What Do We Have to Show in Iraq After $500 Billion Tax Dollars?

By now you’re either convinced that Bush’s Iraq misadventure is the biggest cluster-fuck in US history, or you still cling to the illusion that Bush & Co. knew what they were doing when they decided to invade that country. Then again, there’s some evidence that Bush & Co. knew what they were doing when they decided to privatize the war effort. Of course, many of these private, no-bid, "cost-plus" contracts were given to Bush administration cronies and political supporters — such as Halliburton and others; and, now, with little in terms of reconstruction to show and billions of dollars later, we’re getting a better picture of how these private contractors have raped and pillaged the US Treasury.

Again, if you know what a cluster-fuck Bush’s Iraq misadventure has been from the start, then this article from Rolling Stone will only add fuel to your rage. The article describes in appalling detail the war profiteering by private contractors, and the utter lack of oversight by the Bush administration.

Here’s the opening of the article:

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

And the inevitable conclusion, after examing the evidence:

According to the most reliable ­estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America’s contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where’s the incentive to deliver success? There’s no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don’t pay the bills.