Senate Passes An Amendment Despite Concerted GOP Opposition To Prevent KBR & Halliburton From Getting Away With Raping Employees (Literally)

Today the Senate "debated" the Department of Defense appropriations bill passed by the House (H.R. 3326) for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010. Republicans added frivolous amendments all day, starting with one of the Wyoming clowns, John Barrasso trying to prohibit the use of funds for the Center on Climate Change and National Security of the Central Intelligence Agency. That one failed 60-38, all Democrats-- even Nelson and Lincoln-- voting "no" and all but two Republicans-- the Maine gals-- voting for it. Coburn and McCain had similarly obstructionist amendments rejected and sensible amendments by Inouye and Bond were passed. But the amendment du jour came from Al Franken D-MN).

And what a doozy it is! S. Amend. 2588 simply prohibits "the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims." The "certain claims" have to do with sexual assault.

I might have phrased it differently myself-- like "prohibits any member of the executive team and Board of Directors of Halliburton and KBR from ever getting out of prison for any reason whatsoever" or something like that. But my amendment probably wouldn't have gotten many votes, unlike Franken's which passed 68-30, every Democrat being joined by 9 Republicans. (Does anyone know if LeMieux has to call Charlie Crist and get his OK before he votes?)

Franken offered the amendment because a KBR employee, Jamie Leigh Jones, age 19, was raped by a bunch of KBR workers in Iraq and then locked up in a crate when she tried reporting them. After she was rescued and returned to America she was informed that she couldn't take KBR to court because there was some fine print in her-- and everyone else's-- contracts that don't permit any such thing.

KKK Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an especially corrupt member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was the key spokesperson for the GOP against the legislation which he called unfair to Halliburton, one of the biggest Republican Party contributors in history. This is what Republicans mean when they whine about regualar people having the right to sue. To them, this is a crime.

Corrupt Military Contracting-- Still The Crime Of The Century

"KBR is a sociopathic organization that turns lies into profit. It deserves a corporate death penalty."
-Congressman Alan Grayson

More than most members of Congress, Grayson knows exactly what KBR is and what they do and why they've earned such a harsh judgment from investigators who have looked into them. Before Grayson was elected to Congress to represent a central Florida district centered in Orlando, he was busy suing war profiteers. His successes are legendary, as documented in a Vanity Fair feature, "The People vs. The Profiteers," from 2007 that starts like this:

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?

On first meeting him, one might not suspect Alan Grayson of being a crusader against government-contractor fraud... Grayson spends most of his days and many of his evenings on a lonely legal campaign to redress colossal frauds against American taxpayers by private contractors operating in Iraq. He calls it “the crime of the century.”

His obvious adversaries are the contracting corporations themselves-- especially Halliburton, the giant oil-services conglomerate where Vice President Dick Cheney spent the latter half of the 1990s as C.E.O., and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, now known simply as KBR. But he says his efforts to take on those organizations have earned him another enemy: the United States Department of Justice.

Over the past 16 years, Grayson has litigated dozens of cases of contractor fraud. In many of these, he has found the Justice Department to be an ally in exposing wrongdoing. But in cases that involve the Iraq war, the D.O.J. has taken extraordinary steps to stand in his way. Behind its machinations, he believes, is a scandal of epic proportions-- one that may come to haunt the legacy of the Bush administration long after it is gone.

That time is now, as the NY Times reported today. Yes, Bush and his depraved regime are gone-- but so are untold billions of taxpayer dollars-- and they didn't just vanish into thin air. The connection between the Bush Family and KBR, a spin-off of the Houston-based Dubai-based Halliburton, once run by Dick Cheney, will be judged by historians as one of the actual causes of the Iraq War, the same way historians credit munitions manufacturers with having contributed to what came to be known as World War I. Halliburton and KBR are at the bottom of an effort by modern day robber barons to build generational wealth by massively ripping off the American public. The War Tapes, the first documentary of the Iraq War produced by U.S. soldiers who fought in it, mentions, for example, how Halliburton charged American taxpayers, with the Bush Regime's encouragement, $28 each for the disposable picnic plates given to the soldiers in the mess hall that their meals are served on. The slop they served on the plates cost more. And in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday, Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Susan Collins (R-ME), respectively the chair and ranking member of the contracting oversight subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee want to know why the Pentagon has collected the $100 million in known, admitted overcharges and why the same monopolistic practices that saw KBR and rake in $31.3 billion under its partners in the Bush Regime.

To the irritation of KBR’s critics, the Army has generally upheld the bills the company has submitted to the military, even when the Pentagon’s own auditors have questioned the amounts. But the argument that the Army was overcharged appears to be more clear-cut in the cases of several former KBR officials convicted of accepting bribes and kickbacks.

In those cases, the Army asked KBR to perform a certain task under the Logcap contract, like buying living trailers or building a dining facility, and the KBR officials found subcontractors in the region to carry out the actual work. The officials took bribes to steer the work toward subcontractors who were not the low bidders, or simply inflated the worth of the contracts once they had been awarded.

In the contracts handled by just one of those officials, Stephen Lowell Seamans, who pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy in March 2006, Pentagon auditors quickly found potential excess profits by a Kuwaiti subcontractor of $49.8 million, or 76 percent, “as a result of Mr. Seamans’s fraudulent activities,” the senators wrote.

Of $306 million in tainted contracts, at least $100 million of the charges appeared to be unjustified, wrote the senators.

And people who have looked into war profiteering in Iraq unanimously agree that that's just small change compared to what was actually ripped off. Today the Wartime Contracting Commission is meeting in Washington. At a February meeting Senator McCaskill, didn't shock anyone when she referred to the contracting in Iraq as "a massive failure. We have failed our military, and we have failed the American people." Government agencies report:

• A lack of oversight has led to widespread abuse among contractors who have bilked the government out of millions of dollars.

• There is no accurate count of contractor personnel in the war theater, just as there is no uniform system to track workers killed or injured.

• Private contractors' legal status is different from that of U.S. government employees; military leaders have less authority over contractors than over military or civilian subordinates.

• Criminal cases and civil lawsuits involving contractors, which are not tracked by U.S. agencies, routinely raise political and jurisdictional questions.

Crooked contractors and the Bush Regimistas who enabled them and took their bribes better hope this doesn't wind up going over to the House. Let's face it; Collins may even be complicit and McCaskill... what's she going to do? Send a tweet? If this gets taken up by the House, where members like Grayson, as well as former military officers like Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy and Eric Massa-- not to mention Armed Services Committee member Carol Shea Porter-- know what this is all about and don't mind upsetting some apple carts to get to the bottom of it, the "crime of the century" prediction is going to play out on cable TV. “Some folks," said Eric Massa (D-NY), an Annapolis grad and former officer on the USS New Jersey, "might think that $100 million of missing money is not a lot, I'm not one of them. During the past eight years we did not hold contractors accountable, but that's going to change. I join with Senators Collins and McCaskill in calling for responsibility and accountability in ensuring our tax dollars are used properly. I will not stay silent when the American taxpayer is being ripped off and that is exactly what we're talking about.”

Retired admiral Joe Sestak (D-PA) is the highest ranking military officer to have ever served in the House. Like Carol Shea-Porter and Eric Massa, he serves on the House Armed Services Committee. He may or may not run for the Senate next year. But whatever he does, it doesn't bode well for the criminal contractors who have been ripping off the taxpayers. This morning he told us that "There is probably no more important issue than to correct what has been a failure of accountability in government for some time. I learned in the military that leaders are not only responsible for their actions, but are accountable for them. The failure to ensure accountability for overpayments to KBR and other companies does nothing except reinforce the viewpoint that our government fails to provide accountable leadership.”

The BBC made a short film about the scandal which, predictably, got more play in Europe than in the U.S. If you haven't seen it already, please take a look:

HOW BUSH REGIME AND ITS ALLIES ROBBED US BLIND-- THE GREATEST HEIST IN HISTORY

Well, the Bush Regime robbed us blind in many ways. The destruction of the federal regulatory system has basically given Bush Family allies license to steal-- everything. We had a chance to stop them after Enron. But we didn't and now we have a mortgage crisis, an energy crisis and an inflationary cycle that is rapidly derailing the economy. But that isn't what we're here to discuss today. Today we're here to talk about war profiteers and $23 billion missing "in Iraq." Before you watch it, I want to point out that the lawyer in the blue shirt is Alan Grayson, the Blue America-endorsed running against Republican rubber stamp Ric Keller in Orlando. I want to urge you to watch this and if you get the idea to donate to Alan's campaign after you see it... here's the place.

UPDATE: THE VIDEO HAS BEEN REMOVED... BUT

There's a gag order on the BBC investigators and I don't know if that's why the video has been removed from the internet. It can only be viewed in England now.

We found another video, although just the part that has the Alan Grayson parts. I'll try to get the full film back. Meanwhile, this one is worth looking at:

STOP COMPLAININ'-- THERE ARE PLENTY OF FOLKS GETTING RICH(ER) IN BUSH'S AMERICA

Yesterday we met, briefly, a 22 year old hustler in Miami who the Bush Regime felt should be showered with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts to supply the military with ammunition all over the world, including to front-line troops in Afghanistan. His "company," AEY is now being investigated by the FBI for fraud. Much of the ammunition was obsolete or so deteriorated as to be worse than useless. Republicans call this privatization and the miracle of a free and unregulated market. It isn't unrelated to the Bear Stearns crisis or the mortgage crisis or to the wreckage of an economy 7 years of Bush/Republican misrule is leaving the country.

This morning's CongressDaily features a story by George Wilson called "War Pays," which details how the Bush war economy has been geared towards a few very well-off companies and their executives, many of whom are major donors to Republican Party activities. This is also the major theme in John Cusack's incredible new film, War, Inc, which takes Bush's privatization policies to it's logical-- and catastrophic-- conclusion. [See the movie.]

If the economy isn't quite working as well for you and your family as you'd like it to-- and 46% of Americans say their own household financial situation is getting worse (as opposed to 7% who say it's getting better)-- consider yourself fortunate that you're not one of the 28 million Americans forced into the Food Stamps program by the miracle of Bush economics, the highest number ever since the program was started in the 1960s.

Now, if you're a defense contractor (like so many cronies of this regime, starting with the vice president)... happy days are here again. "Bush's war in Iraq," the article begins, "has been good for defense contractors."

The Pentagon's own figures, along with published stock prices, document that firms like Halliburton and Humana Inc., which provide the military with services rather than weapons, have done especially well during the five years of the Iraq war.

Among the big questions the next Congress and president will have to answer is whether this subcontracting out to private firms of everything from G.I. meals to construction to protecting the American ambassador to Iraq has gotten so out of control that new laws must be passed.

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman tells horror stories about Halliburton contracting in arguing that the gouging of taxpayers must be stopped.

The Pentagon issues annual reports-- which Congress and the mainstream press largely ignore -- telling who in the military industrial complex is getting how many of the taxpayers' defense dollars.

Unfortunately, the reports lag far behind the awarding of contracts but do show authoritatively that the defense business under Bush became like an oasis of prosperity in the midst of what has now become a harsh economic desert for much of the rest of America.

Warnings the Pentagon numbers shout out to lawmakers and the next administration include these:

*The biggest bucks are going to contractors whose super weapons are soaring above predicted costs and have little to do with winning battles against terrorists who specialize in asymmetric warfare. Terrorists blow up American armor with bombs dug into roadways and kill soldiers and allied civilians with belts of explosives hidden under their clothing. They don't use planes, tanks or warships...
     
*The Defense and State departments are turning over so much of their traditional work to private contractors that the tail threatens to wag the dog with controversy.
     
Congressional protests against no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton, which Vice President Cheney headed before he became Bush's running mate in 2000, and Iraqi charges of murderous conduct by the State Department's hired guns supplied by Blackwater USA are two examples of this.
     
*Healthcare costs for military people are skyrocketing and will remain high long after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end, as veterans receive physical and mental care at government facilities...

The cost of caring for military people long after the shooting stops is a major reason behind Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz' recent prediction to the Joint Economic Committee that the Iraq war will end up costing in excess of $3 trillion.

Lockhead Martin scooped up the most dough from the Pentagon in 2006-- over $26 billion. A couple years like that and they'll be in fat city. Their stock has soared and the recent downturn in the market hasn't hurt them at all. Halliburton was the 6th biggest recipient of Pentagon largess, up drastically since Cheney-- whose still receives gigantic compensation from the company-- started running the show (in Washington). I'm not saying Lockhead Martin and Halliburton are as sleazy as AEY-- just that, in terms of war profiteers, way, way slicker and more successful.

POSSIBLE BREAKTHROUGH IN ANTI-HALLIBURTON WAR PROFITEER CASE

Hopefully you had a chance to catch the exciting discussion we had last Saturday over at FDL with one of the most provocative and best qualified Democratic congressional candidates of the year, Alan Grayson (FL-08). He hopes to bring his tremendous expertise in prosecuting war profiteers to Washington next year. I can't think of much Washington needs more.

So when I saw an A.P. story about an appeals court reconsidering a quashed case against Halliburton, the first person I turned to was Alan.

A federal judge in Houston had thrown out lawsuits filed by truckers and their families against Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR Inc., over a deadly ambush on April 9, 2004, that killed six KBR drivers, wounded others and left one missing and presumed dead.

On Wednesday, lawyers for the truckers and their families asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to overturn the judge's ruling and reinstate their cases. The plaintiffs accuse KBR of knowingly sending its workers into harm's way while delivering fuel to U.S. troops at a Baghdad airport.

"We're cautiously optimistic that the 5th Circuit is going to get it right," said Roger Hawkins, lawyer for former KBR trucker Reginald Lane, who was wounded in the convoy attack.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit heard arguments from lawyers for both sides during a rare closed-door session. It could take several months for the court to issue a ruling.

Truckers' relatives were allowed into the courtroom, but the hearing was closed to the public and media.

Halliburton and Houston-based KBR asked for the closed hearing because they said "confidential information," including an Army investigative report on the ambush by Iraqi insurgents, would be discussed.

Tobias Cole, a lawyer for wounded trucker Kevin Smith-Idol, said he didn't hear any references to "top secret" information during the hearing. He questioned the companies' motives for seeking a closed hearing.

"They're just trying to hide their own negligence," Cole said.

Alan can relate. "The most interesting thing about this report on the appeals court argument," he told me yesterday, "is that Halliburton was able to get the court to conduct the argument in secret. Halliburton's central strategy, from beginning to end, is to keep the American public in the dark about what it's been doing in Iraq. That's why they insist on these closed-door sessions. That's why they require their employees to arbitrate their claims in secret. That's why they get draconian 'protective' orders (really, gag orders) in all their federal cases. That's why they block every FOIA request for their records. What they seem to forget is that they're bathing in OUR MONEY, taxpayer money, and we have a right to know how they've been spending it, wasting it, and stealing it."

Alan is challenging the ultimate rubber stamp nonentity in central Florida, a do-nothing lump named Ric Keller. Keller's biggest claim to fame was some kind of hysterical grandstanding to prevent customers from suing fast food chains like McDonald's-- just before he collected some hefty campaign contributions from OSI Restaurant Partners and the National Restaurant Association, helping bring his total of legalized bribes from the Food & Beverages industry to $64,450 in 2006 alone (not counting the further $34,600 he scooped up from the booze industry). Last year Keller outspent his Democratic opponent $1,691,408 to $984,771. Let's narrow that gap a little this year with a little Blue America action


UPDATE: AND BUSH LETS THEM GET AWAY WITHOUT PAYING TAXES

This from the March 6 Boston Globe: "Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven."

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.

CONGRESS TO DEAL WITH THE CONCEPT OF WAR AS A PROFIT CENTER

In the early 80s I read the first of the Robert Caro books on the life of LBJ. Maybe I was naive but I really was shocked to learn about the absolute, unadulterated venality of how Big Business-- not in the 1920s but in my own time-- intersected with politics. LBJ's career was also the story of Brown and Root which became KBR which became, in effect, Halliburton. Vietnam may have torn the country apart-- it did-- and destroyed Johnson's presidency and his legacy but it was a real honeypot for his cronies. A few days ago James Glanz told the more contemporary story of KBR and Halliburton in the NY Times, Bribery Network to Bloat War Coasts Is Alleged. No more Vietnam; now it's Iraq. And for LBJ we have Cheney and Bush.

Every soldier, every contractor and every journalist I know who has been to Baghdad says Halliburton and a handful of other Bush Regime-connected companies are raking in billions of dollars. No one calls the Green Zone anything but the Greed Zone. And the Times is reporting that "Federal
investigators have uncovered what they describe as a sweeping network of kickbacks, bribes and fraud involving at least eight employees and subcontractors of KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, in a scheme to inflate charges for flying freight into Iraq in support of the war, according to court papers unsealed yesterday."

At the core of the case is a contract that KBR, previously known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, won before the war to supply the American military with food, fuel, housing and other necessities. The value of the contract soared with the Iraq invasion, and has so far paid KBR some $20 billion.

The company hired Eagle in a subcontract to fulfill part of that mission, carrying military goods from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Baghdad. But the scheme by the Eagle executives began in November 2003 when a plane operated by a rival carrier, DHL, was struck by a missile and landed in Baghdad with its left wing in flames. The Eagle executives used that incident to charge a fraudulent “war-risk surcharge” of 50 cents for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of freight on its own flights, the papers say.

Between November 2003 and July 2004, Eagle made 379 flights as part of the subcontract, charging some $13.3 million-- an amount that included $1.1 million in overcharges. It is not clear whether KBR knew of the overcharging scheme, but the papers say that Mr. Smoot and an Eagle subordinate delivered nearly $34,000 in gratuities to KBR employees “to obtain or reward favorable treatment” in connection with the contract.

According to the papers, the gratuities included “meals, drinks, golf outings, tickets to rodeo events, baseball and football games and other entertainment items.”

On Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee voted to make this kind of excessive overcharging, or biling, in Iraq and Afhanistan a "war profiteering" cime. Not a single Republican member of Congress dared to object, although the Bush Regime objects strenuously. If the bill passes the House-- it will-- and the Senate-- where McConnell plans to use his obstructionist tactics to bury it for as long as he can-- and then can overcome a Bush veto, it would make it a crime to overcharge on contracts during a war or reconstruction. The felony would carry penalties up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $1 million or twice the amount of illegal profits, whichever is higher. If you think Cheney was incensed over Scooter Libby, just watch him on this one!

Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill have introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Another freshman senator, Amy Klobuchar of Minneaota-- a former prosecutor-- in announcing her support for the bill explained that he office's motto was "follow the money and you'll find the bad guys. That's what we're trying to do with the legislation."


UPDATE: AND BECHTEL TOO

According to yesterday's NY Times "One of the largest American contractors working in Iraq, Bechtel National, met its original objectives on fewer than half of the projects it received as part of a $1.8 billion reconstruction contract, while most of the rest were canceled, reduced in scope or never completed as designed, federal investigators have found in a report" just released, "first of a planned series of audits of Western contractors that have received large slices of the roughly $40 billion in American taxpayer money that has been spent on the troubled program to rebuild Iraq."

LIFE IN THE GREED ZONE-- YEP, THERE'S SOMETHING WORSE THAN CODE RED

Nothing about this story has anything to do with Republican Party hacks Patraeus and Pence-- except the blame part

When we last heard from Fred, the DWT Baghdad correspondent, he gave us a very clear explanation of the various-- and color-coded-- degrees of water problems in the Greed Zone. He gave us all the ramifications, courtesy of Dick Cheney's company Halliburton, between green and red. He didn't explain "black." This morning, when Halliburton subsidiary KBR implemented it, he did: "MISSION CRITICAL WATER NEEDS ONLY: LSA water hours from 0500 - 0900 and 1700 - 2100 daily; Emergency response vehicles maintained at 50% water capacity." I guess the step after that goes way beyond the pathetic benchmarks Bush and corporate Dems passed this week.

Water for showers, toilets, ordinary use is brought into the Embassy Compound (in the Green Zone) by truck. When trucks cannot move, problems quickly become apparent. Drinking water is brought in from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by 18-wheelers with pallet loads of liter (for the kitchen) and half liter bottles for drinking.

I'm just guessin' here, but maybe the trucks with the water are having problems getting into Baghdad because Iraqis-- if not Cheney Democrats in the U.S. Congress-- are eager for Americans to decamp asap. In fact, Moqtada al-Sadr is saying the U.S. must remove their troops from his country. Bush and his cronies claim the U.S. will withdraw when Iraq wants us to but he's waiting until God calls him and tells him that that's the case.

Meanwhile, water isn't the only thing having a hard time getting into Baghdad. Fred explains the process of a person getting into Baghdad. He flew in from Amman, Jordan. His trip doesn't have anything to do with the photo-op McCain staged to falsely paint Baghdad as a safe place to take a leisurely stroll with your gay friend from South Carolina.

Traveling to Baghdad under US Government auspices is a dilly of an experience. It was so fascinating that I took notes along the way. After arriving, everything seemed so surreal that I continued taking notes. I was here in mid-2004 but somehow I either was not exposed to the more weird aspects of life in the Green Zone or did not notice it. Anyway, here is the first part of my story for your amusement.

It took 20 hours to get to Baghdad by plane from Amman, Jordan. Prewar, one could drive it in about ten hours. The trip was bizarre to say the least. I even had written instructions and tried to follow them to the letter but alas, a few things were left out.

The delays started even before travel begins. Someone in Baghdad must first verify that you have a CAC or Common Access Card, country clearance, a Letter of Authorization (LOA, at the airport they referred to them as Travel Orders) and that there is room for you in the inn, i.e. is there an empty bunk in one of the several thousand trailers or other billets in the International Zone (better known as the Green Zone)? None of this happens in parallel, all must be done in a specific sequence. When all is gathered, a seat is reserved for you on a C-130.

Two days a week, a C-130 flies from Kuwait to Baghdad, then Baghdad to Amman, then Amman back to Baghdad and finally from Baghdad back to Kuwait; all very orderly, but intentionally (for security reasons) not on any discernable time schedule.

On the afternoon before the flight, specifically between the hours of 4 and 8 pm, you are obliged to telephone (or inquire via the Internet) the transportation people and ask for the Amman to BIAP (Baghdad International AirPort) ‘show time’. I telephoned at the appointed time and was told that show time at Marka airport-– an old airport now mostly devoted to general aviation-– was “oh-nine-thirty.”

At 8:15 the following morning, a colleague drove me to the airport. On the drive, I mused that the usually brown hills had turned green as the result of a tiny bit of rain a few days earlier and thought of it as a good sign. Such is life in a desert environment.

Marka airport dates from an earlier era. The terminal looks as though it had just slipped into a hole in the ground. It is small, nearly empty, dimly lit and dreary. Other than the employees, everyone in the terminal appeared to be headed for the same flight to Baghdad.

After standing in line for an hour, I paid the departure tax, gave someone at the ticket counter (no tickets were actually issued) my luggage bag and a copy of my LOA and was checked in. One carry-on is permitted – as long as you can carry it on your lap.

After checking in, we passengers gathered in a small open area overlooking part of the runway and waited some more. A forlorn looking Duty Free shop was open as was a stand that sold cookies, sodas and such but otherwise the joint was empty.

After a rather long wait, Jordan Immigration opened a departure counter and someone called out that the immigration line was open. So, I had the dubious pleasure of yet another line in which to stand. Having completed that task, everyone re-gathered into a glassed-off waiting area and, of course, waited some more.

At 12:45 pm, a bus pulled up and after more waiting, a group of us crowded onto the bus and were taken to the plane. This being a C-130 we boarded by walking up a ramp at the back of the plane. The seats are web mesh on aluminum frames. Down each side of the plane a row of seats faces inward; down the center of the plane two rows of seats separated by web mesh faces outward. I’ve attached pictures for your amusement.


The web mesh is the seat back. For those sitting in the middle rows of seats only the mesh separates each persons back from the back of the person on the other side. The plane narrows in the middle to accommodate the wheel wells. Passengers seated in that section find themselves sharing knee space as well. Amazingly enough, several passengers seemed to sleep or toil away (play?) on laptops that were truly on their laps, despite the rather uncomfortable arrangement. When one of the air force types (shall I call him the flight attendant?) went from the front of the plane to the back, he did so by stepping carefully between the knees of the passengers from one seat edge to the next.

Some 70 of us crowded onto the plane. The toilet on the plane is a bucket behind a curtain, if anyone is desperate for relief.

Our baggage, collected on a pallet and wrapped in plastic wrap like a piece of meat at the supermarket, was fork-lifted onto the plane, the ramp raised, the door latched and off we went. The plane jerked forward from a standing position but climbed into the sky quite nicely. The flight was noisy and uncomfortable but not overly long.

At 1:54 pm, the pilot landed the plane in a spiral motion-– rather reminiscent of the time I did my pilot’s biennial with a stunt pilot as my check pilot. In this case however, the reason for landing in such an unusual way was to avoid flying over areas where the troublemakers like to shoot at low flying planes. Touchdown was rather sudden and abrupt.

Even leaving the plane is an experience. First the luggage pallet is removed – we probably could not get off the plane otherwise – then a hippy-looking chap yelled “skull caps off” and “follow me." We stumbled off the plane, in two remarkably straight lines, for some distance behind the plane. The reason was immediately obvious. The engines were still running, the noise was deafening and the wind the engines generated was incredible. We next pushed off to a tent/building where our arrival was registered.

I was instructed to call upon arrival at BIAP but told not to give any flight times, etc. over the phone (seemed strange as the flight was over) but I followed the instructions. I had to borrow a phone as my Jordanian phone did not work despite receiving a SMS message welcoming me to Iraq from Fastlink Jordan.

It is not obvious where the luggage is placed upon arrival, and given the impression I had that the bags continued to the Green Zone with the passengers, I did not go fetch my bag-- a bit of a mistake-- but that’s another story.

For most folks who arrive on a C-130, getting to the Green Zone from BIAP is via steel-plated buses called Rhinos. The color, size and hulking shape of these beasts suggest that they are well-named. Unfortunately the Rhinos do not run until the wee hours of the morning (to avoid being shot at during the daytime, when folks can be along the road without appearing suspicious). So for those of us who arrived via C-130, it’s a 6 to 10 hour additional wait.

Having time to kill, I went exploring. I found a Dining Facility (in Green Zone-speak, a DFAC) but they would not let me enter with my laptop (security has its own peculiar logic) and there was no place to store it safely. I found a PX (Post eXchange) and cluster of trailers housing a Burger King, a Subway sandwich shop, a Green Beans (a Starbucks-like coffee shop found on military bases), a jewelry shop, a barber shop, a beauty salon and a gift shop. All seemed in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by churned up and hardened mud with large river stones in place of paving. The whole business was surrounded by concrete T-walls (blast protection).

Later I took a bus to Camp Striker (where the Rhinos pick up their passengers). The bus was accompanied by a van onto which they place any luggage that passengers are carrying (again, all in the name of security). At Striker, the waiting area is housed in a large temporary building with coffee, tea, television, and wireless internet (for a fee), etc. For those who can tolerate endless propaganda there are some couches and chairs around a couple of televisions with identical smatterings of Fox News and military pep talk pieces. There are also a few books and magazines to read.

At about 11:00 pm, the Rhino passengers queued up, identified themselves and had their names placed on a manifest and were told the number of the bus that they are to take to the Green Zone. Rhino passengers are required to have a flak jacket and helmet. Of course I did not have these items (and did not get any for several days). But I did receive a lengthy lecture on the subject. Just where, how or when I could have acquired this equipment was left out of the lecture.

The Rhinos finally arrived, an announcement was made and we we went out to meet them. The luggage was lined up in a row and sniffer dogs examined them after which the baggage and other boxes were tossed into a shipping container that sat on a flat bed trailer.

Five or six Rhinos (one purposefully empty) took us to the Green Zone. We were escorted by humvees with a pair of helicopters watching overhead. At the Green Zone, the luggage truck was unloaded, and again inspected by other sniffer dogs.

I was not told beforehand that I would be going into the Palace that morning, and thus did not get the necessary temporary badge. By the time someone came to get me, the badge person had left and my escort and I had to wait until someone of higher rank arranged for a temporary badge. The badge was needed simply to let me pass through the Palace on my way to a “Transient Hootch”, Hootch being the name given to the sleeping quarters that are trailers or modified shipping containers. It is a Vietnamese word for huts that serve as living quarters. The US military borrowed the name from the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war and have used it ever since. Once a temporary badge was issued, my escort took me to Billeting, picked up a room key and finally, at 4:00 am I crawled into bed.

So, you see the waiting is unbelievable, especially when you realize that everyone who enters or leaves the airport via this process loses a day in entering and a day in leaving. The drag on individuals and the cost to the USG must be enormous. I think the C-130 holds about 70 people. My guess is that the people cost alone easily exceeds $500,000 each trip. My logic: each trip 65 to 75 people travel to Amman and 65 to 75 from Amman plus similar numbers going through Kuwait – each person loses 16 to 24 hours in traveling this short distance-- the average fee expended for the services of these people likely exceeds $1,000 per person per day (my estimate may even be low)-- add in the cost of the C-130s, the security personnel, the Rhinos, the escorts and the number soon staggers the imagination-- all this in the name of security.

The costs go on. You cannot just change planes in Amman or Kuwait and fly on to Baghdad. Thus folks other than the military who are traveling to Iraq for the US Government must of necessity be lodged in a hotel for a day or more until such time as they can continue their journey.

While Fred tells us how difficult and uncomfortable it is for Americans to get in to the Greed Zone, Frank Rich has a gloomy column on the plight of Iraqis-- many, the very ones who bought into the Bush Regime "freedom and democracy" bullshit-- who now need to get out. As Iraq descends more and more into bloody and hopeless chaos, over 15% of it's population has become refugees-- but only a few hundred (all translators) have been given asylum in the U.S. And if you wonder why those men and women have targets on their backs, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out. Instinctively, everyone knows what a quisling is. American soldiers stationed in Iraq are starting to realize that only one things seems to unite all Iraqis: a desire to take their country back from American occupier.

LIFE IN THE GREED ZONE: LET THEM DRINK... PERRIER?

I hope you've been following the adventures of DWT Baghdad correspondent, Fred, doing his best to avoid mercenaries and Bush Regime screw-ups in the Greed Zone. (Earlier reports are here, and here, and here) I just got another e-mail from Fred this weekend that I'd like to share:

Benjamin Franklin noted [as did, more recently, Craig David] that we know the worth of water when the well runs dry. He might also have pointed out the value of anticipating such an event. I did not, and now I must pay. I am busier here than ever expected and thus let laundry needs go unanswered.
 
Too bad, I must now go to the PX to purchase socks and such with the hope that they have same in stock in my size. The PX is pathetic-- it has lots of stock available in CDs, televisions and the like, but essentials seem to be spasmodically stocked.
 
Water here at the Palace and the Hootches (the home away from home for expat Green Zone types) is delivered to holding tanks by truck, around 5,000 gallons at a time it appears. Given the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of people here, transporting water must be a big operation.
 
I wonder if the bowing up of a bridge across the Tigris has anything to do with the shortage. Baghdad was without electricity for some days because they couldn’t get fuel to the generators. Apparently after the bombing, a second bridge was made off limits to tanker trucks, and the tanker truck drivers refused to cross the alternative bridge because it was serving as a live target gallery for certain malcontents.

Damned those malcontents! There followed an e-mail from Halliburton's KBR division, an "All Hands Notice," declaring that as of April 28 the water status is amber. Amber is the third of 4 stages, just before red. Here's the KB definitions:

a.      Green: Water supply is adequate, no additional conservation efforts are necessary

b.     Yellow: Will usually be initiated when water services have been disrupted for 2 hours or more and the ETR is more than 12 hours

                                               i.      KBR will monitor and report water level every four hours.
                                                             ii.      KBR Fire Department:
                                                           1.      Maintain full water tank levels in emergency                     response vehicles
                                                           2.      Coordinate with city services for emergency water support if needed
                                                            iii.      DCMA will inform KBR to execute a Letter of Technical Direction allowing Task Order 130 to draw water from Task Order 139 supplies at FOB Prosperity ROWPU intermediate storage bladder
                                                           iv.      Stop watering grass and all landscaping
                                                             v.      Cease operation of the KBR car wash station
                                                           vi.      Discontinue Full Service Laundry washing, remain open for drop off and pick up only
                                                          vii.      Shut down self-service laundries
                                                        viii.      Cease water replenishment for palace swimming pool
 
c.     Amber: Will usually be initiated when water services have been disrupted for 6 hours or more and the ETR is more than 24 hours; execute the steps for phase Yellow, additionally;

                                               i.      Limit cleaning to sanitary purposes only; as long as we are using latrines they need to be cleaned.
                                                             ii.      KBR will draw water from the fire station storage tanks if necessary; discontinue water draw when storage tanks level falls to 50% (DO NOT DRAW DOWN BELOW 50%)
 
d.     Red: Will usually be initiated when water services have been disrupted for 6 hours or more and there is no reliable ETR

                                               i.      Implement LSA water hours from 0500-0900 and 1700-2100 daily

The implementation of the Amber alert includes shutting down the KBR car wash station, self-service laundries, full service laundry service and water replenishment for swimming pools. I just noticed that there's something worse than red: black. I guess that's when even Cheney realizes the jig is up-- though when Lieberman will pull his head out of his ass and smell the roses is anyone's guess.


UPDATE: HAZARDOUS DUTY PAY?

"State Department employees in Iraq seldom leave the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone. Even there, rocket and mortar attacks are frequent, and the sound of gunfire is constant. Suicide bombers have penetrated the zone on rare occasions, most recently on April 12." And today's USAToday is reporting that American diplomats are returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder, "the same debilitating, stress-related symptoms that have afflicted many U.S. troops, prompting the State Department to order a mental health survey of 1,400 employees who have completed assignments there."
 

WHO'S REALLY UNDERMINING U.S. TROOPS?

Today Darth Cheney accused the Democratic leadership of undermining the troops. I haven't spoken to a single enlisted man who buys that line of crapola. Instead I got some information that clearly shows exactly who is undermining the troops.

This morning I got some even more disturbing news from the front. Aside from the regular stuff about how things are getting worse and worse, which one always hears from guys stationed in Iraq, something new and very ominous. The soldiers are being told that the Democrats are cutting off funding. That has started manifesting itself in reduced meals, reduced perks, signing for ammo on a per-round basis...

If this is true, it's insane! Are they actually trying to make it look like the Democrats are screwing the troops, something not even the most gung-ho anti-war Democrat would ever allow? Or are they trying to save money to make up for what they've already stolen? Or stretch their resources so they can keep the fighting going longer? Reducing meals immediately makes me thing of Halliburton profiteering. But they could also be reallocating money for covert operations or even an attack against Iran.

Or maybe troops like the idea of going over the Iraq without sufficient armor? And know that if the lack of training and lack of adequate supplies causes them grievous injury, they'll be dumped in a vermin infested hovel for sub-adequate care (unlike Cheney's private hospital at his home)? Congresswoman Solis told me she had just come back to the U.S. from a fact-finding trip to Iraq where she did listen to the profession Bush Regime propaganda specialists pushing the Regime line but that she also made a point of speaking to random enlisted men and women at every opportunity. Her impression: many of these young patriots were biting the bullet, doing their duty and praying they'd get home in one piece and in a reasonable amount of time. They were in fact, "doing time."

I do however, think the Democratic leadership has undermined the only troops Cheney actually cares about, his Halliburton shock troops of grand larceny. In fact, they're so undermined-- and so petrified of investigations into their war profiteering, recklessness, and theft in the range of many millions of dollars, that they're picking up stakes and moving to a safer place... safer than Texas? What could be safer for a corrupt corporation than Texas? Halliburton, meet Dubai; Dubai, Halliburton. Oh, you already know eachother? Oh.. that well. Who knew?

Well, the question might be-- aside from you really knew?-- who should have known and, more important, who should have done something about it. Pinocchio-in-Chief and his rogue regime found another poor schnook to offer up as a third scapegoat for their malfeasance and criminal incompetence regarding Walter Reed. Bush feigned shock and horror when told. Any shock and horror, though, was the shock and horror of being exposed for what a bastard and hypocrite he is.

Forget for a moment that top Regime supporters and rubber stampers in the Congress like John McHugh (R-NY), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) and Steven Buyer (R-IN) were supposed to know what was going on with the care of military wounded were getting, did know all about the disgrace that a Halliburton offshoot had turned the place into, and chose to brush it under a rug and make light of it. Instead, let's look for a moment at Bush's desperate attempt to play dumb.

Although Bush can plausibly deny he reads newspapers (or anything other than Shakespeares and Camus), a major series in the Washington Post can hardly be ignored by the entire Regime. However 2 full years ago when Mark Benjamin first broke this story at Salon and then on National Public Radio's On the Media (with a follow-up on January 5, 2005), Bush and his co-conspirators could keep their fingers crossed and hope no one with a louder voice said anything-- or that the next episode of the Paris Hilton/Anna Nicole Smith roadshow du jour would overpower it, not just on Fox, but on the pathetic Fox imitators like CNN. It worked.


UPDATE: AND NOW WILL CHENEY CRAWL BACK IN HIS UNDISCOLSED HOLE?


Cheney's outrageous slander of the day was smacked down by grievously wounded war hero Max Cleland almost as soon as he spewed it out. John over at Crooks and Liars has the video.

"Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War?" Cleland asks the odious and oft-deferred vice-president. "If you had gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you woulda learned something about war. You can't keep troops on the ground forever-- you gotta have a mission, you gotta have a purpose. You can't keep sending 'em back and back and back with no mission and no purpose. As a matter of fact, the real enemy is Al Qaeda, it's Al Qaeda stupid, it's not in Iraq."

Speaker Pelosi can't call Cheney an idiot (too polite and respectful of the office). But she might as well have:

It is a disservice to our military personnel for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to continue to advocate for an open-ended commitment in Iraq, while brushing aside the advice of military leaders and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, all of whom argue that the war in Iraq cannot be resolved militarily but only through diplomatic, economic and political means. As the Vice President's remarks today prove again, the Administration's answer to continuing violence in Iraq is more troops and more treasure from the American people.

The House Appropriations Committee will consider a plan this week that will take Iraq policy in a new direction. The bill will hold the Iraqi government to the President's own performance benchmarks, reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, honor our promises to our military personnel and veterans, and refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and fighting terrorism.