In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
The New York Post, famous for its big headlines, and... its big headlines, supports Bush, but bad news for Bush, they support the troops more.
STRAIGHT TALK FOR GI JOE
(they learned the importance of ALL CAPS from their print edition I guess.)
Our troops are doing a magnificent job in a miserable environment — despite the lack of support from Pentagon civilians who never paid any dues except to their country clubs. The Rummycrats who insisted we could occupy Iraq with two Boy Scout troops and a repainted pickup truck would not listen to any common-sense warnings from those in uniform, or in the intelligence agencies, or in the State Department, or anywhere else.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's button-down hit men, each a champion of arrogance, saw what they wanted to see. And they paid far more attention to working political spin and handing out reconstruction contracts to favored corporations than they did to assessing what our soldiers might really need in the aftermath of war — or how many soldiers might be needed.
Now, their cherished contractors are lagging badly — to the outrage of our military in Baghdad. Underpaid, overworked soldiers are picking up the slack for Bechtel, Halliburton and the rest of the corporate vultures.
...
Want to know how far off the rails things have slid at the Pentagon? Recently, the Army wanted to tally up how much money it had been forced to divert to private contractors as part of Rumsfeld's rush to privatize military tasks. The Rummycrats forbid it. They refused to let the Army balance its own books — because the privatization mafia knew what they would find: Contractors cost more, not less, than soldiers.
When honest budget managers in the services calculate the transition of any uniformed job to a private contractor, their working assumption is that the contract employee will cost the Pentagon $100,000 a year. A sergeant barely makes a quarter of that, and a private hardly a fifth — including benefits.
You, the taxpayer, are being cheated outrageously in the name of an ideologically driven crusade to reduce the size of government. This is corporate welfare that has nothing to do with the welfare of our troops. And guess what? Most of those contractors disappear when the bullets start flying.
- rob 1:44 PM - [PermaLink] -
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