Just when you thought you couldn't swear more profusely and violently than you have...
BBC Panorama tonight reveals what Henry Waxman calls quite possibly "the largest war profiteering in history."
At least 23 billion dollars. Billion. Not million. Billion. 23 Billion dollars to private contractors - Halliburton apparently number one on the list of more than 70 companies.
And why is it the BBC covering this major theft from Americans, instead of WaPo or the NYT or any one of our other media outlets? Because the Bush administration has placed a gag order on the discussion.
"A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations. The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies"
If anyone out there can get BBC Panorama, please YouTube what you can. Because we aren't going to get the details here.
We always knew it was about the money, but we never knew the figures indicating what was involved. This will well be known as the largest theft in history - and a tremendously destabilizing one. Aside from robbing future generations and ruining our country's credit, it reveals us all as chumps, easily manipulated by clever con men with scary language, as well as by our own lack of curiosity and our fear. We can never pride ourselves on being the World's Smartest Guys again.
Not only that, but think of the size of a private army that such criminals can put together with even a small portion of these proceeds. Who cares if Obama runs - or even wins- if you have such resources? Who would stop them? You? And what Army?
The timing of this also points to planning by Kucinich and Waxman regarding the timing of impeachment proceedings. If impeachment proceedings are begun, testimony can be given in front of any House Subcommittee regarding these thefts. Gag orders would be lifted. Some of the Truth regarding the true menaing of this Administration's actions would be revealed. It was never about belief; it was always about the bling.
In an interview in the London Times today, Bush said that he regretted that he came across as "a guy really anxious for war" in Iraq. ...In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric."Phrases such as "bring them on" or "dead or alive", he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace".
Bush won't be remembered so much as a "man of war" but as a man of crime, a gangster who swindled the fortune out of a terrified, battered America with a combination of fear tactics, threats and emotional blackmail. Bush and Cheney are not so much belligerent warmongers, but arrogant, narrow-minded, gladhanding racketeers who ran a criminal organization larger and more deadly than the Cosa Nostra.
Is there any way to get this nation's money and future back?
[For some reason, I cannot post comments; perhaps it's some setting on my recently reloaded Firefox. Anyway, thanks for your suggestions on updating the title. Earlier brevity ("Holy Sh*t") was due to the shock of both the sum, and the gag orders.
Please forward the BBC story to folk who might be similarly gobsmacked.]