The Bush administration’s desire to put profit into the wallets of private business owners knows no bounds.
Remember what I wrote here, about the BBC reporter pleading with first responders in New Orleans to start dealing urgently with the corpses still– ten days into the emergency– littering the city?
Now we know why those first responders, who do very difficult jobs for low pay and generate “profits” for nobody, had orders not to deal with the bodies. In today’s WaPo, Ceci Connolly and Dan Eggen write that
- After several days of preparations, the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency and its private contractors began a methodical effort to locate and retrieve corpses and body parts from the floodwaters, trapped inside submerged buildings or tangled in debris…
The bodies are being processed by Kenyon International Emergency Services, a Houston firm with close ties to the Bush administration. Kenyon employees were dressed in white suits, gloves and surgical masks. Company officials have said identification could take weeks in some cases, and next of kin will not be notified until the bodies are turned over to the state of Louisiana.
Reporters were turned away by police in attempts to accompany recovery teams or view them at close range, and authorities said Friday that the restrictions were in place to protect the privacy and dignity of the dead.
Do you think it couldn’t get any worse than this? Well, over in Iraq, meanwhile, US commanders on the ground are starting to speak out in public– well, at least to the WaPo– about the dire problems the private mercenary forces there are causing them.
This article, by Jonthan Finer, tells us that
- Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians…
“These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force,” said Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Baghdad. “They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.”
And then there’s the situation at Baghdad airport. There, as Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri tell us— still in the WaPo–
- A standoff over a multimillion-dollar security bill owed by the Iraqi government shut down Baghdad’s international airport Friday and severed Iraq’s last safe route to the outside world…
The dispute concerned a payment, now totaling $36 million, owed British-based Global Strategies Group for running the airport’s security. The $4.5 million monthly contract was signed by Iraq’s previous government and has gone unpaid since January as the current government tries to renegotiate it, Iraqi officials confirmed. Global shut down airport operations for 48 hours in June in a dispute over the same contract.
I guess this later report from AP tells us that the airport did finally reopen early Saturday. But think about it. As any pulp-fiction writer knows, the airport that lies close to a capital city is always a crucial node of national security…
These days, it is not only– or even mainly– Iraqis who need to have safe access to and through Baghdad International Airport. In fact, most Iraqis have a number of other possible ways of getting in and out of the country. Mainly, by road, which is not as dangerous for them as it is for the Americans and other foreigners inside the country.
It is the thousands of US troops and diplomats in and around Baghdad who are most reliant on being able to use the airport. In the event of a major crisis in Iraq, it could be literally their only way out.
So what did the Bushies do:
- (A) Approach the challenge of assuring the security of this vital node with appropriate seriousness, or
(B) Hand it over to their profit-making pals in “Global Strategies Group” so they could skim their X percent off the top of the contract?
You guessed! It was B. If there really is a huge crisis in Iraq and the US people there need to exit the city very fast– do you think they could rely on the profit-takers still to be there for them??
Actually, you think this is bad. But I found an even worse wrinkle in the Baghdad airport story, over at the NYT. There, Richard Oppel writes that,
- After Global Strategies closed the airport at dawn on Friday, infuriated Iraqi ministry officials dispatched their own troops to secure the airport. But the Iraqis turned back to avoid a confrontation with American soldiers who had already hurried to the airport from their nearby base, according to Iraqi officials and Global Strategies…
Giles Morgan, a spokesman for Global Strategies, said the … American military sent troops to guard the airport… specifically because they had been informed that Iraqi forces were on their way to take control.
“The Ministry of Transportation said they were deploying interior ministry personnel to secure the perimeter, and it was on that basis that the U.S. military deployed the quick-reaction forces they have standing by at the airport,” he said.
The acting Iraqi transportation minister, Esmat Amer, said the Iraqi government had “ordered the forces to pull back after American forces were deployed at the first checkpoint on the road,” according to The Associated Press. “We did not want to create a confrontation.”
How’s that again?? The Bush administration keeps telling us that they want to be able to pull US troops out of Iraq, some day– just as soon as the Iraqi forces are ready to take over the country’s security themselves…
The Iraqi security commanders try to send forces over there to the airport– and the US sends troops to prevent them doing that?? What the heck is going on?
Our military has also begun the process of bombing every city in Anbar province into the stone age. This campaign will continue to intensify in the months to come, although we will probably get very little news coverage. Life in those towns and villages must be hell on earth right now. And there’s absolutely no place for the people to go. This is just mass murder being committed in our names.
Is anyone here aware of any source of information on total number of sorties flown and amount of ordinance dropped by navy and air force jets over Iraq? They seem to be keeping this information secret.
according to the most recent polls, nearly two-thirds [of Americans] think the coalition is
We Americans are
deluged with slogans. We often select our
breakfast food, our soap, and our toothpaste
by jingles and catchphrases rather than by
reading the labels. So we fall easily into
accepting evocative expressions in place
of analysis even when it comes to national
security.
William R. Polk
Brilliant and compelling Helena — so provocative, I wanted to send this thread to friends. Ok, we can cut and paste the link id and then put inside a new e-mail from our own e-mail browser. Yet as an idea for you, will it be feasible to set up an easy “e-mail” this link tool? Surely it will help further spread the “word” about your terrific blog. eh? escott
Hi, all. Thanks for the bouquet, Scott, and the timely comments, JC and Salah.
JC, you’re quite right to draw attention to the pulverizing of Tal Afar and other western Iraq cities. I do need to get a main post up about it.
Scott, if you or anyone else has a bit of good HTML that would provide the “email this link” tool, I could think about inserting it into the template. Maybe anyone who has such HTML could email it to me?
Thanks!
Btw, regarding the out-of-control nature of mercenary contractors n Iraq I should have made reference back to Fallujah in spring of 2004…
Helena, not just the mercenary contractors do the dirty job, US personal also in you name and your money.
Khadduri
Letter from Cindy SheehanCindy Sheehan
Sept. 7, 2005
Dear Friends and Supporters of Peace
On August 31st, we closed down Camp Casey on the outskirts of President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. In the three and a half weeks that we were in Crawford, thousands of people passed through – some for just a few hours and some for days or weeks. Throughout the country, hundreds of thousands of people responded to my vigil, calling on the President to meet with me and, just as importantly, adding their voices to the growing cry for an end to the war in Iraq.
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?list=type&type=91‎
Helena, perhaps I should wait for your main post on this subject, but an article in today’s WaPo just crystalized – for me – everything that is insanely wrong about this war and how it is being conducted. The imagery here is stunning: a centuries old city of stone houses in the very cradle of civilization; a “heavy aerial bombardment that had lasted for days,” destroying “virtually every building in a 20-block radius;” a 45-minute blitzkrieg by mechanized infantry, followed by a report of – wait for it – “no enemy contact.” Recon turns up nothing but a few dead bodies scattered around a devastated city – an “anticlimax” to an “eight-day-old counterinsurgency operation.” Can you believe it? Those sneaky insurgents got away again!!!
An “Iraqi army” Corporal is “very unhappy” about the lack of opportunities for the hoped-for slaughter. The American commander proclaims the lack of resistance a sign of the “success of the operation.” The supposed “Defense Minister” warns his own people that similar devastation is coming to “Qaim, Rawah, Samarra and Ramadi.” Col. McMaster cheerily assures the reporter that reconstruction will commence just as soon as demolition is completed. Just like Falluja, I suppose.
And the article is perfectly capped off with a reminder of how in the midst of all this, the country’s main airport is being held hostage by a private British security company, in a contract dispute.
The colossal stupidity of all this is just so overwhelming. Have we no leaders left with any sense at all?
Firstly, “Kenyon International Emergency Services” is subject to the laws of Louisiana and the US so the comparison is not valid. A better comparison would be to a private trash-collection agency rather than the sanitation department of a city government. Not really a big deal.
Your charge of Bush and friends skimming off money from private contracts is a very serious libel that needs to be backed up. Otherwise you are being very scurrilous and quite dishonest. If you’re right Bush deserves to go to jail, but if you’re wrong you do.
John C.
You are quite wrong, and either dumb or dishonest. The quote from the article is “Virtually every building in a 20-block radius was pockmarked with bullet holes”, not ‘destroying “virtually every building in a 20-block radius;”‘
If resistance had been high you would have interpreted that as the war going badly. Now that resistance has diminished you interpret that as the war going badly — not persuasive. Are you trying to be an honest analyst or a propaganda hack?
What kind of person do you want to be?
Well, WarrenW, if you really want to be a stickler about it (as my dad used to say), the full sentence read:
“Virtually every building in a 20-block radius was pockmarked with bullet holes, and many bore the trademark gaping holes blown by heavy explosives dropped nightly from the sky.”
I guess that’s OK with you then, huh? War’s going great, eh? Had to destroy the village in order to save it, didn’t we? Light at the end of the tunnel! Turning the corner! Last throes!