READER COMMENTS ON

"SENATE JUDICIARY HEARINGS: Half a Trillion Spent in Iraq With No Controls, Leahy Introduces Oversight Bill"

(16 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... hubbabubba said on 3/20/2007 @ 1:27 pm PT...





While at the same time the Congress is apparently allowing the White House to send Meirs and Rove up to the Hill to have a hand-in-hand chat about the US Attorney situation without requirement of testifying under oath or public view. IT IS TIME TO GO BALLISTIC ON THE DEMS. To all those who have argued the belief the Dems are as bought and paid for as the Republicans, I concede. This is simply a deal to prolong the lying, avoid prosecution, stall implementation of justice, derail the 2006 mandate of voters. It is stupid and without precedent. Watergate Hearings were the standard. Present hearings are a laughable imitation.

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... big dan said on 3/20/2007 @ 2:23 pm PT...





In case you haven't been following the Sibel Edmonds gag order case, please read.......... http://winterpatriot.blo...chance-to-put-perle.html http://www.dailykos.com/...ory/2007/3/20/61740/4471 http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/ http://wotisitgood4.blog...-edmonds-case-about.html http://lukery.dailykos.com/

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... Ancient said on 3/20/2007 @ 5:09 pm PT...





With Blow Your Face Off sick, what will poor Idiot Boy do? Oh yeah that's right, they've got ranks and ranks of fall guys!

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... big dan said on 3/20/2007 @ 5:29 pm PT...





Democracy NOW!

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (some very lengthy excerpts by me!) Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill joins us to talk about his new book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army." Scahill writes, "Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the 'global war on terror,' with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 private contractors at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments." From Iraq to New Orleans, Blackwater has continued to pull in multi-million-dollar government contracts, mostly without accountability and in near-secrecy. Four years ago today, the US invasion of Iraq was in its opening hours. Hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries later, another date marked later this month has taken on nearly as much significance. March 31st, 2004. Four employees of the private U.S. security firm Blackwater USA are ambushed as they drive through the center of Fallujah. In images broadcast around the world, their burnt corpses are dragged through the streets. Two of them are strung up from a bridge. This is an excerpt of the PBS documentary, "Private Warriors", going back to that day. JEREMY SCAHILL: ...its founder, Erik Prince. He's believed to be, if not the wealthiest, one of the wealthiest people ever to serve in the elite US Navy Seals...Erik Prince comes from a very wealthy rightwing Christian dynasty in the town of Holland, Michigan... And Erik Prince was political at a very early age and watched as his father used his company as a cash-generating engine to fuel the rise of what we now know as the religious right in this country, as well as the Republican Revolution of 1994. His father gave the seed money to Gary Bauer to found the Family Research Council. Young Erik Prince was in the first crop of interns to serve at the Family Research Council. They gave significant funding to James Dobson and his group Focus on the Family, which is now sort of the premier evangelical organizing network in this country, the “prayer warriors.” JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary, and gathered before him was the gaggle of corporate executives that had been tapped by the Bush administration to make up the senior civilian leadership at the Pentagon. There was a sort of mixture of people at the Pentagon. On the one hand, you had people from corporate America, from all the defense and weapons manufacturers that were brought in, and then you also had the neoconservative ideologues, people like Paul Wolfowitz. And so, Rumsfeld gives a speech in which he literally declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy. And he said, “I’ve come not to destroy the Pentagon, but to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

big dan | 03.20.07 - 8:19 pm | # -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And then literally the next day the Pentagon would be attacked. But the vision that Rumsfeld sort of laid out that day would become known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine, where you use high technology, small footprint forces and an increased and accelerated use of private contractors in fighting the wars. It also, at the center of the Rumsfeld Doctrine, became regime change in central strategic nations. Rumsfeld and Cheney both had been signers of the Project for a New American Century, that envisioned a new Pearl Harbor as accelerating the agenda, the neoconservative agenda. And, indeed, the day after Rumsfeld laid out that plan, the Pentagon was attacked, and all of a sudden the world became a blank canvas on which Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush could sort of paint their vision. AMY GOODMAN: What's happened with your website? www.blackwaterbook.com JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I actually got a letter from Blackwater's --- one of Blackwater's many lawyers. They have an army of lawyers. Their counsel of record is Ken Starr, the man who led the impeachment charge against President Clinton. Now, Blackwater has argued in its legal briefings that it can't be sued in civilian courts and that it's entitled to the same immunity enjoyed by the military from civilian litigation inside of the United States. And the reason that Blackwater says this, or among the top reasons, is that Donald Rumsfeld in February of 2006 classified contractors as an official part of the US total force, making up an effective part of the US war machine. So Blackwater has turned around and taken Rumsfeld's designation of their company as an official part of the US total force and said, “This means we're part of the US military, and you can't sue us.” At the same time, Blackwater, since 2004, has been lobbying against having its forces placed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, commonly known as the court-martial system. So Blackwater is essentially saying, “We're above the law. We can't be prosecuted in military courts. We can't be sued in civilian courts.” So Blackwater took active command of an active-duty US Marine in a battle that Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces recall as a massacre on April 4, 2004. Blackwater guys refer to it as their Alamo. It's unclear how many people were killed that day, but they were firing off so many rounds, the Blackwater guys and this Marine, that they had to stop every fifteen minutes to let their weapons cool. Lonnie Young, that Marine, say

that Marine, says hundreds of people were killed that day. The US government would say that there were about twenty to thirty. JEREMY SCAHILL: Blackwater showed up in New Orleans without a contract right after Hurricane Katrina hit, beat most federal agencies to the hurricane zone, within days was hired up by the Department of Homeland Security. Blackwater paid its men, they told me, $350 a day. They billed the federal government $950 a day per Blackwater man. At one point, they had 600 men stretched from Texas all the way to Mississippi through the Gulf. Blackwater was raking in sometimes $240,000 a day. http://www.democracynow.....pl?sid=07/03/20/1337226 (the transcript) http://play.rbn.com/?url...oto=rtsp&start=17:36 (video of interview)

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... chimpeach said on 3/20/2007 @ 5:46 pm PT...





hubbabubba: While at the same time the Congress is apparently allowing the White House to send Meirs and Rove up to the Hill to have a hand-in-hand chat about the US Attorney situation without requirement of testifying under oath or public view. Sorry to mess up your "I hate Dems!" rant, but no Democrats agreed to the deal. Subpoenas are full speed ahead. The vote in the House Judiciary Committee to subpoena Rove, Miers, and three others is tomorrow. The vote in the Senate, which was scheduled last week, is Thursday. Try to hold off on accusations of capitulation until then, if you can.

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... Walter said on 3/20/2007 @ 6:21 pm PT...





You know what would solve the war profiteering problem?

Nationalize the MIC. Seems to me that would certainly squelch those suck-up lobbyists and their Republikker CongressPuppets.

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... big dan said on 3/20/2007 @ 6:51 pm PT...





Did you get that? """"“I’ve come not to destroy the Pentagon, but to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”

And then literally the next day the Pentagon would be attacked. """""" ...also, Rumsfeld said on 9/10, that $2.3 trillion was missing from the Pentagon budget...hmmmmm...and the Pentagon was hit the next day, and I guess it took out all the computers to audit the $2.3 trillion! Well, THAT's lucky, eh??? Cynthia McKinney got e-voted out of congress for grilling Rumsfeld about the missing $2.3 trillion, remember that??? Lost to Hank "Hack" Johnson. What's HE been up to since? “Seven pro-Israel PACs gave to Johnson on Tuesday: MOPAC in Michigan, Washington PAC in D.C., SUNPAC and National Action Committee PAC in Florida, CITYPAC in Chicago, Mid-Manhattan PAC in New York and Louisiana for American Security PAC." Seems these pro-Israeli PAC's had interest in premominately black Dekalb County, Ga. http://www.democracynow.....pl?sid=06/08/04/1419200 Remember the questionable runoff, covered by Brad Blog, in which "Hackin' Hank" got something like 5,000 votes to ZERO, from the primary to the runoff, vs. McKinney??? Which proves my theory that Dem primaries are hacked, too.

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... faith white said on 3/20/2007 @ 9:11 pm PT...





Bushes latest offing : sacrifice.

Whose sacrifice? The struggling middle class, giving up their taxes for generations to come.

The struggling middle class, sacrificing their families for cannon fodder, for generations to

come. Yet, bushes- corporate- war-for- profit cronies make no sacrifice. WE THE PEOPLE

sacrifice all, Bushes pals: arms dealers, weapons manufacturers and mercenaries, can’t rake it in fast enough.

You call that sacrifice? The only way to end this war and end the immoral canker known as war profiteering, is a 100% war profits tax. BUSH CALLS FOR SACRIFICE, LET’S SEE SOME, COMING FROM HIS SECTOR. PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 3/21/2007 @ 5:26 am PT...





hubbabubba #1 You could not be more uninformed. A shut-down in government will happen to some degree. In his speech yesterday, upholding Gonzales, Bush might as well have said "terrorists would benefit if Rove and Miers have to tell the truth". But since nobody would buy it anymore, and he knows it, he has to do a James Cagney "come and get me coppa" routine. It came across as a spoiled brat tantrum, rather than a principled stand. Shameful nixonian criminality pure and simple.

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... big dan said on 3/21/2007 @ 6:11 am PT...





Faith: How have the richest sacrificed for this war, by getting a tax cut? What was THEIR sacrifice? WHO is Bush asking to "sacrifice", US again? With more social program cuts? But more tax cuts for the rich? The social program $$$ is being cut, and directly subsidizing the elite's tax cuts and more military spending...along with "borrowing", which is ANOTHER tax increase for our children and grandchildren.

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... Pete Bogs said on 3/21/2007 @ 6:41 am PT...





Halliburton, your salad days may be coming to an end...

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... hubbabubba said on 3/21/2007 @ 6:46 am PT...





Got the message Dredd and Chimpeach---

I am holding my breath however, because the committees in question must vote to accept or reject the WH "offer". I rant out of frustration. But where is the evidence the Dems have spine?

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 3/21/2007 @ 7:02 am PT...





Hubbabubba #12 Frustration noted and shared. Compare the years of republican oversite with only a few months of democratic oversite, and one can't help notice the change of reality. Bush never had to throw a temper tantrum during the rubber stamp 109th republican led congress, but already a couple of months into the 110th democratic led congress he is throwing temper tantrums. He is feeling the heat because they are truly generating heat. This is good because the people are now seeing what they suspected. Seeing is believing.

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... big dan said on 3/21/2007 @ 9:44 am PT...





PartII of Blackwater, on Democracy NOW! today! http://play.rbn.com/?url...oto=rtsp&start=47:20

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... Jason Ptaszek said on 3/21/2007 @ 5:22 pm PT...





There is a documentary that I saw in October or so about the issues with the no-bid contracts that were given to all the companies and the problems about war profiteering. You can see the address at www.iraqforsale.org, its a must see movie, it really opened my eyes to the connections of the administration and the companies that are "rebuilding" Iraq at our expense. I'm glad to finally see the dems in the house finally doing something about it. Bush needs to realize that he's not above the law.

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... Mugzi said on 3/24/2007 @ 5:35 am PT...

