Nine months after the July 2005 drugging and gang rape alleged by ex-Halliburton employee Jamie Leigh Jones, President Bush was asked in a public Q&A at John Hopkins University to explain how he proposes to bring private military contractors in Iraq under a system of law. The President was noticably flummoxed by the question and clumsily stammered out a laughable non-reply before moving awkwardly off the topic.
But the importance of this question has taken on new life in the wake of a civil suit brought forward this week by the victim, as well as new allegations announced by Florida Senator Bill Nelson concerning KBR's former "Morale, Welfare and Recreation Coordinator" in Ramadi, a 41-year old woman who says a drunken KBR employee entered her living quarters and raped her in December 2005.
About the same time, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld himself attended a public Q&A at Johns Hopkins and was questioned on the same topic. Rumsfeld said "There are laws that govern the behavior of Americans in that country. The Department of Justice oversees that...[b]ut if you think about it, Iraq’s a sovereign country. They have their laws and they're going to govern, the UN resolution and the Iraqi laws, as well as U.S. procedures and laws govern behavior in that country...".
The JHU student had been voicing the concerns of many Americans pondering the unchecked free hand afforded private military contractors in Iraq and the region. Rumsfeld's explanation to her question left the student more confused then ever. She and the public at large could see clearly that Iraq was unable to enforce it's laws as an embattled nation under foreign occupation and in the middle of a simultaneous civil war.
Mistrust grew as video showing contactors randomly shooting at innocent civilians for fun had circulated online, but supporters of US Armed Forces had long resented the trend of replacing our troops with unaccountable civilians at obscenely higher salaries. This was made even worse by numerous accusations of favoritism and fraud in awarding no-bid contracts to crony corporations. KBR/Halliburton was found guilty in several separate incidents of double-billing, exposed for overcharging and even endangering US troops.
This led many to believe Dick Cheney was providing cover for the firm - even after Halliburton's disgrace in the rip-off scandals, they stayed on as the largest contractor in Iraq, with profits skyrocketing because of their tidy "cost plus" arrangements.
During his long tenure as CEO of Halliburton, Cheney schmoozed his previous White House and Pentagon connections to help secure defense contracts (perhaps this is why his number appeared on the call records of area escort services). Later as Vice-President he would return the favor, but Halliburton still gave the American people the flip of the bird when they announced they were relocating their headquarters to Dubai, becoming a foreign firm who will skip paying US taxes and use cheap foreign labor to maximize profits.
So the freshman student waited until Bush's visit in April of 2006 to have this vital question answered, looking to Bush as Rumsfeld's boss to personally clarify the matter. Bush, as you can hear in the audio clip, (video here) was not up to the task, deferring back to "the Secretary" who the coed stated in her original question had already left the question unanswered.
As this issue is now unfolding to include House Judiciary Committee investigations and calls for inquiry by Hillary Clinton and others, freshly-appointed Attorney General Michael Mukasey may soon have to answer for the inaction to this point. Some suggest that investigations will lead to right back to his department, however - articles have already been published reporting a DOJ cover-up and stalling on the KBR gang rape.
KBR's employment contract "fine print" left the women in both cases with little legal recourse - their terms of employment dictated mandatory "private" arbitration in cases of employee lawsuits. The track record for the arbitration firm Halliburton chooses historically rules in favor of the corporation over 80% of the time.
This means that Bush's dismissal of public calls for contractor accountability could have contributed to officials feeling the need to hinder this rape investigation. For example, officials who improperly gave KBR over the rape kit collected from the incident could be seen as having complicity in the failure to protect evidence or failure to pursue evidence-tampering charges once it went "missing".
All correspondence related to this case should be subpoenaed and reviewed at once to see how far high up the chain of command went. This clearly ties in to the many-headed hydra representing the corruption of this White House and illicit ties to privatized defense firms. Impeachment investigations would either implicate or exonerate Cheney and the others, so it's only fair to the White House to proceed, because they now stand accused of turning a blind eye to gang rapes - you would think they'd feel the need to clear their names.
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April 2008 Update: Another KBR employee has come forward claiming she was raped and intimidated by KBR staff and employee complaint policies
GW is a proud American from NY State, concerned about ethics issues, media manipulation and overconsumption. He has recently changed careers to become an inner city schoolteacher. A firm proponent of curbing overpopulation and international adoption, he hopes to adopt a third child and enjoys history, outsider art, garage rock music and rare/unusual vinyl records.
Bush and his cronies are examples of morons who have been brainwashed by the corporate funded propaganda that claims the answer to all the worlds problems is to privatize everything. In addition to mass privatization any oversight or regulation should be eliminated and governments only role in the economy is to hand out gigantic welfare checks to big business. Whats even more amazing is that people are just starting to wake up to this bullshit. Free trade, globilization, giving big business everything they ask for and waging war against labor was accepted by Bill Clinton and most people in Washington for the past two decades. Corporate funded propaganda is just like the propaganda the old Soveit Union used to brainwash its populace. Americans realize that companies like Haliburton own our goverenment and are mad as hell.
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Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 193 comments)
on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 9:03:25 AM
Murder, rape, torture, theft, corruption and this jerk makes a joke. Instead of laughing along with this sociopath the crowd should have thrown their chairs at him and booed him off the stage.
One would think that any competent person would have "looked into the matter" before employing Gestapo type para-military forces in a foreign country - but not this crowd. Shot first - joke about it later.
I don't know what else to expect from this administration when the words incompetent, inept, corrupt, ignorant, arrogant and hubris are the norm. God this man makes me sick and ashamed to be an American.
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Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 1002 comments)
on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 11:01:29 AM
Just remember, no one is more heavily delighteder than GWBush when we misunderestimate him. I don't know whether looking inept is part of his plan or perhaps he really is bumblingly inarticulate, and chosen for a front man because of this quality.
But the truth is that the despots and murderers continue to get exactly what they want. They've stolen elections, murdered rivals, subdued the Congressional opposition, stifled the mainstream media - and now they're in the process of sealing off the last vessel that holds some truth, the Internet.
The question is: What are we all going to do when the vote counters report that Giuliani has defied the polls, made a miraculous showing in the General Election next November and squeaked out a victory. Are we going to be among the crybabies and sore losers that whine about stolen elections and other conspiracy theories, or are we going to accept reality like mature and realistic citizens in a free republic, and give our new Maximum Leader some room to enact further measures that tighten the noose?
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Josh Mitteldorf (15 articles, 41 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 27 comments)
on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 11:22:00 AM
GwB simply believes that the end justifies the means.
ie He is simply at one end of the conservative thought continium.
Consevatism as a political concept was created to placade the masses for the right to vote but maintain the power status quo.
That is there are classes of people those who rule and those who follow. Human nature wants order and predictability. Watch any conservative ad and they alway talk in terms of 'experience and predictability'. People tsend to see authoritan leaders as 'strong'. Strong as a clear view of the future and dont\'t bother me with the petty details.
If there is logical blame here it is that the US public all of them aren't interested unless it involves them personally in some way. If for example it was a US woman raped by an Iraqi then all hell would break loose.
The problem with capitalism is that the most appropriate don't necessarily succeed. Ask yourself what sort of person goes to a war zone to participate in the war? the naive, the blood thirsty the emotionally imature....then ask yourself what sort of people commit these actions in the US. That doesn't mean include soldiers ( most aren't there by choice and aren't in the legal twilight zone).
The argument of money is weak simply ask yourself would you shoot smeone you don't know for those sorts of renumeration? if you answer 'yes' please report to the nearest therapist.
As stated practical democracy is a messy system of government but it is better than all the hybids tried. It needs people power for change
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Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 532 comments)
on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 4:20:03 PM
Unfortunately people are not waking up to this BS fast enough. The number one factor deciding the winner is still TV ads, payable to big corporate media.
If Hillary is the front runner nationally, the Dems are not equipped to fix this Constitutional crisis. She, with Pelosi and Reid are dealmaking appeasers choosing the military-industrial interests over the majority of Americans. In other words, not democratic leaders at all. They also think little of the Constitution upon which all of their jobs are based, ignoring those laws and provisions which have been violated since 2000. These do-nothing Dems have heard the 2006 voter and ignored them.
To Mr M, the crowd at JHU should have booed Bush's answer indeed. As I listen, it's nervous laughter from an audience of young people still in awe of a Presidential visit. Bush was "working the crowd", trying to use his down-home charm in place of actually answering her question, but to a thinking citizen, it's a rather pitiful display because the student's question was and is so serious. If you listen closley to Bush, he literally says "Help!" at the prospect of answering, a rare glimpse into his ill-preparedness and lack of knowledge on an issue of great importance.
A similar incident happened when Bush visited Kansas State and was asked about a bill with the largest-ever cuts to student aid, just passed and signed into law by him. Bush was apparently unaware, first denying it, then finding out from an offstage aide (perhaps for the first time) right at the podium that his administration robbed every college student of about $2,000 through student loan privatization, handing the profits to big banks. Bush can be seen in a split second grimacing when he realized how badly he just goofed, but he quickly recovers and begins to spin the truth, telling the students he "reformed" the system, claiming that the $12.7 billion dollars taken from the program made it "more efficient". He then goes into his usual political pap, saying we need to "compete in this competitive world". The crowd was a little less forgiving but it is still another trainwreck - see him flail around in his own ignorance here.
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Gustav Wynn (45 articles, 32 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 215 comments)
on Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 7:56:31 PM
