Aerobic Reading: More Shame for the Bush-Reich
I've bounced off several recent headlines that attempted to drag me back into the sorry subject of contracting corruption in Iraq. Each time my head, while acknowledging there is likely an absolutely scandalous story there, has insisted that Alito and the bribery/influence-peddling republican party corruption-fest are far more urgent.
But thanks to the brief synopsis below, my perspective is a little different, partly as it resonates with the book I am wrestling my way through. While recommended in terms of content, "Prelude to Terror - the Rogue CIA and the Legend of America's Private Intelligence Network" (J. Trento) is at least as full of discouraging news about our intelligence community and its long history of off-the-record illegal actions and sleazy corruption as the title suggests. A bit more on the book below. But here's the more-digestible web-morsel on the recent IG Audit on Iraq reconstruction:
The New York Times has printed a good, if woefully incomplete, story on the massive, death-dealing corruption of Bush's crony conquistadors in Iraq (Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects). One of the anecdotes of avarice related in the just-released audit of the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction could well stand as an emblem of the entire murderous, misbegotten enterprise: it's grubby, it's petty, it's driven by raw, bestial greed, and it resulted in the cruel, unnecessary death of innocent people.
Although the episode is mentioned in the lead - and full marks to reporter James Glanz for this radical departure from standard Big Media practice - you had to wade through the entire story until you came upon the details, buried full fathom five in the last two paragraphs of the story. But here it is, the very form and pressure of the Bushist age:
Excerpt: Sometimes the consequences of such loose controls were deadly. A contract for $662,800 in civil, electrical, and mechanical work to rehabilitate the Hilla General Hospital was paid in full by an American official in June 2004 even though the work was not finished, the report says. But instead of replacing a central elevator bank, as called for in the scope of work, the contractor tinkered with an unsuccessful rehabilitation.
The report continues, narrating the observation of the inspector general's agents who visited the hospital on Sept. 18, 2004: "The hospital administrator immediately escorted us to the site of the elevators. The administrator said that just a couple days prior to our arrival the elevator crashed and killed three people."
For some of us it is absolutely breathtaking to think of profiteering in the face of crisis, horror, and war. OK, yes, there is that delightful sub-human pool of munitions traders eager to profit off killing machinery (GHWB family royally prominent here of course). It certainly goes a long way to explain the motivation for terrorism directed at any country that would be complicit in (or in this case responsible for) such obvious violations of basic human rights.
I recommend "Prelude to Terror" to anyone who has not paid proper attention to the machinations and corruption that could seem to be aberrations in the workings of the federal government. If you are anywhere near as innocent as me, a read of this book should take care of that particular cherry.
Probably there are other ways I could have learned of Bush 1's mistress, or the full-fledged bi-polar dedication to making a profit if we could disguise it as fighting communism during the Reagan regime. The CIA is the focus of this book, namely the overt and covert bivalence reaching all the way back to the early '50's, and how the latter was at times farmed out and at times both were conducted in the same house of horrors. Most conspiculously in Prelude, that horror was the Reagan/Bush regime, when the shoddy costume-figure so many hard-core conservatives want to venerate as the best prez ever paired (badly) with the former CIA director who "controlled" information so well that many have remarked how much we preferred him to his son. The scary part is that if son is truly competing with dad, based on the truly awful legacy detailed in this book, junior may still not feel he has won the ghastly contest. In terms of war profiteering and general corruption, from what I can tell GHWB has not gotten nearly enough "credit."
It's still unclear whether Prelude or I will be the victor when I have finished reading. Frankly, this book deserved better editing. Some parts are a struggle to process, due partly to too many names flung around and not nearly enough attention paid to a narrative line. Other parts are far better. It's unfortunate that it is not a "couldn't put it down" sort of a book, because the revelations, personalities, and connections documented here are of vital interest to anyone wanting to better understand the background to the Iraq debacle.
But thanks to the brief synopsis below, my perspective is a little different, partly as it resonates with the book I am wrestling my way through. While recommended in terms of content, "Prelude to Terror - the Rogue CIA and the Legend of America's Private Intelligence Network" (J. Trento) is at least as full of discouraging news about our intelligence community and its long history of off-the-record illegal actions and sleazy corruption as the title suggests. A bit more on the book below. But here's the more-digestible web-morsel on the recent IG Audit on Iraq reconstruction:
The New York Times has printed a good, if woefully incomplete, story on the massive, death-dealing corruption of Bush's crony conquistadors in Iraq (Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects). One of the anecdotes of avarice related in the just-released audit of the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction could well stand as an emblem of the entire murderous, misbegotten enterprise: it's grubby, it's petty, it's driven by raw, bestial greed, and it resulted in the cruel, unnecessary death of innocent people.
Although the episode is mentioned in the lead - and full marks to reporter James Glanz for this radical departure from standard Big Media practice - you had to wade through the entire story until you came upon the details, buried full fathom five in the last two paragraphs of the story. But here it is, the very form and pressure of the Bushist age:
Excerpt: Sometimes the consequences of such loose controls were deadly. A contract for $662,800 in civil, electrical, and mechanical work to rehabilitate the Hilla General Hospital was paid in full by an American official in June 2004 even though the work was not finished, the report says. But instead of replacing a central elevator bank, as called for in the scope of work, the contractor tinkered with an unsuccessful rehabilitation.
The report continues, narrating the observation of the inspector general's agents who visited the hospital on Sept. 18, 2004: "The hospital administrator immediately escorted us to the site of the elevators. The administrator said that just a couple days prior to our arrival the elevator crashed and killed three people."
For some of us it is absolutely breathtaking to think of profiteering in the face of crisis, horror, and war. OK, yes, there is that delightful sub-human pool of munitions traders eager to profit off killing machinery (GHWB family royally prominent here of course). It certainly goes a long way to explain the motivation for terrorism directed at any country that would be complicit in (or in this case responsible for) such obvious violations of basic human rights.
I recommend "Prelude to Terror" to anyone who has not paid proper attention to the machinations and corruption that could seem to be aberrations in the workings of the federal government. If you are anywhere near as innocent as me, a read of this book should take care of that particular cherry.
Probably there are other ways I could have learned of Bush 1's mistress, or the full-fledged bi-polar dedication to making a profit if we could disguise it as fighting communism during the Reagan regime. The CIA is the focus of this book, namely the overt and covert bivalence reaching all the way back to the early '50's, and how the latter was at times farmed out and at times both were conducted in the same house of horrors. Most conspiculously in Prelude, that horror was the Reagan/Bush regime, when the shoddy costume-figure so many hard-core conservatives want to venerate as the best prez ever paired (badly) with the former CIA director who "controlled" information so well that many have remarked how much we preferred him to his son. The scary part is that if son is truly competing with dad, based on the truly awful legacy detailed in this book, junior may still not feel he has won the ghastly contest. In terms of war profiteering and general corruption, from what I can tell GHWB has not gotten nearly enough "credit."
It's still unclear whether Prelude or I will be the victor when I have finished reading. Frankly, this book deserved better editing. Some parts are a struggle to process, due partly to too many names flung around and not nearly enough attention paid to a narrative line. Other parts are far better. It's unfortunate that it is not a "couldn't put it down" sort of a book, because the revelations, personalities, and connections documented here are of vital interest to anyone wanting to better understand the background to the Iraq debacle.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:07 PM
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