Obama's race speech; Scooter Libby being disbarred; the study that came out officially disproving the Iraq-al Qaeda link...I'm just chompin' at the bit to take a stab at all these juicy items...
And yet, after getting into this whole KBR scandal track, I'd feel like a most irresponsible blogger to not include the latest breaking malfeasance, brought to you by our favorite former Halliburton subsidiary. Dodging taxes, supplying dirty water, these things are deplorable, yes, but electrocuting a dozen of our own troops unearths a new level of nefariousness. One that we simply cannot ignore, nor can we allow the Pentagon to continue to absolve...
The mother of Sergeant Ryan Maseth has filed a lawsuit against the private contractor alleging that faulty wiring and negligent inspection of said wiring led to the death of her son by electrocution. Further probing into the issue found that not only had KBR reported wiring problems before the death of Sgt. Maseth and never did anything about it, but that at least twelve other soldiers died under similar conditions.
From Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell's joking dismissal of earlier reports that KBR supplied contaminated water to the troops, to the fact that every day a new story breaks about another one of KBR's schemes to capitalize as much as possible from the war, it is clear that the contracting firm is confident in its ability to get away with corrosive and negligent behavior without any form of accountability coming from the Pentagon.
And on top of it all, the Senate Appropriations Committee found that such lack of government oversight into how the funding and resources for the war is spent has caused perhaps hundreds of thousands of weapons to be funneled to insurgent militias. KBR has made it clear that the lives of our troops and security for the American people is worth nothing compared to the billions of dollars they have reaped from their contracts.
Click here to sign Progressive Future's petition to the Pentagon to enforce some serious accountability for the actions of private contractors in Iraq.