Tuesday's news was like a review of a year or two of posts here at Dreaming Up Daily. Once again, the Bushites are sending the escalation of U.S. troops into battle in Iraq without enough body armor and other necessary equipment, while (according to this Washington Post story) "The increase would also further degrade the readiness of U.S.-based ground forces, hampering their ability to respond quickly, fully trained and well equipped in the case of other military contingencies around the world and increasing the risk of U.S. casualties, according to Army and Marine Corps leaders." At the same time, a government report questions whether the National Guard has the equipment it needs for emergencies in the U.S.
Update: A Pentagon report shows how dire the situation is for troops now: without the equipment they need.
Where are all those billions and billions of dollars going, you might well ask. Jeremy Scahill has this answer:
Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest "force" in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What's more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.
Bush's mercenary army (and his several attempts to use it in US emergencies, such as New Orleans) has been mentioned here more than once; it's getting wider press now because the helicopter shot down in Iraq the other day belonged to Blackwater, the major mercenary company.
Meanwhile, at the Scooter Libby trial, a parade of testimony, much of it from within the Bush administration, reaffirms that VP Cheney did request the CIA to send someone to investigate the rumor that Iraq was buying nuclear material from Niger, that when the conclusion of that investigation (by Joseph Wilson) contradicted what Cheney wanted to hear and what Bush claimed was true in order to justify invading Iraq, Cheney and Libby blamed the CIA and specifically Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent and Wilson's wife. And that Libby lied about how he learned of Plame, which was from Cheney.
Both the House and Senate have begun committee hearings on the Climate Crisis. While the Senate looks into the matter itself, the House Oversight Committee heard testimony about how relentlessly the Bushites attempted to suppress climate science. Nearly half of climate scientists surveyed personally experienced attempts to interfere or suppress even the mention of global warming, while half of them felt the interference was so severe that they resigned.
This confirmation of previous stories about this political and dictatorial abuse received new relevance with the revelation by the New York Times that Bush has issued an executive order requiring that all government agencies have a political appointee--appointed by the President--to supervise regulatory rules. In the most political of all administrations, this is yet another bald attempt to control health, safety and environmental regulations of industries, and thwart the will of Congress in the regulations they pass. So soon, not only will "global warming" be banished from official Newspeak, but also such bothersome words and concepts as "pollutant," "health hazard" and "dangerous."
No comments:
Post a Comment