Congress
Gives Iraq War Profiteers Another Hundred Billion
By Evelyn Pringle
26 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Congress
has demonstrated its unconditional love for the Bush administration
by handing the war profiteers another $100 billion worth of good reasons
to keep the war in Iraq rolling along at full-throttle.
And today there was the President,
whose only military experience consists of draft-dodging, going AWOL
from a cushy stint in the National Guard set up by daddy, and finishing
his term of duty as grounded fighter pilot, calling a press conference
to inform Americans for the umpteenth time that the only way to the
keep the terrorist at bay is by allowing the slaughtering in Iraq to
continue; forever apparently.
Over the past month, the
majority of political discussions on cable news talk shows related to
Iraq funding bill were focused on how members of Congress and especially
those who are presidential candidates are consumed with worry over how
their votes on funding will affect the results of the next elections.
Once elected, it would be
interesting to find out exactly how long it takes for politicians to
lose the ability to feel and vote with their hearts when they know that
a policy such as the Iraq war is terribly wrong, without thinking about
how the decision will effect the vote tally in the next election.
As citizens, we have no control
over our own government. Never in my 57 years on this earth have I been
so ashamed to be an American knowing that every day that the war continues
we are knowingly allowing our soldiers and innocent Iraqis to be killed
or injured with absolutely no justification, other than because politicians
believe it will be beneficial to their careers to allow Bush's failed
war policies to continue.
While political commentators
discuss voter odds, myself and probably most Americans are sitting at
home unable to watch the news without breaking down crying as the latest
pictures flash on the screen showing the happy faces of the young soldiers
who are now dead, knowing full well that the next night there will be
more pictures of dead soldiers because the politicians have made it
clear that the citizens paying their salaries have no right to demand
that their elected officials put an end to the killing in Iraq.
It would be interesting to
take a poll to see how often each politician even looks at the smiling
faces of the dead soldiers and the second question in the poll should
be, for those who claim that they do look at these faces every day and
still vote to give Bush more funding, how many had to use drugs or alcohol
to get to sleep during the 7 days following the vote.
For this poll, a high number of drugs and alcohol users would be viewed
as positive because the reason for the question is to determine how
many politicians still have the capacity to feel guilt.
Congress needs to get one
thing straight, the war funding is not about politics, it is about more
deaths and injuries every single day that ticks off the calendar all
because Bush took this country into a senseless war based on lies. Every
single day matters to the soldiers and their families, and to those
of us who feel extremely guilty about not being able to find a away
to get them out of Bush's war.
Why is there no in-depth
discussion by any members of Congress on political talk shows about
where these tax dollars are actually ending up, aside from an occasional
flare-up of indignation about Halliburton?
There is nothing positive
in Iraq to hold up to show Americans how Iraqis have benefited from
all the tax dollars already poured into a bottomless pit.
The issue of war profiteering
is like the elephant in the middle of the living room, every member
of Congress knows where the funding is going but Americans don't hear
them on talk shows letting people know that these kids are being killed
in the name of war profits.
And the statements in speeches
made by members of Congress while debating the bills don't mean anything
because 95% of Americans never hear those speeches. Honest politicians
should be out screaming to any reporter who will listen to educate Americans
about where the hundreds of billions of tax dollars have ended up.
This war is 100 times worse
than Viet Nam. A least with Viet Nam, the war profits were not being
funneled over the backs of our dead soldiers in plain sight directly
into the bank accounts of current and former members of the administrations
in power at the time.
Nor were they being funneled
to the family bank accounts of the Presidents who were in office during
the Viet Nam war.
Former Nixon administration official, John Dean, has said that the Bush
administration is worse than the Nixon's. He’s right; the Bush
gang makes the Nixon administration look saintly and gives a whole new
meaning to Nixon's famous line of "I am not a crook." In comparison
to the actions of the current regime, it could indeed be said that Mr
Nixon was not a crook.
Its easy to understand why
most Republicans are not about to tell the world that the leader of
their party is a war profiteering crook but the question remains, when
are Democrats going to start addressing the issue of who is benefiting
from all this war funding and start publicly naming names along with
the companies they are connected with.
They have the ability to
draw press coverage and give the specific names of current and former
administration officials and Bush family members who have set up companies
to profit off the war or steered contracts to companies they now work.
Last year, most clearly in
the fall elections, Americans told Bush and Congress to get our troops
out of Iraq. Democrats took control of Congress at the new year, and
there was Bush in a televised address on January 10, 2007, announcing
that he had ordered the deployment of five more combat brigades to serve
as sitting ducks in Iraq, in addition to the 15 brigades that were already
there. Since then, he has extended combat tours from 12 months to 15
months and announced the deployment of still more troops.
According to an analysis
by Hearst Newspapers, when support troops are added in, the total number
of soldiers in Iraq is about 162,000, and could be 200,000 by Christmas.
In the years to come, the
history books will describe the Bush Presidency and the details of a
grand war profiteering scheme nicknamed the "war on terror,"
and with that in mind, members of Congress would be wise to start speaking
out against the war profiteers to make damn sure that the historians
will be able to report that that they were out there calling a spade
a spade and trying to put an end to the death for profit disaster in
Iraq.
One commentator on a recent
cable talk show made the statement that when voting on the Iraq funding;
politicians are not in lock step with how strongly Americans feel about
ending this war. That comment was an understatement, because Americans
are as fed up with politicians debating over the money as much as they
are with the war itself.
Members of Congress and the
Presidential candidates should quit trying to second guess how American
will vote in the next election and think about how much longer they
are going to be willing to sit at home in front of their television
sets depressed and driven to tears by looking at flashes of the happy
faces of soldiers who were killed that day.
As for presidential candidates,
the name John Murtha should be added to the ballot, as he seems to be
about the only member of Congress willing to go public and speak from
the heart when trying to get the rest of Congress to recognize the need
for an immediate plan to rescue our young men and women stranded in
Iraq.
The candidates that are working
hard to try to end the war get little credit or media coverage. Dennis
Kucinich is rarely mentioned and he is working tirelessly to come up
with ways to get our soldiers out of Iraq.
By the time the 2008 election
rolls around, who knows, after weighing the few options available maybe
Americans will decide that no candidate who is a current member of Congress
and refused to listen to the people on such an important issue as the
Iraq war can be trusted to serve as President.
[email protected]
(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for OpEd News and an
investigative journalist focused on corruption in government and corporate
America)
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