In the spirit of Johnathan Swift: A Simple Proposal.

thereisnospoon of My Left Wing notices that there has been a distinct change in the conduct of government corruption...

Usually, you see, corruption takes a little bit of work: special interest "X" gives you money for your campaign; you return the favor on the sly by giving handouts to special interest "X"; special interest "X" takes you on special junkets to keep your loyalty.

These a**holes, on the other hand, don't even think they need to stoop to such effort. The corruption doesn't even happen in exchange for campaign contributions; it's a direct connection from policies of mass bloodshed to increased profits in their overly bloated personal bank accounts. The Republicans in this administration--from Cheney to Rumsfeld to everyone else--are content to own direct stock in companies that have direct interest in killing Americans, killing foreigners overseas, and letting our wounded veterans rot in substandard medical facilities. They literally make a DIRECT PROFIT from death and destruction, while they make decisions to lie the American people into creating even more death and destruction.

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Blackwater: Should be Black Hearted Water.

This is beyond the pale of decency.
Steven Weber at Huffington

...moms and wives and daughters spoke, expressing outrage in hoarse, respectful tones. They testified that they had asked Blackwater USA simple questions: how did my boy die? Why was there no planning? No protection? No help? Why were these men---some in Iraq for mere days before being killed on the mission to protect catering equipment---denied the use of maps? Of an experienced escort? Of heavy defensive weaponry? Where were their remains? Blackwater USA informed them that in order to obtain answers to these questions the families would have to sue the company. Otherwise, they were not obliged to respond. And months later, at a memorial service organized by Blackwater USA, the families were closely guarded by Blackwater USA security and prevented---prevented---from speaking with each other. So sue they did. And what was the response to the suit the grieving families launched? Blackwater USA countersued to the tune of 10 million dollars.

[...]California Republican Representative Darrell Issa prefaced his inquiry with his assertion that their testimony was not germane to the goal of the commission. Having gotten this matter out of the way, he proceeded with what he felt was germane: the authorship of their statement and whether a lawyer was involved in its drafting.

[...]testimonials, when prepared by lawyers, can function as an advance attack in a lawsuit that could result in the awarding of millions of dollars to the plaintiffs. The women responded: "We will not take one dime. We want accountability". And why wouldn't Issa or Shays think that the motive behind the grieving families's lawsuit would be anything other than financial? After all, that is how America does business. That is the heart of why Blackwater USA is there: to profit.

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The arms contractors LIKE the Iraq war, and the possibility of an Iranian one too!

Booman gives us a heads up on how well Lockheed is doing. (That means you and I have Lockheed's hand in our pockets.)

Richard Cummings has an article in Playboy entitled Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The piece examines the rotating door between Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon, the White House, K Street, and Congressional staff. It also looks at the results: bigger military budgets, huge profits for Lockheed, and permawar. It's a good read, despite being horribly edited (Playboy, are you hiring?). There is one part of the article that is particularly illustrative of just how bad things are. It involves a meeting between (then) Deputy National Security advisor Stephen Hadley and a relatively little-known neo-conservative (and Lockheed executive) named Bruce P. Jackson. (You can see Jackson's PNAC biography here).

In November of 2002, Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security advisor, asked Bruce Jackson to meet with him in the White House...

...according to Jackson, Hadley told him that "they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale" to justify it. Jackson, recalling the meeting, reports that Hadley said they were "still working out" a cause, too, but asked that he, Jackson, "set up something like the Committee on NATO" to come up with a rationale.

Here's what Jackson came up with.

What Bruce Jackson came up with for Hadley this time, in 2002, was the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. The mission statement of the committee says it was "formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations."

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Keep telling yourself, "It's not about the oil".

It really has been about the oil.
Chris Floyd at Empire Berlesque

The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not because he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and on-line. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush Administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reports. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," say the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come... Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and The U.S. Takeover of Iraqi Oil.

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