| JTProcess |
Wow!!! Bill Maher on FIYAH!!! nailing it down!!!!
New Rule: Stop Saying Iraq Is Another Vietnam, It's Another Enron.
Iraq is Enron, and President Bush is Ken Lay. He's fighting a war with phony accounting tricks. The Bush administration fudged the numbers to get us into Iraq, and cooked the books to keep us there. "The surge" is simply another in a long series of inflated stock quotes. This past weekend Marcel Marceau passed away at age 84. Doctors say he went quietly. Thus proving that evil thrives when good men stay silent. And just like with Enron, the good men and women who are blowing the whistle on Iraq contractor fraud are being vilified, fired, demoted, and those are the lucky ones.
Last Friday morning the Senate Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing entitled "The Mistreatment of Iraq Contracting Whistleblowers," just in time to make the Friday news dump. According to the committee more than $10 billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction and military support contracts is unaccounted for. In other words, for every six dollars spent in Iraq one dollar is in question. And folks, it's a war-zone, you're dealing with a culture known for its haggling skills, so you've got factor in a little skimming, but this is ridiculous. If you stole that much money from the Mafia you'd be dead.
Vicente Fox may have called President Bush a "windshield cowboy," but Bush has certainly turned Iraq into a wild, wild, west. And here's another one from the War in Iraq's this-is going-to-make-you-vomit file. Some Iraq contract whistleblowers have been vilified and fired, others have been detained by the US military and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques.
Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, was working for an Iraqi-owned outfit called the Shield Group Security Company. Vance said he witnessed Shield Group selling guns, land mines, and rocket-launchers to Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry workers. Vance described Shield Groups as "a Wal-Mart for guns." Vance reported this to the FBI, and instead of a pat on the back, he got 97 days at Camp Cropper, a military prison outside of Baghdad. In fact, Saddam's Hussein's old crib. Vance was placed in solitary confinement, subjected to head-banging music blaring from dawn to dusk, and interrogators screaming the same questions over and over again in his face.
Also testifying at the hearing along with Vance was Barry Godfrey, a former KBR employee (KBR+Halliburton=Cheney) who claimed that he was fired after complaining to his supervisors about fraudulent overcharges.
Also testifying was Bunnatine Greenhouse. Greenhouse is the former highest-ranking civilian contracting official at the Army Corps of Engineers, so I'll dispense with the "Greenhouse having gas" joke. But Greenhouse was removed from her position when she tried to crack down on "casual and clubby contracting practices" at the Army Corps of Engineers.
Also testifying was Robert Isakson who was a co-plaintiff in a "qui tam" lawsuit (a whistleblower lawsuit) against Custer Battles. No, "qui tam" is not that stuff that Chinese people do in the park, it's shorthand for the Latin Phrase "qui tam pro domino quam pro seipso," which dates back to 13th century England, and means, "He who is as much for the King as for himself." Today, a "qui tam" lawsuit is one brought under the False Claims Act by a private plaintiff on behalf of the Federal or State Government. Isakson won the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud against Custer Battles. However, the verdict was overturned by the judge, who ruled that because the CPA was not part of the US government, the "qui tam" statute did not apply.
Meanwhile the Bush administration has not litigated a single case against a contractor alleged to have defrauded the US Government in Iraq. Apparently, like terrorism, this isn't a law enforcement issue either. |
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| JTProcess |
This should fucking OUTRAGE EVERYONE!!! REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT!!!!
"Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, was working for an Iraqi-owned outfit called the Shield Group Security Company. Vance said he witnessed Shield Group selling guns, land mines, and rocket-launchers to Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry workers. Vance described Shield Groups as "a Wal-Mart for guns." Vance reported this to the FBI, and instead of a pat on the back, he got 97 days at Camp Cropper, a military prison outside of Baghdad. In fact, Saddam's Hussein's old crib. Vance was placed in solitary confinement, subjected to head-banging music blaring from dawn to dusk, and interrogators screaming the same questions over and over again in his face. " |
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| JTProcess |
No takers?
I was thinking about starting a seperate thread just about the Donald Vance incident...
I read an article about this in the NY Times MONTH'S ago...
VTW... this is another area you and I probably disagree... Iraq has proven to be a huge scam to make a few people rich... and anyone who tries to point that out such as Vance did is being held prisoner and tortured!
If that's not a definite indication of guilt... I don't know what is.
Also, this guy was blowing the whistle on AMERICANS SELLING WEAPONS TO INSURGENTS! You guys are all gung ho about Iran helping insurgents but when Americans are arming people killing our troops where's that same vitriol?
*crickets*
Here's the NY Times article on Vance for anyone interested.
Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment
One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.
American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.
The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.
Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.
The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.
But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.
At Camp Cropper, he took notes on his imprisonment and smuggled them out in a Bible.
“Sick, very. Vomited,” he wrote July 3. The next day: “Told no more phone calls til leave.”
Nathan Ertel, the American held with Mr. Vance, brought away military records that shed further light on the detention camp and its secretive tribunals. Those records include a legal memorandum explicitly denying detainees the right to a lawyer at detention hearings to determine whether they should be released or held indefinitely, perhaps for prosecution.
The story told through those records and interviews illuminates the haphazard system of detention and prosecution that has evolved in Iraq, where detainees are often held for long periods without charges or legal representation, and where the authorities struggle to sort through the endless stream of detainees to identify those who pose real threats.
“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”
A spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s detention operations in Iraq, First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, said in written answers to questions that the men had been “treated fair and humanely,” and that there was no record of either man complaining about their treatment.
Held as ‘a Threat’
She said officials did not reach Mr. Vance’s contact at the F.B.I. until he had been in custody for three weeks. Even so, she said, officials determined that he “posed a threat” and decided to continue holding him. He was released two months later, Lieutenant Fracasso said, based on a “subsequent re-examination of his case,” and his stated plans to leave Iraq.
Mr. Ertel, 30, a contract manager who knew Mr. Vance from an earlier job in Iraq, was released more quickly.
Mr. Vance went to Iraq in 2004, first to work for a Washington-based company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company where, he said, “things started looking weird to me.” He said that the company, which was protecting American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards from a sheik in Basra and that many of them turned out to be members of militias whom the clients did not want around.
Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons it was selling to suspicious customers, including a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The ministry had ties to violent militias and death squads. He said he had also witnessed another employee giving American soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs.
full article |
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| salafibrigades |
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| Max-the-Silent |
Quote: Originally posted by JTProcess
This should fucking OUTRAGE EVERYONE!!! REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT!!!!
"Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, was working for an Iraqi-owned outfit called the Shield Group Security Company. Vance said he witnessed Shield Group selling guns, land mines, and rocket-launchers to Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry workers. Vance described Shield Groups as "a Wal-Mart for guns." Vance reported this to the FBI, and instead of a pat on the back, he got 97 days at Camp Cropper, a military prison outside of Baghdad. In fact, Saddam's Hussein's old crib. Vance was placed in solitary confinement, subjected to head-banging music blaring from dawn to dusk, and interrogators screaming the same questions over and over again in his face. " |
Now this is a story with legs. I'm aware of the some of the facts, The main and most important fact being that Vance went to the FBI while home on leave, and entered into a contract with them to work as a CI - he was not under indictment or charged with a crime - he saw wrongdoing and wanted to stop it. When the wheels came off in Iraq, the feds nabbed him and other SG security personnel and threw them in the can. Statside FBI was kept in the dark when Vance claimed to be a CI.
There's enough stupidity in this deal to put a shitload of feds into involuntary retirement, and enough criminal behavior to put some Shield Group honcho's into federal prison for Donkey's years. |
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| JTProcess |
| yeah zimmie, NC Mike and Vacate the Word won't touch this thread with 911 foot pole. |
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| Fdubya247 |
| Bump for the cockroach larvae.... |
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| JTProcess |
Wow...
I wonder what would've happened if someone caught an american selling guns and weapons to the nazi's during world war 2?
You think he would've been thrown into a concentration camp like a traitor?
I'm curious what VTW, NC Mike, Jackies Career, and the rest of you armchair quarterbacks think about Donald Vance's little excursion...
*crickets* |
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| Fdubya247 |
Quote: Originally posted by JTProcess
Wow...
I wonder what would've happened if someone caught an american selling guns and weapons to the nazi's during world war 2?
You think he would've been thrown into a concentration camp like a traitor? |
No, but his son will be president, and his grandson will get elected POTUS twice by ignorant rednecks and DUPED SUCKERS like Vacunt, zimmiecunt, and Dikey-Cunt...
:ps: |
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| Billyfromsphily |
Quote: Originally posted by Fdubya247
No, but his son will be president, and his grandson will get elected POTUS twice by ignorant rednecks and DUPED SUCKERS like Vacunt, zimmiecunt, and Dikey-Cunt...:ps: |
These are the ones who are impressed by someone who is too big a pussy to release personal records of his life before the age of 40. |
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| JTProcess |
no bush apologists will touch this thread... so great.
Keep that head in the sand !!!
blame the democrats, blame the iraqi's... blame anyone you can!
sad state of affairs... crippled america... a pipe dream butt fucked... |
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| Halcyon |
Quote: Originally posted by JTProcess
sad state of affairs... crippled america... a pipe dream butt fucked... |
Strength Beyond Strength ~ Pantera.
Lyrics
There is nothing. No education. No family life to open my
Arms to. You'd say that my job is today, yet gone tomorrow.
I'll be broke in a gutter.
I know the opinion. A broken record. Fuck you and your
College dream. Fact is, we're stronger than all.
You're working for perfect bodies, perfect minds and perfect
Neighbors. But I'm helping to legalize dope on
Your pristine streets and I'm making a fortune.
You're muscle and gall. Naive at best. I'm bone, brain and
Cock. Deep down stronger than all.
A sad state of affairs. A crippled America. A pipe dream
Buttfucked. Immune. Stronger than all.
A lament for a rookie officer, punk ass weak little lamb.
For the mob, truly, does rule at this particular time.
We've grown into a monster. An arrogant, explosive motherfuck.
Hard as a rock. Shut like a lock.
Finally, the president in submission. He holds out his hand on
Your television and draws back a stump. It's too late for some.
Far too late.
No more holdbacks. No more paying a cops paycheck. Let him
Bust his own child. The son that heeds my word and smokes my dope.
The daughter that sucks me off and snorts cheap anything.
Hail Kings. The new Kings. Stronger than all.
A simple process to legalize. There would not be a choice but to
Take our side. Be there no question of certain strengths. Know
This intention. Forever stronger than all. |
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| JTProcess |
Quote: Originally posted by Halcyon
Strength Beyond Strength ~ Pantera.
Lyrics
There is nothing. No education. No family life to open my
Arms to. You'd say that my job is today, yet gone tomorrow.
I'll be broke in a gutter.
I know the opinion. A broken record. Fuck you and your
College dream. Fact is, we're stronger than all.
You're working for perfect bodies, perfect minds and perfect
Neighbors. But I'm helping to legalize dope on
Your pristine streets and I'm making a fortune.
You're muscle and gall. Naive at best. I'm bone, brain and
Cock. Deep down stronger than all.
A sad state of affairs. A crippled America. A pipe dream
Buttfucked. Immune. Stronger than all.
A lament for a rookie officer, punk ass weak little lamb.
For the mob, truly, does rule at this particular time.
We've grown into a monster. An arrogant, explosive motherfuck.
Hard as a rock. Shut like a lock.
Finally, the president in submission. He holds out his hand on
Your television and draws back a stump. It's too late for some.
Far too late.
No more holdbacks. No more paying a cops paycheck. Let him
Bust his own child. The son that heeds my word and smokes my dope.
The daughter that sucks me off and snorts cheap anything.
Hail Kings. The new Kings. Stronger than all.
A simple process to legalize. There would not be a choice but to
Take our side. Be there no question of certain strengths. Know
This intention. Forever stronger than all. |
I knew there was a reason I liked you!
Where are the GOP apologists with an answer as to why Donald Vance was tortured for blowing the whistle on Americans who were ARMING INSURGENTS THAT KILL OUR TROOPS!?
*crickets* |
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| Halcyon |
Quote: Originally posted by JTProcess
I knew there was a reason I liked you!
Where are the GOP apologists with an answer as to why Donald Vance was tortured for blowing the whistle on Americans who were ARMING INSURGENTS THAT KILL OUR TROOPS!?
*crickets* |
Seen Pantera live about 4 times in my life. One of my all-time favorite groups EVAR!
In any case, you'll be waiting until they get an answer from Rush about what to think about all of this. Either that, or they're scurrying over at Newsbusters.org to try and get a deflection, errr.... answer :giggle: |
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| JTProcess |
Oh yeah man... I saw pantera multiple times... one of the greatest live shows of all time.
I shed tears when dimebag died man... that was a sad day.
I don't know if the GOP will formulate talking points for this one... they probably don't want to call any attention to it since it's been virtually ignored by the mainstream "liberal" media. |
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| Halcyon |
Quote: Originally posted by JTProcess
Oh yeah man... I saw pantera multiple times... one of the greatest live shows of all time.
I shed tears when dimebag died man... that was a sad day.
I don't know if the GOP will formulate talking points for this one... they probably don't want to call any attention to it since it's been virtually ignored by the mainstream "liberal" media. |
Dimebag Darrell died on 12/8/04
I smoke a bowl at 4:20 for him every year :D |
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| JTProcess |
Well this sums it up... Due to their lack of outrage I can only conclude that the GOP is for arming insurgents.
How does it feel to enable the people who are killing our soldiers guys? |
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| Halcyon |
Quote: Originally posted by JTProcess
Well this sums it up... Due to their lack of outrage I can only conclude that the GOP is for arming insurgents.
How does it feel to enable the people who are killing our soldiers guys? |
Bush has never supported the troops, he has done everything within his power to make sure he could exploit them at every turn.
From sending them to Iraq with improper equipment/armor, to forcing them to do 2-3 active tours of duty with a minimal amount of time spent at home, to vetoing a 5% pay raise, to vetoing a 3.5% pay raise, to vetoing a bill that allows them to spend an equal number of hours at home as they did out in the field.
Bush has made sure the troops are shit on at every turn.
It's not that I agree with this, but I almost expect this from a government and in particular the Bush administration. It's clear the government SPECIFICALLY sees a benefit to making sure our troops continue to die overseas for them. They personally reap the benefits, wether it's no-bid contract companies raking in profits, or it's politicians personally scamming over 9 billion from the Defense fund itself. They clearly have a reason and reap the benefits of 'hating our troops'.
The people who really bug me, are the people who hate the troops and hate America here on this board. It's disturbing to think that people who DON'T see any profit, personally, are so apt to hate this country and hate the troops.
NCMike06, VTW, zimmie, DUDE-HERE, polititees, vegaseric, and the others I don't care to mention right now, are all haters of this country. It bugs me that anyone filled with so much hatred for our country and for our troops continues to live here.
No one hates this country more than them. No one has less patriotism then them. And no one is so happy to see the troops get killed over there than them.
Fucking disgraces to this country, and their own families. |
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