02 June 2008
The American Way: Hire Someone To Do It
After 9/11, George W. Bush told a shocked, fearful and grieving nation that the best way to respond to this tragedy is to go shopping. He flew over the devastated areas of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas to demonstrate his leadership for responding to Katrina and Rita. His appointed, accountable leadership in Homeland Security, FEMA and the Corps of Engineers were so inept and unprepared to respond that thousands of people experienced unnecessary suffering, death and displacement. Any ability of the National Guard's ability to respond was on deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Bush's action: hire contractors to help those people out, and make sure the states pay for them.
Privatization of basic functions of government. Bush and his lackies reminded me of Boss Hogg and his sheriff. The Administration's first venture into contracting out basic functions of the federal government was the brain-child of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Even as his top generals advised him and Congress that over 250,000 military personnel were needed to attack Iraq, Rumsfeld and his buddy Dick Cheney, the Vice President, saw advantages to a lean fighting force. All those military personnel who were in support operations could be replace with contractor personnel. Additionally, longtime experience with the resources of Halliburton and its personnel subsidiaries could substantiate issuing sole source contracts to these companies to perform as many of the non-combat jobs possible. Why, they could even hire combat personnel through Halliburton's KBR and a new firm, Blackwater. The only oversight would be a contract administrator in the DoD's staff in the Pentagon.
Official casualty numbers do not include contractor personnel. To date, the U.S. government has not reported to the American people the casualties incurred by private contractor personnel even though we are paying for their hiring, training and replacement. Sorry to be so cold in my language, but I find no better way to express these costs (the accounting term for 'hired persons') paid by the U.S. taxpayers. I doubt that the DOD accounting system has a means of recording human losses in terms other than dollar costs.
I resent this Administration's accounting of several thousand hired, supplemental soldiers, cooks, drivers, field support personnel killed or wounded in this war as an accounting entry in a contract's reimbursable costs.
Privatization of basic functions of government. Bush and his lackies reminded me of Boss Hogg and his sheriff. The Administration's first venture into contracting out basic functions of the federal government was the brain-child of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Even as his top generals advised him and Congress that over 250,000 military personnel were needed to attack Iraq, Rumsfeld and his buddy Dick Cheney, the Vice President, saw advantages to a lean fighting force. All those military personnel who were in support operations could be replace with contractor personnel. Additionally, longtime experience with the resources of Halliburton and its personnel subsidiaries could substantiate issuing sole source contracts to these companies to perform as many of the non-combat jobs possible. Why, they could even hire combat personnel through Halliburton's KBR and a new firm, Blackwater. The only oversight would be a contract administrator in the DoD's staff in the Pentagon.
Official casualty numbers do not include contractor personnel. To date, the U.S. government has not reported to the American people the casualties incurred by private contractor personnel even though we are paying for their hiring, training and replacement. Sorry to be so cold in my language, but I find no better way to express these costs (the accounting term for 'hired persons') paid by the U.S. taxpayers. I doubt that the DOD accounting system has a means of recording human losses in terms other than dollar costs.
I resent this Administration's accounting of several thousand hired, supplemental soldiers, cooks, drivers, field support personnel killed or wounded in this war as an accounting entry in a contract's reimbursable costs.
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