This is a 2005 documentary that I just saw on cable TV (check your local listings for show times). Riveting stuff. Things I didn't know:
- The vast majority of translation services are contracted to a private U.S. company, who hire any Joe-Schmoe off the Iraqi street who can speak the littlest English--and we entrust them with sensitive intelligence without hardly knowing anything about them.
- Rather than buy a tire to fix a flat on a truck, Halliburton prefers to blow the truck up, buy a new truck, and charge the American taxpayer.
- A lot of soldiers aren't permitted to do the jobs they are trained to do. Instead the govt. has awarded contracts to Halliburton to do those jobs, and the soldiers sit around and watch them.
- the CEO of Halliburton earned $42 million in salary in 2004. I can't even fathom that.
Kansas gets a brief shout-out in this quote (paraphrase): "OF COURSE there are kickbacks. OF COURSE there are conflicts of interest. OF COURSE there are scams. If you don't believe that, then I've got an ocean in Kansas that I want to take you surfing in."
Is Congress interested in resolving this? Nope, because the Congressmen are getting kickbacks too. There's too much of our taxpayer money involved to stop it. War is a commercial business.
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