THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY: A SCANDAL OF EPIC PROPORTIONS THAT WILL HAUNT THE LEGACY OF THE BUSH REGIME

A recent issue of Vanity Fair features a story by David Rose on war profiteers in Iraq. The editors introduced it with a compelling question-- though not the most compelling question.

Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers' behalf. Whose side is the Justice Department on?

The article is fascinating and very much recommended... but I doubt there are many DWT readers who need to read it in order to answer that question. Unfortunately, the question Vanity Fair could have, should have, asked is "Whose side is the Republican Party on?" And not just whose side are the Inside the Beltway greedballs and their propagandists on-- we know that as intuitively as we know whose side the Justice Department is on-- but whose side the hard core Republican voters are on!

There's probably no one who knows more about war profiteers in Iraq-- outside of Cheney and the folks at Halliburton and KBR-- than Alan Grayson, an attorney prosecuting numerous war profiteering cases. We came across him because he is running for Congress against corrupt Republican rubber stamp Ric Keller in central Florida's 8th CD (Orlando area). Next weekend Alan will be our guest at Blue America sessions at Firedoglake and Crooks and Liars. But I called him today and asked him this tough question-- the one about Republican voters. Do these Americans actually support this kind of behavior?

Before we take a look at what Alan told me take a look at this CBS News clip I found on his website:



"I think that the Republicans, from top to bottom, are genuinely trying to change America into Amerika with a 'k.' They want America to be a place where ordinary workers cannot organize, where everybody tries to undercut everybody else in the labor market, and where the people in charge are the people who can best tap into war profiteering profits... These people want to change America and change it to make it something that Eisenhower warned us about half a century ago. They want everything in America to be under the control-- and in the teeth-- of the military-industrial complex.

"When I talk to Republicans in general these days, they're very unhappy about the war. The problem is, they're unhappy about the war because they don't like to lose-- and that's just the wrong way of looking at it. They have become willing participants in a war that at this point is approaching imperialism. If they read in newspapers everyday that we were winning the war, they would be just as happy with the war as the characters in Orwell's 1984 are happy with their endless war against some unnamed enemy that they can never clearly understand the purpose of. Republican voters have, in effect, collaborated in this effort despite their misgivings about the war and the primary reason why they're not happy right now isn't because the war is wrong or unjustifiable but because we're not not winning."

Next week-- Saturday, 11am, PT, 2pm in Florida-- promises to be a very interesting Blue America session with a candidate for Congress who has already been playing an important role, one that Congress should have been vigorously involved in for the last half dozen years. Please be sure to come by and meet him.