Reply #24: War is their girlfriend, but they're married to privatization

[GreenZoneLT]

Every time I get the details on something that's fucked up in Iraq, at the bottom of it is the Bushies' notion of "transformation," which is essentially a quasi-religious mania to turn over all (and I mean ALL) government functions to private companies.

It's bitten deeply into the military culture; we contract out shit for no reason other than that every officer wants to be able to put a "transformation" bullet on his annual evaluation report. Rumsfeld was the guy who created that particular monster, and I think even if we win in '08 and put an opponent of privatization in the SECDEF's chair (good luck finding one, since they mostly all work for defense contractors at some point), it will take 10 years to reverse the cultural damage.