Cunningscam's demand for bribes put troops in (even more) harm's way

[MindPilot]

Casualty of War
By John Rippo, San Diego


Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007 | I would offer perhaps a dissonant perspective to the loss of U.S. Attorney Lam which concerns the case of Duke Cunningham.

My newspaper, ESPRESSO, once reported the tale of a local man who developed a landmine destroying device nicknamed the "Armadillo." This was enthusiastically received by the Marine and Navy specialists who tested it -- it took a licking and kept on ticking -- and it eventually progressed to the office of Duke Cunningham who then sat on the committee for military appropriations.

Cunningham's words to the inventors were to the effect that if "they couldn't bring anything to the table" they couldn't expect Cunningham to support the Armadillo. There, the chances for the simple, cheap and effective machine stopped cold. When last I saw it, the Armadillo sat under a tarp in the San Diego machine shop it was made in.

But what did that mean to the U.S. troops engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan? Many of the IEDs that kill and maim them are made in the forms of landmines -- that could be destroyed safely by the Armadillo. ESPRESSO once published a photo of a ten-year old Iraqi boy who found one of these the hard way, and whose mutilated body will form one more testimony to a mines' effectiveness in the pathology journals. That boy and the soldiers cruelly mutilated like him are the result of a venal lawmaker's failure to get his bribe.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/01/19/letters/406casual.txt

[Warpy]

1. This scumbag may walk, too

since they've forced the prosecutor who was pursuing this case out.

They are terrified that the case against Cunningham, one of the most corrupt members of Congress, ever, will spill over into an investigation into the DOD-military contractor-GOP money laundering operation. Brent Wilkes's name has already come up more than once, and I fear he's only the tip of a very large iceberg.

That party has become a racketeering organization. They have a lot to answer for, and I hope they eventually will, once Stupid and his gang are out of power. I just think they're going to get people off in the meantime.

Cunningham may be one of them.

[MindPilot]

2. I'd bet my next paycheck that Cunningham

gets a pardon.

[gratuitous]

3. Well, Duke's really, really sorry

He cried and everything. Don't you think he's suffered enough for getting caught? Lost his seat, and now he can't take no more bribes!