"Check It Out" for Friday, February 20th
Pratap Chaterjee of CorpWatch writes at TomDispatch about what Obama plans to do with war profiteer KBR and the privatization of the US military?
"Obama could pop over to KBR's Crystal City government operations headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, just a mile south of the Pentagon and five miles from the White House. On Crystal City Drive just before Ronald Reagan National airport, it's hard to miss the KBR corporate logo, those gigantic red letters on the 11-story building at the far corner of Crystal Park.
"Many people who know something about KBR's role in Iraq and Afghanistan might want Obama to question the military commanders at Rock Island and the corporate executives in Arlington about the shoddy electrical work, unchlorinated shower water, overcharges for trucks sitting idle in the desert, deaths of KBR employees and affiliated soldiers in Iraq, million-dollar alleged bribes accepted by KBR managers, and billions of dollars in missing receipts, among a slew of other complaints that have received wide publicity over the last five years.
"But those would be the wrong questions.
"Obama needs to ask his Pentagon commanders this: Can the U.S. military he has now inherited do anything without KBR?
"And the answer will certainly be a resounding no.
"Today, there is one KBR worker for every three U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- and the main function of these workers, under LOGCAP, is to build base infrastructure and maintain them by doing all those duties that once were considered part of military life -- making sure that soldiers are fed, their clothes washed, and their showers and toilets kept clean. While many stories have been written about the $80,000 annual salaries earned by KBR truck drivers, most of the company's workers make far less, mainly because they are hired from countries like India and the Philippines where starting salaries of $300 a month are considered a fortune.
And speaking about those contractors at the DOD and their conservative supporters here's an article by Armand Biroonak at Campaign for America's Future:
"The conservatives proclaiming now is a time of “fiscal responsibility” must have forgotten that they enacted tax cuts for the rich and spent $12 billion a month in Iraq. Now there is a growing right-wing movement to cut so-called “wasteful entitlement” programs such as Social Security as a means of balancing the budget. Meanwhile, make any attempt to cut defense spending and conservatives are ready to attack. Why are conservatives so hostile to cuts? Those lucrative defense contracts would be placed in jeopardy, of course.
"Criticize this obscene level of funding and conservatives are armed with their empty rhetoric of “supporting the troops” and “protecting America.” In reality, the defense budget serves as a profit bonanza for defense contractors. Over the past eight years defense contractors have seen their profits soar to record levels, even amid the recession.
"For instance, the Iraq War is the most privatized war this nation has seen, with nearly 20 percent of funding for operations—about $85 billion—going to private contractors such as Halliburton or Blackwater.
"Our intelligence community is outsourced also, with 70 percent of the intelligence budget going to contractors. Moreover, funding does not even stay on American soil, approximatelyone-third of defense contracts for the Iraq and Afghan Wars have gone to foreign companies.
Chris Arsenault at IPS News reports on Obama's lofty rhetoric bumps into harsh realities on his Canadian visit.
"...While the Canadian public catches Obama fever, environmentalists and some aboriginal groups say they've been left in the cold by his energy policies.
" 'Obama must ask Canada to clean up its tar sands and to respect the rights of our aboriginal First Nations,' said Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipweyan First Nation, a community near the Alberta tar sands, the world's largest energy project.
"In an apparent about-face from his campaign promises, Obama refused to characterise tar sands crude as "dirty oil" in a pre-summit interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. While acknowledging that the sands creates "a big carbon footprint," Obama argued that technologies, including a plan from Alberta's provincial government to store carbon dioxide underground, could solve the problem."
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