No armor, no fortified mess hall: WHERE is the Iraq money going?

[enough]

Around $150 billion so far. Where has that money gone? Not to supporting the troops, obviously.

[knowbody0]

1. damn the liberal press for exposing this

they never cover the good things in iraq.

[GetTheRightVote]

2. I believe * and Cheney probably have that answer for us

Halliburton and perhaps the Carlye Group too, hmmmm.

[Trajan]

3. GREAT question .....

Can you say Halliburton ? ...

I knew you could ...

[Jacobin]

4. It wouldn't matter if they did have armor and fortified bunkers

We have invaded a hornets nest. To suggest that more armor or fortified bunkers would have made IraqNam a success is to give credence to the very idea of the invasion, which was a preposterous blunder to begin with.

[Johonny]

9. Yeah

I kinda wish we had less. If we were fighting on more an even playing field over there, Americans would have back this war a hell of a lot less. Modern weapons are expensive, but people are generally cheap and abundant. Economically it doesn't make sense to waste all that money on body armor. Morally... well that's another story.

[Jacobin]

14. You are presuming that body armor and fortified bunkers would stop

or slow down the killing.

It wouldn't. The bomb was brought in to the tent where the explosion and loss of lives took place. Having a hard roof on the mess hall would have made no difference.

Armor the vehicles and the IEDs would get bigger.

Your presumption is that the invasion and occupation are winnable with more soldiers and resources. That fallacy was laid to rest in Vietnam.

Why spew the RW mantra of "oh, if only we had done it with more/bigger/better/faster/moreexpensive/quicker whatever, then the whole GREAT idea of Invading and Conquering a muslim country to steal their oil would be going great, all the troops would be home and the Iraqis would be "singing great songs about us" as Richard Perle predicted.

I don't understand your thought processes.

[Bigmack]

23. A "hard" roof ...

Would just make it worse.... contain the blast and get more casualties. The tent roof just "vented" the explosive power.

Lemme see... Hummers aren't armored (or even supposed to be armored), tanks and Blackhawks can be knocked out, messhalls aren't secure, ragheads with EID's are bringing the Superpower to a halt.

What have we taught the third-world potential terrorists, boys and girls?

[enough]

15. No indeed, I do not give credence to the invasion,

which I have despised and protested since before it began.

I have not suggested that armor and fortified bunkers would make the invasion a success. I have asked a simple question: where did the money go, and why not to the first priority of protecting the troops.

[neebob]

19. What he said! nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Not supplying the troops with armored vehicles

or body armor.

I think this is something we can really make a big stink about. I can't see any freeper objecting, because we can nail them for not supporting the troops.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

6. Forget the freepers.... leave them to their wiles... they will tire of it

soon enough... look at how many have already jumped ship from this admin. Isn't it just amazing how when people are shaken out of their stupor by what little commonsense they may have... that they are able to do a 180 and carry on? I think it is great when people can see how badly they have been bamboozled and do the right thing. Thank G_d for a human being's ability to wtfu.

[Johonny]

7. I bet it has.

It's expensive as hell to fight a war with modern weaponry.

[Career Prole]

8. You can bet the house Negroponte and the staff of the largest embassy

in the world don't eat their meals in a big tent.

[Jacobin]

16. It was not a rocket attack. It was a bomb brought in by an insurgent

A hard roof would have made no difference. While no one has more contempt for this invasion and the idiots who went along with it, I find no solace in criticizing how the administration is turning the steering wheel of the war as the car flies off the cliff. It doesn't matter. All that will happen is a big boom when it hits bottom.

[Career Prole]

17. See if the diplomats will trade kitchen staffs with the troops then.

I can guarantee the vetting process for embassy and Green Zone personnel is a hell of a lot tougher than that which is utilized for civilian support staff for the troops.
How can I guarantee that? Because if a suicide bomber could have gotten into those "administration" areas they would have long before now.
No, when Myers said everything was being done to ensure troop safety within reason he was lying and that will be proven in the next day or two when they institute procedures to prevent incidents like this from happening again.

[secedeeconomically]

10. halliburton

[Cleita]

11. Anonymous, only by number, Swiss bank accounts?

That's where all the money robbed from Banana Republics' treasuries go to. Perhaps we need to request all kinds of information under the freedom of information act, like the Pentagon's receivable and payable accounts since Bush took office.

[AlCzervik]

12. Padded bills ala Reagan, remember $400 hammers?

[Kansas Wyatt]

13. Ask 'FAT DADDY' Cheney & 'POPPY' Shrub.

[nascarblue]

18. Where did the money go? Read this...

While billions of US taxpayer dollars have been awarded in lucrative contracts to companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, there are few signs that any reconstruction has actually taken place in war torn Iraq.

The infrastructure is in a state of collapse, with 70% unemployment.

One reason for this incredibly high rate is that out of $1.5 Billion in contracts paid out of Iraq’s funds, 85% has gone to US and British companies who rarely hire Iraqis.

Iraqi firms, by contrast, have received 2% of the contracts paid for with the same Iraqi funds.

Fadl Abid Oda, 30 years old, has taken it upon himself to do something that western companies in Iraq have failed to do. In a tiny room off a busy street in the Orfali district of Baghdad, Fadl stands in his small library.

“Anyone can take a book from here,” he says, “People can take smaller books for three days, six days for larger books. But anyone who wants to read here in the library, it’s ok, he can get any book he wants.”

There is a shelf of tattered books on one of the walls. The front of the library, which is actually an old vegetable stall, opens to the street. The 8 chairs which line the 12’x12’ room are filled with people reading books.


While companies like KBR have been investigated for overcharging the US government $61 million for importing fuel into Iraq, Fadl is pleased with his project.

“We are working on very little finances, so we are trying to connect with anyone who can get us any book,” he says while waving his hand across the small bookshelf, “The budget for this project is now $200. We do this by taking 75 cents per month from people who read here. We try to bring even CD’s for computers, and anything else that is cheap.”

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000153.php#more

[baldguy]

20. Dick's getting a big dividend check this year.

[DoNotRefill]

21. Fortified mess hall???

WTF???

[David Zephyr]

22. Halliburton Will Soon Open Its "Fortified Tent Division"

Because, after all, they are only there to support the troops.

[itzamirakul]

24. And what about the food???

The men and wormen were sitting down to a lunch of chicken tenders and macaroni and cheese. The newspaper described it as the usual "school lunch."

Remember that Haliburton got all that money because they had designed a new kind of food packet that heated itself up?

You are right. Where the fcuk is the money?

[Disturbed]

25. $18 billion still missing?

Anyone heard about that, lately?

They are building a bunker close to the tent area day away from finishing that, so said a news person. Don't know if that is true. How can we believe the news these days when the sources of that news lie so often?

No matter what type of security that is put in place, it can probably be circumvented. Iraq can never be made safe or stable. The new plan is to turn Iraq into the new Warsaw Ghetto, ala Falluja.