or Hindu army were camped in the bible belt. They're pissed.
Perhaps the Taliban form of Islam is extreme but its really very close to Islam in Saudi Arabia, its just the U.S. chooses to pretend its different. Saudi Arabia beheads people in public, they cut off their hands, they repress women so why aren't you upset about that. The women with the greatest equality in the Middle East were in Saddam's Iraq, a secular and progressive state compared to most in the region. Women in Iraq have already lost many of the rights they had and they will lose them all if Iraq ends up being an Islamic state which is nearly inevitable.
The other problem you have in all this is Islamic law is somewhat brutal, its spelled out in the Koran. It is a part of their culture, maybe you don't like it but its not the place of the U.S. to tell everyone they have to live like Americans and Christians. If you want people to stop hating you, you have to start respecting cultures different from yours, and stop telling people how to live.
Another reason most of the world hates the U.S. is because you invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and rather than bringing "Freedom and Democracy" there it appears the U.S.
An OK review though it leaves out the huge pink elephants in the room.
A.The board completely avoided closing some of NASA's to many competing centers which desperately needs to be done. They spend to much time fighting each other and there is way to much duplication of effort and overhead. They did this because they knew if they tried to close any centers the congressional delegation in the state its in would fight the whole plan tooth and nail. That strongly suggest NASA's centers are more pork than anything to do with getting the job done. I'd personally vote to close Johnson. Houston is the armpit of the U.S. and the only reason Johnson is there is because President Johnson wanted to put it there. Everything Johnson does should be at Kennedy for the sake of simple efficiency and proximity. Many of the contributing causes to the Columbia disaster were due to really poor long distance communication between Johnson and Kennedy.
B. It probably does need to be done but the major thing this plan is going to try to do is to knock all of NASA's employees out of the ranks of the civil service which is why Bush likes this whole idea. It is an undying mantra of Republican's that they want to get rid of civil servants. They tend to be unionized, which Republicans hate with a passion and being unionized they tend to vote against Republican's, and they are hard to control or motivate. If the Bush administration can move thousands of people from the ranks of the civil service to private contractors it also will put a whole lot more money/pork in to the pockets of their friends and benefactors in big business. You can't argue that it would be a plus since one of NASA's biggest defects is they have lots of dead weight employees they can't get rid of easily or motivate.
Bullshit. That is the definition of an interstellar space faring race. There is plenty of stuff in this solar system to keep us busy for at least a century, Mars, moons of Saturn and Jupiter, asteroid mining, etc.
"blowing another $100 billion on a one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars mission isn't really a good idea."
A "one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars" is a complete waste of time and money, a base on the moon isn't much better since its gravity is to low and no atmosphere.
Putting a permanent colony on Mars would be priceless. It would dramatically alter most of humankind's horizon, give us a second biosphere, and hopefully give us a fresh start free of many of the encumbrances and inertia of societies on Earth. It would also almost certainly drive advances in a lot of fields including energy, biology, geology, manufacturing and terraforming.
If you accomplished that we would almost certainly become a space faring race and we will have to become that before we exhaust Earth's resources.
"To address the first issue.. sure, stupid people..maybe they should be excluded from voting altogether."
No, stupid people should be allowed to vote as long as they learn to to do it correctly. Sample ballots are usually widely available before the election in newspapers and the like so you can walk through it with help if necessary.
Bringing the Palm Beach ballot in to this is a red herring. Those ballots were in a machine too, albeit a simple one, but it was badly designed too. The original suggestion was a simple piece of paper, where you put an X next to the name which is what Canada, Britain and lots of other places do. You can't get any simpler and the KISS principal applies here. If you screw up and mis-vote then yes, you get disenfranchised but its YOUR FAULT. This is where personal responsibility comes in which the modern world seems loathe to require of people any more.
I don't care how many ways you try to justify it. If you are relying on complex hardware and software to count your votes its always going to be easy for someone to screw with it. Again the only people who will even have a chance to keep an eye on it are us hackers and we know we aren't to be trusted.
Anyone can audit an election with paper ballots and I like that, so do all the little old ladies and gents who like to work at polling stations. Yes there will be counting errors but anytime you have an election that is close enough for the margin of error to matter you can count the ballots until you are sure you have it right.
"They'd have me believe that Bush is a completely incompetent moron who (disengage rational thought) is the mastermind behind the most nefarious and profitable corruption in world history. They continuously point to the glaring, embarrassing international goofs the White House makes while (disengage rational thought) the Bush administration is pulling off the most successful power grab in American history."
Not saying its true but what you describe is quite plausible. George W. is not one of the brightest President's we've had. He has always been a C student at best. His academic credentials, Yale and Harvard MBA are more thanks to his families power and connections than his intellectual ability. He joked recently in a commencement speech about being a C student and how far he'd gone, well most C students don't have his family connections.
Though George W. isn't very bright he does have extremely bright people pulling the strings for him which is why what you say isn't possible is. Karl Rove is the brains in the White House, he is extremely bright and ruthless. Dick Cheney is the neferious and somewhat paranoid one. It is, according to Woodward his job to think of every possible bad thing that could happen and make sure the Bush administration plans for it.
Cheney did rewrite the rules for contracting when he was defense secretary and reopened the revolving door where you work in government, where you give lucrative contracts to big companies, and then make millions when you retire from the government and go to work for the same company as he did with Halliburton. Dick Cheney was the mastermind who hollowed out the military and made it completely dependent on contractors for basic things like cooks, and then his company Halliburton has been getting all those contracts.
If you don't think the Republican party is massively corrupt you should have watched the passage of the Medicare "reform" bill. Billy Tauzin (R) rammed it through Congress and last I heard was going to work for the drug lobby who are going to get a windfall profit from it. The Medicare administrator was drawing up the cost estimates for it at the same time he was negotiating his own private sector job with the companies who were going to make out like bandits when it passed. He had the permission of the White House to job shop though it was massively corrupt to allow it. The administrator then intentionally underestimated the cost of the bill by something like a hundred billion dollars because if the real price tag had been known it never would have passed. He also threatend his subordinates who threatened to reveal the real cost before the bill passed. The Bush administration had to put out the correct numbers right after the bill had passed to everyone's dismay. That guy cost taxpayers a hundred billion dollars in exchange for a sweet multimillion dollar career/payoff. Even then the bill barely passed, lobbyists for the drug and healthcare industry were circling like sharks in the lobby of the Capitol while the debate was going on openly bribing and intimidating Congressmen to get it passed. The payoff to the drug industry was hundreds of billions in tax dollars to pay for drugs and the Medicare administration is precluded by law from negotiating fair prices. The drug companies can charge as much as they think they can get away with.
Don't get me wrong, the Democrats are almost as corrupt as the Republican's, they just send their pork in different places, but for you to stick your head in the sand and pretend like the Bush administration isn't massively corrupt is naive.
Its also basically true that the Bush administration is making one foreign relations gaffe after another. I'm pretty sure the U.S. has never been more hated and feared around the world than it is today. International polls certainly suggest this. Why is that a contradiction to the fact that the Republican's are also in the midst of one of the biggest domestic power grabs ever at home. American's seem to be a lot more gullible than most people around the world so they are falling for the Bush Administration BS while most of the rest of the world isn't.
Well you wont bait me in to a pro Democrat rant. They are just as corrupt and bereft of morals and good ideas as the Republicans. But they are currently completely impotent so they aren't the ones to worry about at the moment. The Republicans who have a stranglehold on power, and are engaged in wholesale abuse of that power, are.
As for 2000 the election for all practical purposes was a toss up so both parties were trying to steal it. The Republican's were just much better at it, and it didn't hurt that the governor of the state in questions was the President's brother and the Secretary of State, Katherine Harris who did everything possible to give it to the Bush family was his right hand lady. She was paid off by the Republican's with the house seat in the 13th district.
Lets just not pretend the Republicans are pure as new driven snow, OK. Its a near certainty they already used Diebold's machines in 2002 to steal the Georgia Senate and Governor's race so if they do it again in 2004 don't make it sound like it would be a first.
I'm not going to get in the middle of you two but I think the Carlysle meeting between Bush and Bin Laden's brother referred to was with George H.W. Bush, his father, and not George W. Bush. Before you start ranting maybe you should figure out what you are talking about.
I'm not sure there was a meeting on the day of 9/11 but George H.W. Bush does work for the Carlyle group so its plausible. He gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for making short speeches for them, or more likely to use his influence to steer business their way. The Carlyle group is one of Saudi Arabia's largest defense contractors. The Bin Laden family is one of the Saudi Arabia's wealthier and more powerful families. Osama is the black sheep of the family, and they publicly disowned him, but Saudi Arabians deny a lot of ties to terrorism though they are the world's biggest supporters and funders of most of it. The Bin Laden family had to disown Osama or it would hammer their multibillion dollar business in the U.S. and the rest of the world. They run a big construction conglomerate if I recall. Whether they really disowned him is anybody's guess.
George W. Bush did allow a special flight right after 9/11, when no American's were flying, in which all the Bin Laden relatives and numerous other Saudi's were spirited out of the country.
Halliburton for Cheney and Carlysle for the Bush family are two of the many incestuous relationships in the current government which make it look very corrupt, whether it really is or not.
It intersting to see Election Systems and Software get some bad publicity. They are actually larger than Diebold in turns of evoting. Every one is familiar with the fact Diebold's CEO is a Bush campaign bigwig in Ohio and promised to deliver Ohio for Bush.
ES&S is also excessively close to the Republicans. An excerpt from Mother Jones on them:
"While Diebold has received the most attention, it actually isn't the biggest maker of computerized election machines. That honor goes to Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold's. "
"The firm, which is privately held, began as a company called Data Mark, which was founded in the early 1980s by Bob and Todd Urosevich. In 1984, brothers William and Robert Ahmanson bought a 68 percent stake in Data Mark, and changed the company's name to American Information Services (AIS). Then, in 1987, McCarthy & Co, an Omaha investment group, acquired a minority share in AIS."
"In 1992, investment banker Chuck Hagel, president of McCarthy & Co, became chairman of AIS. Hagel, who had been touted as a possible Senate candidate in 1993, was again on the list of likely GOP contenders heading into the 1996 contest. In January of 1995, while still chairman of ES&S, Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald that he would likely make a decision by mid-March of 1995. On March 15, according to a letter provided by Hagel's Senate staff, he resigned from the AIS board, noting that he intended to announce his candidacy. A few days later, he did just that. "
"A little less than eight months after stepping down as director of AIS, Hagel surprised national pundits and defied early polls by defeating Benjamin Nelson, the state's popular former governor. It was Hagel's first try for public office. Nebraska elections officials told The Hill that machines made by AIS probably tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in the 1996 vote, although Nelson never drew attention to the connection. Hagel won again in 2002, by a far healthier margin. That vote is still angrily disputed by Hagel's Democratic opponent, Charlie Matulka, who did try to make Hagel's ties to ES&S an issue in the race and who asked that state elections officials conduct a hand recount of the vote. That request was rebuffed, because Hagel's margin of victory was so large."
"As might be expected, Hagel has been generously supported by his investment partners at McCarthy & Co. -- since he first ran, Hagel has received about $15,000 in campaign contributions from McCarthy & Co. executives. And Hagel still owns more than $1 million in stock in McCarthy & Co., which still owns a quarter of ES&S."
"How will they ever be ready in time for the November elections?"
Uh, they are ready...to steal the election for the Republicans this Fall. Its pretty obvious Jeb Bush wants to make sure there is no doubt Florida goes to his brother this time around, so he is dead set against making sure all the new electronic voting machines in his state are verifiable.
The Bush administration has a really strong, or actually overwhelming, incentive to make sure they win. They have to white wash the investigation of who really authorized the use of torture in Iraq. All indications are that it was George W. Bush, General Myers, Rumsfeld and his deputy for military intelligence Steve Cambone under the top secret Copper Green program. They might have got away with it for Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area and may not be under Geneva protections but authorizing torture in Iraq was a war crime under the Geneva conventions and the U.S. laws that enforce the Geneva rules. Its pretty obvious now it wasn't just a bunch of out of control reserve privates doing it on their own.
If the Democrats were to win the White House or Congress and were to really pursue the investigation, which I'm not sure they would, you could see impeachment and senior members of the Bush administration and the military on trial for war crimes. If the Republicans win they can try to stop the blame and the damage at General Sanchez, and if they continue to control both houses of Congress, and they keep their party members in line they will probably succeed. I wager they are already engaged in massive paper shredding and deletion of top secret documents, especially after the leak of the Pentagon and DOJ memo's last week where it became clear the White House was trying, in vain, to establish a legal basis for the use of torture.
If you saw Ashcroft's testimony before Congress last week, a rare event, it became pretty clear the Bush administration has decided they are at war and they can do pretty much anything they please, and unfortunately the "War on Terror" is unlikely to ever end.
Slashdot Mirror
In the short term its a certainty the Army could do the job cheaper. Grunts get paid a fraction of what contractors get paid, plus there is a big overhead/mark up for a civilian contractor. When the contractor starts padding the books on everything then it gets really expensive. The famous example in Iraq was one of Halliburton's subs was grossly overstating the number of meals they were serving in the mess hall.
The only factor that works against using soldiers is they are kind of expensive in the long run thanks to some of the benefits.
The bigger problem with using contractors is you create an army that isn't self sufficient and it causes a lot of problems. Using contractors to drive trucks in supply convoys in a war zone is bad. They should be driven by soldiers with weapons and thoroughly protected by the Army's assets.
Having your army fed by local subcontractors is especially stupid. Many troops are being fed by Saudi and Kuwaiti contractors who are presumably Arab and Muslim. If the insurgents infiltrate a few of their own in to these messes it would be extraordinarily easy to incapacitate an army without firing a shot.
" I'm not sure where exactly you got the idea that the UN had any sort of power to revoke of grant exemptions for things like this, the UN is realy nothing more than a forum, despite the best efforts of some."
http://www.maconareaonline.com/news.asp?id=7219
Uh, try Google news. Its been in the news since mid May when the exemption renewal came up. I saw in the news a couple days ago China had decided to abstain which may prevent the U.S. from getting the exemption renewal.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2961305
The International Criminal Court is on somewhat shaky ground but it is the court of last resort for prosecuting war crimes at the moment.
Its certainly true that the U.S. can always resist surrendering its citizens to the international court but at present the international court can't charge Americans thanks to the U.N. exemption. The exemption has a time limit, 2 years I think and its up for renewal.
If the exemption isn't renewed, and thanks to Iraq it appears unlikely it will be, then the international court can potentially lay charges against American's as war criminals especially as in this case where there appear to be no clear jurisdiction for bringing charges against these civilian contractors. I'm not saying it would happen since the U.S. is the 800 pound gorilla at the U.N. but its a sad comment on how far the U.S. has fallen that it is the world's leading candidate for war crimes charges.
It may true that it is not clearly defined but the Constitution does explicitly require the Congress to pass a declaration of war before the President can wage one. The Iraq resolution was not a declaration of war. Again the DOJ established the CIA agent can't be court martialed because there is not a declared state of war.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0204a.asp
This has some good quotes from Madison who was there. I particularly like this one:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."
Sorry man but you've been sucking the Bush propaganda machine's teat a little to long.
"Any objective observer knows Saddam probably gave money and material to Al Qaeda"
Please provide a reference to any evidence to support your claim. I'm not aware of any. The only known Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the war was in a part of Iraq on the Iranian bored Saddam didn't control. Al Zarqawi is the other link the Bush administration is pushing but most of if not all of his activities have been in post Saddam Iraq. A terrorism expert on the news last night, who seems to be in the know, suggested Zarqawi isn't even part of Al Qaeda and is pursuing his own agenda.
Saddam backed Palastinian groups, hated Israel and he was a troublemaker but he is a secular socialist and is the antithesis of the Islamic fundementalists.
Nearly half the U.S. people still think Iraq was responsible for 9/11 thanks to the Bush/Fox machine. Saudi Arabia was the one the U.S. should have invaded if you wanted to avenge 9/11.
"Bush never made a connection between Iraq and 9/11"
Wrong again, revisionism on your part and theirs. Maybe Bush didn't say it but his administration did during the run up to the war. They insisted one of the lead 9/11 hijackers met with Iraqi intelligence in Eastern Europe, As I recall it was Atta. The 9/11 commission has evidence that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt he was in the U.S., using ATM machines which took pictures of him, when this meeting was supposed to have taken place.
"And Bush didn't alienate the world"
Once again every international poll I'm aware of says you're wrong. Bush is the most reviled U.S. president in modern times outside the U.S.. Spain threw out its government for supporting Bush. The Britush hammered Blair's party in the last local election and will throw him out for supporting Bush when he comes up. Australia appears poised to throw out their government for backing Bush. The Polish foreign minister flat out said it last summer, they were in Iraq to get a cut of the oil contracts. At least he was honest.
Most of the separation the conservatives are railing about today wasn't by design but was legislated in the early 1970's thanks to the . Not sure it was in the CIA's original charter to stay out of domestic affairs but they certainly didn't until the Church commission forced the issue. The Chruch Commission came about because the CIA and FBI were so massively abusing their power that they had become a national embarrassment, a threat to democracy, and had to be reined in. The CIA and FBI were both engaged in massive domestic spying especially on dissidents. Nixon's plumbers of Watergate fame were for all practical purposes CIA. J Edgar Hoover was using the FBI to spy on just about everybody.
If the CIA and FBI hadn't abused their power they might not have been reined in so it is their own fault. Now that they are being given massive new funding and all the constraints are being taken off there is a near certainty they will return the massively abusive behavior they were famous for in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, or actually they will probably reach a whole new level with the tools of modern technology and the "War on Terror" as an excuse.
What exactly are you talking about?
This is a civilian contractor we are talking about here. If you read my post you would see that civilian contractors apparently can't be court martialed except during times of war and the Congress has unfortunately not declared war in Afghanistan or Iraq so they can't be court martialed. This offense happened in Afghanistan so U.S. domestic laws against torture, which also enforce the Geneva rules, don't apply.
There should be a new rule, the U.S. should stop waging wars unless the Congress has the guts to actually declare war. It would fix a whole lot of evils. For example instead of passing a weak kneed authorization for the wars in Iraq or Vietnam Congress should have to actually declare war. When faced with this gravest of constitutional duties they might have come to their senses, do their jobs, investigate, contemplate, and decide if there is a reason to go to war. Iraq and Vietnam might not have happened as a result and the U.S. might be a lot better off.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident used to push the U.S. in to Vietnam was largely a U.S. fabrication. South Vietnamese patrol boats attacked North Vietnam, they fought back, there was a U.S. destroyer in the area that was apparently never fired on but Johnson claimed that it had been and used it to sucker Congress in to endorsing the disasterous escalation in Vietnam without declaring war.
And of course in Iraq the Bush administration fabricated the case for WMD's and ties between Iraq, Al Aqaeda and 9/11, launched a war that has alienated most of the world, resulted in war crimes and was once again not a declared war.
Its only fair since the DOJ is apparently turning in to a global law enforcement agency, and will apparently be tasked to prosecute DOD and CIA contractors for torture in order to deflect attention from the people in the White House and Pentagon who probably ordered the torture in the first place.
An interesting case is the CIA contractor who apparently beat an Afghan detainee to death and was charged with assault this week. He is apparently being prosecuted under the Patriot Act, by the DOJ, in a really disturbing interpretation and extension of this already overly broad laws reach. The article being used was supposed to be for foreign terrorists who attack U.S. government facilities overseas but they are apparently reinterpreting it to cover a U.S. citizen, and government employee, attacking a foreigner at a government facility overseas.
The DOJ apparently had to stretch it this way or CIA and DOD contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan could quite literally get away with murder. The problem:
- Civilian contractors can be court martialled but only if congress officially declared war which it hasn't in Afghanistan or Iraq
- There is no way the U.S. will turn its citizens, especially a CIA or DOD employee, over to Afghanistan or Iraq which are the only entities with jurisdiction
-The U.S. has managed to exempt its citizens from prosecution by the international courts who prosecute war crimes wherever they occur. The U.S. blackmailed the U.N. in to this exemption by threatening to withdraw troops and support from peacekeeping operations in the Balkans in particular. China supported this, and helped pass it, but as of yesterday no longer will because of the obvious war crimes the U.S. is committing.
- The DOJ doesn't normally have jurisdiction outside the U.S. though it is rapidly taking upon itself the right to prosecute anyone for crimes anywhere, and become the worlds first truly global police force. The Bush administration is trying or has already given the DOJ the right to prosecute U.S. citizens who commit sex crimes anywhere in the world which is another huge extension of the DOJ's power. You can no longer count on escaping the long arm of the Bush administration by moving out of the U.S.
In an interesting twist it is quite possible the Bush administration was intentionally using civilian contractors to perform interrogations and torture, they've hired a lot of them, because they knew they couldn't be charged thanks to this long series of convenient exclusions.
It may only be because the Bush administration is under heat to make it look like they didn't approve torture in the first place, that they've been forced to go to these new extremes. So they turn to the Patriot Act to find a way to prosecute these contractors who were probably doing what the Bush administration wanted them to do in the first place when they tortured detainees.
If this use of the Patriot Act it upheld the DOJ gains broad new international law enforcement powers. If its not upheld CIA and DOD contractors guilty of torture and murder are given a get out of jail free card, at least until the UN cancels the U.S. excemption from international war crimes prosecution.
Another interesting fact about this case is the CIA contractor is being prosecuted under the patriot act in a really disturbing interpretation and extension of its reach. It was supposed to be to charge foreign terrorists who attack U.S. government facilities oversees but they are apparently reinterpreting it to cover a U.S. citizen attacking a foreigner at a government facility over seas.
The DOJ apparently had to stretch it this way or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan could quite literally get away with murder. The problem:
- Civilian contractors can be court martialled but only if congress officially declared war which it hasn't in Afghanistan or Iraq
- There is no way the U.S. will turn its citizens, especially a CIA employee, over to Afghanistan or Iraq which are the only entities with jurisdiction
-The U.S. has managed to exempt its citizens from prosecution by the international courts who prosecute war crimes wherever they occur. The U.S. blackmailed the U.N. in to this exemption by threatening to withdraw troops and support from peacekeeping operations in the Balkans in particular. China supported this, and helped pass it, but as of yesterday no longer will because of the obvious war crimes the U.S. is committing.
- The DOJ doesn't normally have jurisdiction outside the U.S. though it is rapidly taking upon itself the right to prosecute anyone for crimes anywhere, the worlds first truly global police force. The Bush administration is trying or has already given the DOJ the right to prosecute U.S. citizens who commit sex crimes anywhere in the world which is another huge extension of the DOJ's power. You can no longer count on escaping the long arm of the Bush administration by moving out of the U.S.
In an interesting twist it is quite possible the Bush administration was intentionally using civilian contractors to perform interrogations and torture, they've hired a lot of them, because they knew they couldn't be charged thanks to this long series of convenient exclusions.
It may only be because the Bush administration is under heat to make it look like they didn't approve torture in the first place, that they've been forced to go to these new extremes to find a way to prosecute these contractors who were probably doing what the Bush administration wanted them to do in the first place when they tortured detainees.
Maybe you would care to share with us the "whole story" preferably with some references instead of just libeling Waxman. Is the "truth" secret or maybe you are just blowing smoke and there aren't any "parts" that tear up my side of the story or your so lame you can't back up your BS.
Waxman is a pretty tireless crusader against fraud, waste and abuse all over the government, its not like he is out to just get Halliburton. If you are a taxpayer you owe him a small debt of gratitude those his efforts are almost completely lost in the massive pork and corruption that currently infects the U.S. government.
Please explain where the math is wrong. I didn't say it was 10K for a person for a night, it was 100 people at $100 a night. I think the whole point is, and the army apparently agreed, is that it isn't exactly right to take a huge staff on an extended assignment, alongside soldiers living in tents, thinking you rate putting your entire staff in a five star hotel for the duration, at the tax payers expense. Halliburton/KBR signed up to work for the Army, alongside the Army, they get paid well for it so they should be living like the Army lives and like the Army tells them to.
All in all its more than a little excessive. Rent some god damn apartments if nothing else.
They just don't make war profiteers like they used to.
Every picture of them I've seen they are carrying machine guns, better than the M-16's the underpaid grunts next to them are carrying and they have the best body armor, better than most of the grunts had for the first year in Iraq. I'll grant you they don't drive M-1's or or fly Apaches but I wager they are packing the same weapons they packed when they were SEALS, why would they carry anything less.
Blackwater is doing exactly the same thing Army grunts are doing in Iraq know, guarding people, places and supply lines. Thats what Army's do when they are in occupation mode, the grunts just get paid a lot less and there aren't enough of them.
I'll say it again to you and every other anonymous coward chicken shit, chicken hawk I didn't criticize Halliburton for making money in that post, I criticized the original poster for pretending like they Halliburton was there to rebuild Iraq out of some noble desire to help Iraqis have a better life. I'll say it again KBR would bulldoze Iraq if the Army told them to and the profit margin was right. I'm just calling a spade a spade.
Most businesses aren't making money in a war zone. There is a huge difference. Most businesses aren't helping a government invade another countries under false pretenses. Most businesses aren't making money helping kill, and now torture, people.
"making money were some sort of sin"
You are putting words in my mouth at least as far as that post goes. All I said is call a spade a spade. Halliburton, KBR and Bechtel are in Iraq to make money, nothing more, nothing less.
But, when it comes in the form of war profiteering making money is a sin. It creates a profit motive for war which makes war more likely not less. It makes it more likely people are going to be killed and killing people for no reason is a sin. War profiteering makes it more likely, not less, that false pretenses will be used to start wars. Is it an accident Dick Cheney, KBR's ex CEO was the #1 cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He, no doubt, had numerous motives for starting the war in Iraq but the fact his company is making a mint on it adds a really disturbing edge.
If the Army told KBR to bulldoze Iraq they would do it just as eagerly as rebuild it if the profit margin was right.
Stop either being naive or thinking everyone who reads your post is. Halliburton is in Iraq to make money, money, money, nothing more, nothing less. They could care less about rebuilding Iraq unless its in their contract that they have to. Their KBR subsidiary follows the Army around like a poodle where ever they go trying to rake in as much money as possible off all its wars and police actions. And its a lot of money, thanks to Dick Cheney in particular who, as Secretary of Defense, reorganized and downsized the Army so they are now totally dependent on KBR to drive to do things like their trucks and cook. Brown and Root was war profiteering in Vietnam 40 years ago.
I suppose its possible some Halliburton employees are idealists who are there to rebuild Iraq for the Iraqis....gag....sorry....thats so ridiculous I can't even say it with a straight face. They are there for the money too.
Apparently Halliburton's financial staff in Kuwait are staying in the five star Kempinski Julai'a Hotel and Resort. The tab is $10,000 a night. A 100 people apparently ran up a one million dollar bill in 3 months. The Army tried to move them to tents but they refused.
Some other examples apparently from ex employees and whistleblowers:
"Abandoned $85,000 trucks because of flat tires and minor problems."
"Paid $100 to have a 15-pound bag of laundry cleaned as part of a million-dollar laundry contract in peaceful Kuwait. The price for cleaning the same amount of laundry in war-torn Iraq was $28."
"Spent $1.50 a can to buy 37,200 cans of soda in Kuwait, about 24 times higher than the contract price."
I like the truck story the best. If true it appears the Iraqi insurgents can decimate the U.S. supply lines by throwing sharpened jacks in the road in front of Halliburton's convoys. Once the trucks are abandoned they are most probably looted, stolen or burned.
War profiteering is always ugly and if you go in to one of these war zones as a contractor that is basically what you are.
The problem with war profiteers is that when you have companies like Halliburton and its subsidary Kellog Brown and Root(KBR) who make a fortune off wars they have strong motivations to encourage and promote wars. KBR has been profiting off war since at least Vietnam when it was Brown and Root. I see another post that indicates they are doing the same thing in the Balkans.
It really disturbing when you have a Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, who rewrites all the Pentagon's rules and moves half the jobs formerly done by soldiers, like driving trucks and cooking, to contractors so KBR can an even better profit since the Army is now totally dependent on them. Cheney, as his reward gets a cushy job as Halliburton/KBR's CEO where he cashes in on his generosity as Secretary of Defense. He then returns to government as VP where he was the #1 cheerleader for a war waged under false pretenses where his old company is raking in billions in sole source contracts. Cheney denies he arranged the contracts. Well he didn't have to. KBR always gets all the Army's war zone logistics contracts and have for a long time.
Another disturbing example is Blackwater. Blackwater consists mostly of ex green berets, rangers, seals and delta force. Uncle Sam spends a fortune to train them. At the first opportunity they get out and join Blackwater where they make 6 figure salaries. They are mercenaries, plain and simple. The mercenary army is the single largest army in Iraq, after the U.S. and larger than the British contingent. The four mercenaries killed in Fallujah that started the month long war there were from Blackwater (Blackwater being the term for SEALS attacking from the water at night).
War profiteering really and truly stinks. It helps propel nations in to wars, for bad reasons, that get a lot of people killed.
I don't suppose it occurred to you that maybe the U.S. is doing things that makes people really hate you, though its your government more than the people, but the people are culpable in supporting that government with votes, tax dollar, soldiers and going along with it. I think I should point out people don't hate you for what you do "here" assuming as in the U.S. They hate you for what you are doing "there" by constant intervention, invasion, manipulation or occupation of their homelands.
You seem to be saying people hate the U.S. only because they've been "brainwashed" in to it. You seem to be echoing the Bush administration line that the people attacking the U.S. are attacking it because of its "Freedom" which simply isn't the case.
The number one reason the Arab world hates the U.S. is because it has for more than a half century backed Israel at every turn, against the Palastinians, an arab people suffering under a brutal occupation if they are still in their homeland or who are scattered around the middle east and the world, often in squalid refugee camps, in a diaspora like that inflicted on the Jews so long ago. Here is a little history. The Palastinians certainly have some bad people and done some bad things but the Arab world is always going to hate the U.S., with reason, until the U.S. finds a balanced position and helps compel an equitable peace there, equitable being defined as one where both sides are equally unhappy, and one isn't living under the thumb of the other. A few weeks ago when Bush took it upon himself to give parts of the West Bank to Israel, acting like he even had the authority to make concessions on behalf of the Palastinians, he pushed a bunch more Arab moderates in to the hands of the extremists who hate the U.S.
Another reason many Arabs hate the U.S. is because the U.S. put troops in the middle of their holyland, Saudi Arabia, after the first Gulf War and has been propping up brutal and corrupt dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. U.S. troops are infidels in this region, they are Christians, Jews and liberated women. The people in the region react to them about the same way Americans would react if an Arab or Hindu army were camped in the bible belt. They're pissed.
Perhaps the Taliban form of Islam is extreme but its really very close to Islam in Saudi Arabia, its just the U.S. chooses to pretend its different. Saudi Arabia beheads people in public, they cut off their hands, they repress women so why aren't you upset about that. The women with the greatest equality in the Middle East were in Saddam's Iraq, a secular and progressive state compared to most in the region. Women in Iraq have already lost many of the rights they had and they will lose them all if Iraq ends up being an Islamic state which is nearly inevitable.
The other problem you have in all this is Islamic law is somewhat brutal, its spelled out in the Koran. It is a part of their culture, maybe you don't like it but its not the place of the U.S. to tell everyone they have to live like Americans and Christians. If you want people to stop hating you, you have to start respecting cultures different from yours, and stop telling people how to live.
Another reason most of the world hates the U.S. is because you invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and rather than bringing "Freedom and Democracy" there it appears the U.S.
An OK review though it leaves out the huge pink elephants in the room.
A.The board completely avoided closing some of NASA's to many competing centers which desperately needs to be done. They spend to much time fighting each other and there is way to much duplication of effort and overhead. They did this because they knew if they tried to close any centers the congressional delegation in the state its in would fight the whole plan tooth and nail. That strongly suggest NASA's centers are more pork than anything to do with getting the job done. I'd personally vote to close Johnson. Houston is the armpit of the U.S. and the only reason Johnson is there is because President Johnson wanted to put it there. Everything Johnson does should be at Kennedy for the sake of simple efficiency and proximity. Many of the contributing causes to the Columbia disaster were due to really poor long distance communication between Johnson and Kennedy.
B. It probably does need to be done but the major thing this plan is going to try to do is to knock all of NASA's employees out of the ranks of the civil service which is why Bush likes this whole idea. It is an undying mantra of Republican's that they want to get rid of civil servants. They tend to be unionized, which Republicans hate with a passion and being unionized they tend to vote against Republican's, and they are hard to control or motivate. If the Bush administration can move thousands of people from the ranks of the civil service to private contractors it also will put a whole lot more money/pork in to the pockets of their friends and benefactors in big business. You can't argue that it would be a plus since one of NASA's biggest defects is they have lots of dead weight employees they can't get rid of easily or motivate.
Bullshit. That is the definition of an interstellar space faring race. There is plenty of stuff in this solar system to keep us busy for at least a century, Mars, moons of Saturn and Jupiter, asteroid mining, etc.
"blowing another $100 billion on a one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars mission isn't really a good idea."
A "one-time put-a-guy-on-Mars" is a complete waste of time and money, a base on the moon isn't much better since its gravity is to low and no atmosphere.
Putting a permanent colony on Mars would be priceless. It would dramatically alter most of humankind's horizon, give us a second biosphere, and hopefully give us a fresh start free of many of the encumbrances and inertia of societies on Earth. It would also almost certainly drive advances in a lot of fields including energy, biology, geology, manufacturing and terraforming.
If you accomplished that we would almost certainly become a space faring race and we will have to become that before we exhaust Earth's resources.
"To address the first issue.. sure, stupid people..maybe they should be excluded from voting altogether."
No, stupid people should be allowed to vote as long as they learn to to do it correctly. Sample ballots are usually widely available before the election in newspapers and the like so you can walk through it with help if necessary.
Bringing the Palm Beach ballot in to this is a red herring. Those ballots were in a machine too, albeit a simple one, but it was badly designed too. The original suggestion was a simple piece of paper, where you put an X next to the name which is what Canada, Britain and lots of other places do. You can't get any simpler and the KISS principal applies here. If you screw up and mis-vote then yes, you get disenfranchised but its YOUR FAULT. This is where personal responsibility comes in which the modern world seems loathe to require of people any more.
I don't care how many ways you try to justify it. If you are relying on complex hardware and software to count your votes its always going to be easy for someone to screw with it. Again the only people who will even have a chance to keep an eye on it are us hackers and we know we aren't to be trusted.
Anyone can audit an election with paper ballots and I like that, so do all the little old ladies and gents who like to work at polling stations. Yes there will be counting errors but anytime you have an election that is close enough for the margin of error to matter you can count the ballots until you are sure you have it right.
"They'd have me believe that Bush is a completely incompetent moron who (disengage rational thought) is the mastermind behind the most nefarious and profitable corruption in world history. They continuously point to the glaring, embarrassing international goofs the White House makes while (disengage rational thought) the Bush administration is pulling off the most successful power grab in American history."
Not saying its true but what you describe is quite plausible. George W. is not one of the brightest President's we've had. He has always been a C student at best. His academic credentials, Yale and Harvard MBA are more thanks to his families power and connections than his intellectual ability. He joked recently in a commencement speech about being a C student and how far he'd gone, well most C students don't have his family connections.
Though George W. isn't very bright he does have extremely bright people pulling the strings for him which is why what you say isn't possible is. Karl Rove is the brains in the White House, he is extremely bright and ruthless. Dick Cheney is the neferious and somewhat paranoid one. It is, according to Woodward his job to think of every possible bad thing that could happen and make sure the Bush administration plans for it.
Cheney did rewrite the rules for contracting when he was defense secretary and reopened the revolving door where you work in government, where you give lucrative contracts to big companies, and then make millions when you retire from the government and go to work for the same company as he did with Halliburton. Dick Cheney was the mastermind who hollowed out the military and made it completely dependent on contractors for basic things like cooks, and then his company Halliburton has been getting all those contracts.
If you don't think the Republican party is massively corrupt you should have watched the passage of the Medicare "reform" bill. Billy Tauzin (R) rammed it through Congress and last I heard was going to work for the drug lobby who are going to get a windfall profit from it. The Medicare administrator was drawing up the cost estimates for it at the same time he was negotiating his own private sector job with the companies who were going to make out like bandits when it passed. He had the permission of the White House to job shop though it was massively corrupt to allow it. The administrator then intentionally underestimated the cost of the bill by something like a hundred billion dollars because if the real price tag had been known it never would have passed. He also threatend his subordinates who threatened to reveal the real cost before the bill passed. The Bush administration had to put out the correct numbers right after the bill had passed to everyone's dismay. That guy cost taxpayers a hundred billion dollars in exchange for a sweet multimillion dollar career/payoff. Even then the bill barely passed, lobbyists for the drug and healthcare industry were circling like sharks in the lobby of the Capitol while the debate was going on openly bribing and intimidating Congressmen to get it passed. The payoff to the drug industry was hundreds of billions in tax dollars to pay for drugs and the Medicare administration is precluded by law from negotiating fair prices. The drug companies can charge as much as they think they can get away with.
Don't get me wrong, the Democrats are almost as corrupt as the Republican's, they just send their pork in different places, but for you to stick your head in the sand and pretend like the Bush administration isn't massively corrupt is naive.
Its also basically true that the Bush administration is making one foreign relations gaffe after another. I'm pretty sure the U.S. has never been more hated and feared around the world than it is today. International polls certainly suggest this. Why is that a contradiction to the fact that the Republican's are also in the midst of one of the biggest domestic power grabs ever at home. American's seem to be a lot more gullible than most people around the world so they are falling for the Bush Administration BS while most of the rest of the world isn't.
Well you wont bait me in to a pro Democrat rant. They are just as corrupt and bereft of morals and good ideas as the Republicans. But they are currently completely impotent so they aren't the ones to worry about at the moment. The Republicans who have a stranglehold on power, and are engaged in wholesale abuse of that power, are.
As for 2000 the election for all practical purposes was a toss up so both parties were trying to steal it. The Republican's were just much better at it, and it didn't hurt that the governor of the state in questions was the President's brother and the Secretary of State, Katherine Harris who did everything possible to give it to the Bush family was his right hand lady. She was paid off by the Republican's with the house seat in the 13th district.
Lets just not pretend the Republicans are pure as new driven snow, OK. Its a near certainty they already used Diebold's machines in 2002 to steal the Georgia Senate and Governor's race so if they do it again in 2004 don't make it sound like it would be a first.
I'm not going to get in the middle of you two but I think the Carlysle meeting between Bush and Bin Laden's brother referred to was with George H.W. Bush, his father, and not George W. Bush. Before you start ranting maybe you should figure out what you are talking about.
I'm not sure there was a meeting on the day of 9/11 but George H.W. Bush does work for the Carlyle group so its plausible. He gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for making short speeches for them, or more likely to use his influence to steer business their way. The Carlyle group is one of Saudi Arabia's largest defense contractors. The Bin Laden family is one of the Saudi Arabia's wealthier and more powerful families. Osama is the black sheep of the family, and they publicly disowned him, but Saudi Arabians deny a lot of ties to terrorism though they are the world's biggest supporters and funders of most of it. The Bin Laden family had to disown Osama or it would hammer their multibillion dollar business in the U.S. and the rest of the world. They run a big construction conglomerate if I recall. Whether they really disowned him is anybody's guess.
George W. Bush did allow a special flight right after 9/11, when no American's were flying, in which all the Bin Laden relatives and numerous other Saudi's were spirited out of the country.
Halliburton for Cheney and Carlysle for the Bush family are two of the many incestuous relationships in the current government which make it look very corrupt, whether it really is or not.
It intersting to see Election Systems and Software get some bad publicity. They are actually larger than Diebold in turns of evoting. Every one is familiar with the fact Diebold's CEO is a Bush campaign bigwig in Ohio and promised to deliver Ohio for Bush.
ES&S is also excessively close to the Republicans. An excerpt from Mother Jones on them:
"While Diebold has received the most attention, it actually isn't the biggest maker of computerized election machines. That honor goes to Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold's. "
"The firm, which is privately held, began as a company called Data Mark, which was founded in the early 1980s by Bob and Todd Urosevich. In 1984, brothers William and Robert Ahmanson bought a 68 percent stake in Data Mark, and changed the company's name to American Information Services (AIS). Then, in 1987, McCarthy & Co, an Omaha investment group, acquired a minority share in AIS."
"In 1992, investment banker Chuck Hagel, president of McCarthy & Co, became chairman of AIS. Hagel, who had been touted as a possible Senate candidate in 1993, was again on the list of likely GOP contenders heading into the 1996 contest. In January of 1995, while still chairman of ES&S, Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald that he would likely make a decision by mid-March of 1995. On March 15, according to a letter provided by Hagel's Senate staff, he resigned from the AIS board, noting that he intended to announce his candidacy. A few days later, he did just that. "
"A little less than eight months after stepping down as director of AIS, Hagel surprised national pundits and defied early polls by defeating Benjamin Nelson, the state's popular former governor. It was Hagel's first try for public office. Nebraska elections officials told The Hill that machines made by AIS probably tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in the 1996 vote, although Nelson never drew attention to the connection. Hagel won again in 2002, by a far healthier margin. That vote is still angrily disputed by Hagel's Democratic opponent, Charlie Matulka, who did try to make Hagel's ties to ES&S an issue in the race and who asked that state elections officials conduct a hand recount of the vote. That request was rebuffed, because Hagel's margin of victory was so large."
"As might be expected, Hagel has been generously supported by his investment partners at McCarthy & Co. -- since he first ran, Hagel has received about $15,000 in campaign contributions from McCarthy & Co. executives. And Hagel still owns more than $1 million in stock in McCarthy & Co., which still owns a quarter of ES&S."
"How will they ever be ready in time for the November elections?"
Uh, they are ready...to steal the election for the Republicans this Fall. Its pretty obvious Jeb Bush wants to make sure there is no doubt Florida goes to his brother this time around, so he is dead set against making sure all the new electronic voting machines in his state are verifiable.
The Bush administration has a really strong, or actually overwhelming, incentive to make sure they win. They have to white wash the investigation of who really authorized the use of torture in Iraq. All indications are that it was George W. Bush, General Myers, Rumsfeld and his deputy for military intelligence Steve Cambone under the top secret Copper Green program. They might have got away with it for Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area and may not be under Geneva protections but authorizing torture in Iraq was a war crime under the Geneva conventions and the U.S. laws that enforce the Geneva rules. Its pretty obvious now it wasn't just a bunch of out of control reserve privates doing it on their own.
If the Democrats were to win the White House or Congress and were to really pursue the investigation, which I'm not sure they would, you could see impeachment and senior members of the Bush administration and the military on trial for war crimes. If the Republicans win they can try to stop the blame and the damage at General Sanchez, and if they continue to control both houses of Congress, and they keep their party members in line they will probably succeed. I wager they are already engaged in massive paper shredding and deletion of top secret documents, especially after the leak of the Pentagon and DOJ memo's last week where it became clear the White House was trying, in vain, to establish a legal basis for the use of torture.
If you saw Ashcroft's testimony before Congress last week, a rare event, it became pretty clear the Bush administration has decided they are at war and they can do pretty much anything they please, and unfortunately the "War on Terror" is unlikely to ever end.