Can We Haul Up KBR/Halliburton for Treason Yet?

Let's see, aside for overcharging for services, taking money for services not rendered, failing to provide needed water, human trafficking, and bribe-taking, KBR also burned hazardous waste and exposed tens of thousands of people, including troops.

Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including US troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company.

[...]

KBR burned "tires, lithium batteries ... biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."

And they did so within plain sight of US troops operating in Iraq, the lawsuit states. "In some instances, the burn pit smoke was so bad that it interfered with the military mission," the Nashville lawsuit states. "For example, the military located at Camp Bucca, a detention facility, had difficulty guarding the facility as a result of the smoke."

[...]

At a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on Friday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said that KBR continues to use burn pits at the US's largest base in Iraq [Balad Airbase].

  Raw Story

At least a class action lawsuit has been filed for that. But why aren't these things acts of treason?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

It's Sunday

A little reverence, if you please.

Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. [...] There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there.

[...]

The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle. Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting "filthy rich by 40", as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they "rule the world". Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.

[...]

Goldman played its part in the meltdown that almost destroyed the global financial system. It, like most other banks, lent too much money, made its first quarterly loss for more than a decade last year and ended up taking bail-out cash from Washington.

[...]

What’s more, at the height of the crisis, the Federal Reserve broke with an 80-year-old tradition and let Goldman turn itself from a pure investment bank into a bank holding company. This meant it could borrow funds at the same cheap rate as commercial banks for as long as it wanted. [Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive,] says Goldman changed status not for the money, but because it had become clear, following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman, that the market had lost faith in the ability of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate investment banks. Being regulated by the central bank, the Federal Reserve, would help to restore confidence in the financial system as a whole.

[...]

The list of former Goldman executives who have held key posts in the US administration and vital global institutions in New York and Washington alone is mind-boggling. It includes: the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton (Robert Rubin); the treasury secretary under George Bush (Hank Paulson); the current president and former chairman of the New York Federal Reserve (William Dudley and Stephen Friedman); the chief of staff to the treasury secretary Timothy Geithner (Mark Patterson); the chief of staff under President Bush (Joshua Bolten); the economic adviser to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton (Robert Hormats); the chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Gary Gensler); the under-secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs under President Bush (Reuben Jeffery); the past and current heads of the New York Stock Exchange (John Thain and Duncan Niederauer); the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division (Adam Storch). Moreover, Goldman’s new top lobbyist in Washington, Michael Paese, used to work for Barney Frank, the congressman who chairs the House Financial Services Committee.

[...]

"We’re very important," [says Blankfein]. "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle." To drive home his point, he makes a remarkably bold claim. "We have a social purpose."

[...]

He insists we should be celebrating his bank’s success, not condemning it. "Everybody should be, frankly, happy," he says.

[...]

Even though he proudly pays himself more in a year than most of us could ever dream of — $68m in 2007 alone, a record for any Wall Street CEO, to add to the more than $500m of Goldman stock he owns — he insists he’s still "a blue-collar guy".

[...]

He is, he says, just a banker "doing God’s work"

  UK Times

Indeed.

....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

"A Crime Against Our Nation"

President Obama spoke today:

“It is an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred anyplace in America,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it’s all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims.”

[...]

"The SRP is where our men and women in uniform go before getting deployed," Obama said. "It’s where they get their teeth checked and their medical records updated and make sure everything is in order before getting shipped out. It was in this place, on a base where our soldiers ought to feel most safe, where those brave Americans who are preparing to risk their lives in defense of our nation, lost their lives in a crime against our nation."

  Politico

Are other incidents of soldier killing soldier on bases also crimes against our nation?

That strikes me a a singularly unwise statement to make at this time. Unless the objective is to add fuel to the fire of anti-Muslim sentiment and encouragement to the Christians vs. Muslims America is a Christian Nation crowd.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Clarification

Remember, people. The United States is not at war with Islam. All we want is to have control of the oil.

And furthermore, God wants us to have it.

Mission Totally Accomplished

Not only have we turned Iraq into a hell hole and are forcing slaughter and chaos over the Afghan border into Pakistan, but we’re quickly knocking out the last hope of Palestine while we’re at it.

Aljazeera English points out that the stance of Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration, that the Palestinians had to negotiate with the Israelis while the Israelis were stealing their land, [have led President] Abbas to step down.

[...]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he wants to stand down and he declines to run in the upcoming Palestine Authority elections. The decision came in the wake of the US failure to convince the Israelis to halt colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. It also followed a series of embarrassing flip-flops by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who praised hard line right wing PM Netanyahu for his efforts in favor of the peace process. Even for a diplomatic statement, this tack is is a little embarrassing in its obsequiousness toward Netanyahu, who has undermined the peace process at every turn and rejects out of hand the US demand that he freeze settlements.

[...]

Aljazeera English reports on Israeli confiscation of Palestinians' homes. The evictions are carried out with the full cooperation and encouragement of the Israeli government.

  Juan Cole

The Democrats should be proud. It took Barack and Hillary to finish what Dubya started.

It is morally and ethically unconscionable to leave millions of Palestinians in a condition of statelessness, in which they have no rights (Warren Burger defined citizenship as the 'right to have rights' as my colleague Margaret "Peggy" Sommers pointed out in her new book). Therefore, if there isn't going to be a 2-state solution, there will have to be a one-state solution, in which Israel gives citizenship to the Palestinians. (As it is, 20% of Israelis are Palestinian Arabs and that proportion will grow to 33% by 2030 if they are not expelled by sometime Moldavian night club bouncer and now foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman.)

  Juan Cole

My guess is that the next step will be to expel all Palestinians (or perhaps, if that fails, build ovens for them).

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What's in a Name?

In an interview with US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) [regarding the Ft. Hood shooting], Fox host Shepard Smith asked: "The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?"

"It does," Hutchison replied. "It does, Shepard."

  Raw Story

If not about the shooter, then certainly about Shep and Kay. And the rest of us.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

SNAFU

The suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was on a ventilator and unconscious in a hospital after being shot four times during the shootings at the Army's sprawling Fort Hood, post officials said. In the early chaos after the shootings, authorities believed they had killed him, only to discover later that he had survived.

[...]

Authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on behalf of some unidentified radical group, the official said. He would not say whether any evidence had come to light to support that theory.

[...]

Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of "friendly fire," that in the mayhem and confusion at the shooting scene some of the responding military officials may have shot some of the victims.

[...]

Video from the scene showed police patrolling the area with handguns and rifles, ducking behind buildings for cover. Sirens could be heard wailing while a woman's voice on a public-address system urged people to take cover. Schools on the base went into lockdown, and family members trying to find out what was happening inside found cell phone lines jammed or busy.

[...]

The motive for the shooting wasn't clear, but Hasan was apparently set to deploy soon, and had expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said generals at Fort Hood told her that Hasan was about to deploy overseas. Retired Col. Terry Lee, who said he had worked with Hasan, told Fox News he was being sent to Afghanistan.

Lee said Hasan had hoped Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars.

For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing a career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.

But his record wasn't sterling. At Walter Reed, he received a poor performance evaluation, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. And while he was an intern, Hasan had some "difficulties" that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.

At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

  Yahoo

And this guy was allowed to be a military psychiatrist?

Apparently, anyway, he was a lone shooter. The other two reported early on were simply men taken in for questioning who were then released.

We'll be hearing more, and Mr. Hasan may wish he had died, because I'm sure there are many others who do.

Seriously WTF?

A source tells CBS News investigative producer Len Tepper that Hasan is a licensed psychiatrist in Bethesda, Md. He is a drug and rehab specialist who got his Virginia psychiatry license July 12, 2005.

  CBS

Update on Ft. Hood Shootings

The shooting began around 1:30 p.m., Lt. Gen. Bob Cone said at a news conference. He said all the casualties took place at the base's Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.

[...]

A graduation ceremony for soldiers who finished college courses while deployed was going on in an auditorium at the Readiness Center at the time of the shooting, said Sgt. Rebekah Lampam, a Fort Hood spokeswoman.

Greg Schanepp, U.S. Rep. John Carter's regional director in Texas, was representing Carter at the graduation, said John Stone, a spokesman for Carter, whose district includes the Army post.

Schanepp was at the ceremony when a soldier who had been shot in the back came running toward him and alerted him of the shooting, Stone said. The soldier told Schanepp not to go in the direction of the shooter, he said. Stone said he believes Schanepp was in the theater.

[...]

About a mile from Fort Hood's east gate, Cynthia Thomas, director of Under the Hood Cafe, a local coffee shop and nonprofit military support center, has been calling soldiers and friends on the post to make sure they're OK.

"It's chaotic," Thomas said, as a SWAT team just drove by. "They're just saying that they're under attack they don't know what's going on. ... The phones are jammed. Everybody is calling family members and friends. Soldiers are running around with M-16s."

  Houston Chronicle

Fort Hood is the largest military base in America, has lost more soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other military facility, and after eight years of constant deployments had more than its fair share of highly-stressed soldiers and dependents even before [the] shootings.

[...]

Pual Dirksmeyer, a chaplain of the 1st Cavalry Division, spoke of the "emotional carnage" - the broken marriages, the mental afflictions of returning soldiers, the frayed nerves of the families left behind, the occasional suicides, desertions and instances of soldiers suddenly running amock.

[...]

Major Ben Phillips, a psychologist, estimated that 15 to 30 per cent of returning soldiers had psychological problems, mostly post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries. He said the soldiers' vulnerability to psychological disorders increased with each deployement, and equivocated when asked if they were being sent back into action before they were fully recovered.

Wives told of their husbands checking beneath their cars for bombs before leaving for KMart, accelerating under bridges or swerving past old tyres on the road as if they were still in Baghdad. One 32-year-old soldier recalled panicking in a crowded mall one day and laying a man out because "it made me feel I was back in the markets of Tikrit".

  UK Times

We don’t know yet what the story was on the three soldiers (one a Major) who did the shooting, but we may be lucky that this hadn’t already happened.

And I’m sure there is some serious pow-wowing going on right now about how to present what did happen. The major’s name? ABC and CNN are reporting it’s Major Malik Nadal Hasan. (I thought we were fighting them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here? I know, bad form.)

WTF?

At least one U.S. soldier opened fire Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, killing at least 11 people and wounding 31 others, military officials said.

One gunman was shot to death, and two other soldiers were in custody, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, commanding general of the Army’s III Corps, told reporters.

[...]

A senior Obama administration official told NBC News analyst Roger Cressey that one of the suspects who was in custody was an Army major.

[...]

Military and local hospital officials said the victims were a mixture of men and women, military and civilian.

[...]

Fort Hood, one of the largest military complexes in the world, was on lockdown, as were schools in the area. Dozens of agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the post, federal officials said.

[...]

Emergency Services officials at Fort Hood said the incident began about 1:30 p.m. CT (2:30 ET) when at least one gunman opened fire in the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center and Howze Theater on the west side of the base.

[...]

“Initially, I thought it was a training exercise,” he said. But then, “a soldier came running past me and said, ‘Sir, there is someone shooting.’

“As he ran past me, I saw blood on his back,” Schannep told the base paper. “I don’t think he even knew he had been shot.”

  MSNBC

The first shooting began at about 1:30 p.m. at a personnel and medical processing office, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Nathan Banks said. The facility, called a Soldier Rating and Processing center, handles administrative details for soldiers.

Banks said the second shooting took place at a theater on the sprawling base.

[...]

Lampam said a graduation ceremony for soldiers who finished college courses while deployed was going on in the auditorium at the time of the shooting.

[...]

The base is home to nine schools -- seven elementary schools and two middle schools -- and all were on lockdown, said Killeen school spokesman Todd Martin.

Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said Texas Rangers and state troopers were en route to Fort Hood to help seal the perimeter of the 108,000 acre base.

  Click2Houston

Well, John, for once, I’m glad you were in Baghdad and not home on base. (Okay, that was a lie.) My condolences to the families of those wounded and killed.

Speaking of the CIA...

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

[...]

Suspects in Uzbekistan's gulags "were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned -- it changed my whole world view in an instant -- to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves," Murray said.

[...]

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan's natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

"The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan," Murray noted.

[...]

"There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you'll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It's what it's about. It's about money, it's about oil, it's not about democracy."

  Raw Story

Yeah, thanks for clearing that up for us. We were fuzzy.

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is slated to be completed in 2014, with $7.6 billion in funding from the Asian Development Bank.

Murray was dismissed from his position as ambassador in 2004, following his first public allegations that the British government relied on torture in Uzbekistan for intelligence.

YouTube video at Raw Story.

One of the 23 American citizens convicted in an Italian court of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in 2003 says the CIA "broke the law" when it ordered the operation.

Sabrina DeSousa, a former CIA operative, told ABC News that the agency and the US government "betrayed and abandoned" her and the other US government employees who orchestrated the kidnapping as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, which saw terrorism suspects shipped to countries where they could be tortured within the confines of local law.

  Raw Story

Isn’t betrayal and abandonment an unwritten clause in the CIA contract? I know breaking the law is. Sadly, the 23 CIA “citizens” were convicted in absentia, so I suppose their only punishment is no more assignments in Italy.

SNAFU

[Canadian] Defence Minister Peter MacKay has ordered officials to look into allegations that innocent Afghans may have been sent to jail because of botched translations by Canadian military interpreters.

MacKay's statement in the House of Commons on Monday came as a counter-insurgency expert said U.S. forces have been plagued with the same concerns.

[...]

"We're willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure ice cream and steak is there," [Ret. Marine Cpl Thomas] Hammes said in an interview from Washington. "And I would trade all of that for my entire tour if I could have one decent translator.

"Many times I'd trade body armour for a translator."

[...]

"We very often don't know what our translators are saying … I never knew what the hell was going on in Iraq, but at least I was aware I didn't know," he said.

[...]

Hammes said the credibility of the interpreters is paramount to the success of the mission. If they're making mistakes it reflects badly in the community you're trying to influence.

  CBC

Putting it mildly.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.