War Profiteering
According to a report by a Pentagon panel, the dollar value of Army contracts quadrupled from $23.3 billion in 1992 to $100.6 billion in 2006. While the Pentagon outsourced hundreds of troop support jobs to private companies, the number of Army contract supervisors was cut from 10,000 in 1990 to 5,500 currently.
In what writer Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism” in her terrific book The Shock Doctrine, this collusion between the private sector and the Pentagon and the resulting costs to American taxpayers is finally beginning to emerge. Congressional investigators have estimated that one in every six dollars charged by U.S. contractors for Iraq reconstruction was questionable. Current estimates run as high as $100 billion wasted taxpayer dollars.
An audit released last week by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction reported that millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays or poor performance, including projects that were falsely described by the U.S. government as complete.
In February, Federal prosecutors in Rock Island, Illinois indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the largest private contractor for the Pentagon in Iraq, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants and two other KBR employees have pled guilty in Virginia. They join a list of 36 people indicted on Iraq war-contract crimes.
The Boston Globe recently reported that KBR has two shell companies in the Cayman Islands for bookkeeping purposes. Because the companies are offshore, KGB and its workers avoid paying about $100 million a year in Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Senator John Kerry has sponsored a bill that would close loopholes for companies registering overseas. On the remote chance that his bill gets through both the Senate and the House, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for the current occupant of the White House to sign it.
In his farewell address in 1961, Republican President and former General Dwight Eisenhower warned against the rise of what he called the “military industrial complex”.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Oh, how I wish we had heeded Eisenhower’s advice.
In what writer Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism” in her terrific book The Shock Doctrine, this collusion between the private sector and the Pentagon and the resulting costs to American taxpayers is finally beginning to emerge. Congressional investigators have estimated that one in every six dollars charged by U.S. contractors for Iraq reconstruction was questionable. Current estimates run as high as $100 billion wasted taxpayer dollars.
An audit released last week by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction reported that millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays or poor performance, including projects that were falsely described by the U.S. government as complete.
In February, Federal prosecutors in Rock Island, Illinois indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the largest private contractor for the Pentagon in Iraq, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants and two other KBR employees have pled guilty in Virginia. They join a list of 36 people indicted on Iraq war-contract crimes.
The Boston Globe recently reported that KBR has two shell companies in the Cayman Islands for bookkeeping purposes. Because the companies are offshore, KGB and its workers avoid paying about $100 million a year in Social Security and Medicare taxes.
Senator John Kerry has sponsored a bill that would close loopholes for companies registering overseas. On the remote chance that his bill gets through both the Senate and the House, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for the current occupant of the White House to sign it.
In his farewell address in 1961, Republican President and former General Dwight Eisenhower warned against the rise of what he called the “military industrial complex”.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Oh, how I wish we had heeded Eisenhower’s advice.
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