The Great Iraq Swindle (Rolling Stones Magazine)

[Andre II]

"How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.


According to the most reliable estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills."


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

[Ghost in the Machine]

1. Not to nitpick, but it's not the Rolling Stones, it's Rolling Stone Magazine...

You might want to fix that...

:hi:

[Andre II]

2. Thanks!

:hi:

[Coexist]

3. although it seems nitpicky - I agree it should be changed

an article in Rolling Stone this excellent will get more eyeballs than something the Rolling Stones might say about politics.

[Ghost in the Machine]

5. That's what I was thinking too. Or someone may open it expecting some Stones

lyrics. Just trying to help with clarity. I see he's changed it, but still has the "s" on Stone....

[splat]

4. Who wrote that?

I didn't see a name on it, did you?

[otohara]

8. Matt Taibbi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Taibbi

[Peregrine Took]

6. When will the MSM pick it up or will they just ignore it as they usually do

when something is negative about this rotten from top to bottom administration?

[nosmokes]

7. Long way of saying *It's About The Oil!*

Good article that puts a lot of the more outrageous scandals in one place. But there's nothing that's really new. It's the size and the scope of the whole thing that's so brazen that makes it wild. It had to go right to the top and why they're wlking free instead of oing hard time still boggles the mind.