Into the Void

Excellent Bush Quote generator script from The Bush Quote Generator.

Technorati: political humor, dubya, wetbrain, bush

Mental Health Care Failing At-Risk Troops, Related Study Finds Battlefield Ethics Also Suffering - CBS News

This story on CBS shows an ongoing problem in Iraq. Overworked, stressed-out soldiers start to fall apart due to long deployments and irrational (if any) strategy. I question labeling someone as mentally ill when it’s due to long-term stress.

Think about it. You get sent to the Middle East on a six-month deployment. 18 months later they still won’t let you go home. Your kids think you lied when you said you’d be home in six months - and again when you said you’d be home in a year - and are showing behavioral problems in school; your mortgage is in arrears because you took a pay cut for what you thought would be only six months; if you owned a business it has long since failed; you’ve missed 18 months worth of family get-togethers; you have to climb over a half-dozen Jersey Barriers to get to your ratty, noisy little home-away-from-home. And every day you drive highly-paid civilian contractors up and down the road to the airport like a duck in a shooting gallery. You start to envy the ones who get to go home in a body bag.

You see no progress being made, and you no longer believe that your efforts can make a difference. It creates a lot of confusion.

And in frustration you start lashing out at people. This is not good. We are literally driving thousands of our best citizens insane with our irrational policy and complete lack of strategy for rebuilding the country we tore apart. For someone with a degree in History, Bush seems incapable of learning from the mistakes of the past. Perhaps he was AWOL for history class, too.

I would like to remind everyone that we are not at war over there. Bush declared that the war was over years ago. Let’s get the other Islamic countries involved at the political level - their citizens are already in there helping the “insurgency,” as we like to call their freedom fighters. Whether you like Iran or not, they have what passes in the Middle East as a Democracy. So does Turkey. You’d have to get all kinds of agreements to stop the sectarian violence, but we knew that before we started this whole thing.

Technorati: Bush civilian+contractors Democracy freedom+fighters insurgency Iran Iraq Islamic stress mentally+ill Middle+East politics sectarian+violence

In the grand American tradition of kicking them while they’re down, President Bush made a Proclamation last week that suspends the minimum wage laws for workers in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. Hell of a thing to do to people who have lost everything and want to rebuild. Here it is, right from the horse’s mouth, Whitehouse.gov.
Proclamation by the President: To Suspend Subchapter IV of Chapter 31 of Title 40, United States Code, Within a Limited Geographic Area in Response to the National Emergency Caused by Hurricane Katrina
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050908-5.html
Bush is even extending the Emergency Declaration to many states that took in refugees. Like New Jersey???
President Approves Emergency Declaration For New Jersey
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=19001

Here is a list of the five major companies getting contracts in the area.
FEMA Contracts to Provide Housing Relief for Displaced Hurricane Victims
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18708
These companies already have found windfalls in government contracts. There is no need to take money from the wage earners at the bottom of the corporate pyramid. They also have lucrative contracts in Iraq. Our Army protects their civilian contractors, oil workers, at public expense.

The former head of FEMA, Joe Allbaugh, is or has been a lobbyist both for the Shaw Group and for Halliburton.
Former FEMA Chief Is at Work on Gulf Coast: Lobbyist Allbaugh Gives Clients Help
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702385.html
You know Halliburton, that’s the company that is being investigated for overcharging us, the taxpayers, in Iraq.
Halliburton Overcharge Not Deliberate, Zakheim Says

Halliburton’s KBR unit, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, has been paid $866 million on the oil reconstruction contract and “$61 million is actually the only part that is being questioned,” Zakheim said.

http://www.halliburton.com/news/archive/2003/article_121703.jsp

In an unrelated story, our Vice President was still on the Halliburton payroll in 2001. To his credit, he used all of his stock options in 2000 so that he could sell the stock to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Vice President and Mrs. Cheney Release 2000 Income Tax Return

Included in the wage and salary income reported on the tax return is $806,332 in salary and $4,333,500 in deferred compensation and bonuses from Halliburton Company, where Mr. Cheney served as chief executive officer until he resigned on August 16, 2000. As previously reported in Halliburton’s proxy statement, Mr. Cheney received a cash bonus of $1,451,398 from Halliburton in January of this year, which will be included in the 2001 tax return.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/04/20010413-5.html