Iraq rebuilding blunders finally come to light..And the Pentagon lies
By John Amato Sunday Dec 14, 2008 2:15pmA new report produced by the government spends over 500 pages telling us what we witnessed with our own eyes:
An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures. In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’...read on....
Rummsfeld has a nice quote too on the second page saying:
The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq. “What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.
“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said. “My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”
It's good to get the truth out of the administration, but wow....The depths these lying liars sunk to over their pet project named "Mission Accomplished", I mean the Iraq War.
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The company could be called Damage Controlled Architects Inc./Gov. Cesspool/Bush/Bin Laden International.
"Reconstruction" in Iraq looks a lot like "Reconstruction" in The South after the RepubliScum trashed it during the American Civil War.
Thieves, swindlers, rapists, pillagers .. carpetbaggers.
It wasn't until the Second World War that the RepubliScum got serious about "rebuilding" the South .. with "defense plants" that formed the backbone of the Military Industrial Complex and gave the RepubliScum their foothold in the "New South".
Trash & Burn, Pillage & Loot .. then "rebuld" a century later.
It's all according to plan.
They really don't mean a whole lot. I cast my first vote in a presidential election in 1964 (had to be 21 in those days) and I seem to remember the southern state Neocon types or their equivalent of the 50s and 60s being mostly Democrats back then. People like Lester Maddux, George Wallace, etc.
I wasn't until Lyndon Johnson and a bunch of northern congresspeople supposedly
The Pentagon lies?
Eleven Nine.
The original lie that started it all.
We need to push the envelope a little bit. We've been steadily following in the wake of this disastrous administration and pretending that we are keeping up when they are just spraying mud all over us. Let's get out in front a bit and cut them off at the crossroads, instead of continually playing from behind. Great point.
So the RepubliScum (thanks MountainMan) voted for --"a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars"-- but when it comes to saving anyone but bankers, meaning American middle-class jobs, it's off the table. Nice!
would be a more accurate title for this report.
Treason would be a nice word to hear once in a while too.
Anyone with half a brain knows that the real reason that the USA invaded Iraq was oil. Oil. Oil. Oil. Bush and his oil buddies thought that within a year we would have all the oil flowing into tankers headed to the good 'oil' USA. Right.
Thank you Sir, may I have another!
if you'd read the PNAC documents back in 2000 and understood corporate fascism, you would not have been surprised about anything that has happened in the last 8 years. All of these neo-cons are arrogant, sociopathic, filthy pigs who think they deserve to be running the world. When the WTC fell to the ground - you would have know that was the New Pearl Harbor; when the invasion of Iraq began - you would have know that was the first step in stealing oil and establishing forward military bases from which to spread US hegemony across the adoring world; when thay passed the Patriot Act you would have known that was the first step toward the devolution of our democracy, etc., etc.
How could anyone not know before now that everything that came out of the mouths of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Wolfowitz, et al were nothing but LIES!!!!??
... the more "proof" Bushco had that we were truly saviors. The more money wasted, the more George patted himself on the back as a liberator.
Then, after Bushco gives Halliburton $25 BILLION taxpayer dollars for no-bid contracts, what happens?
Ha ha. Halliburton moves its headquarters to fucking DUBAI to avoid paying U.S. taxes on their "earnings."
Think we get suckered much?
of putting its faith in smart people.
Without checks, smart people make mistakes.
Guaranteed.
Obama appears to proceeding wisely. He'll get checks.
How wise he is is yet to be determined.
I'm hopeful but cautious.
and what if the smart people that these think tanks invite, groom, and then place into positions of power,
are also evil?
why arent these criminals in prison?
Because not enough people in the established media are doing enough investigative work or publicity to make that an unavoidable issue. Not enough people are willing to get after the hard hitting evidence and anomalies that remain unsolved to this day. The Anthrax investigation seems to be forgotten by a lot of people in the pop media. The relationship between the Bin Laden and Bush families are better not brought up amongst polite society. Something man. I don't know. You tell me.
What really bugs me is the way the media has dealt with, and continues to this day, to deal with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
For example, I was just watching CNN where the anchor prefaced the video of the Iraqi journalist throwing a shoe with labels such as "bizarre" and the implication that the Iraqi journalist must be mentally ill.
You see, on the one hand the media criticizes itself for not "asking enough questions" in the run up to the war back in 2003, then they turn around and pretend like "It's weird that Iraqis haven't welcomed us as liberators".
The Bush administration. Administration... heh! They didn't administer anything. This is the final end of the ANTI-GOVERNMENT!
It's like some heroin addicts just cut loose, took the kid's collage fund to Vegas to let it ride. When the money ran out, they maxed out the credit cards to stay in the game. When that was gone they put down the deed to the house. When that went, they put the car keys on the table.
After 5 days in vegas, they wake up in a blurry haze, broke, the hotel room covered in coke and you just know there's a dead prostitute slumpped in the bathtub, lying in a pool of blood, shit and puke after a half-assed attempt to dismember ad smuggle the body out of the room once they realized that she'd been suffocated when they defecated on her face...
Is that Iraq in there, or us...??
I vividly recall Rummy at a news conference cavalierly announcing that 2.3 trillion dollars was missing. No accountability, no problem.
The fact that these warmongering scum still walk free and live the good life galls me no end.
yes, that announcement by Rumsfeld was made to the press and the American people,
on Sept 10, 2001.
Nothing to see here, no coincidence.
Such lying, incompetent muthah funkers must be to prison right?
no?
Indictments then?
....
investigations at least?
....
huh... so I guess the "moral risk" here isn't that important
Who cares that these people have turned the world upside down for their pride and greed?
Who cares that these people have made the rivers run red with blood?
Who cares that these people have corrupted our democratic republic to its very core?
Hitler and Mussoullini have nuthin' on these folks
Had it not been for GW's grandfather Prescott Bush, and his great-grandfathers Samuel Prescott Bush & Herbert Walker, Hitler would never have risen to power in post-World-War-One Germany.
War profiteering was perfected by Samuel Prescott Bush (aka "The Merchant of Death") and Herbert Walker during World War One and the skills passed on to future generations of Bushes.
It's the Way of the Bushes ..
what good are investigations when the criminals appoint the investigators, limit the funding, limit the scope, fail to punish liars/perjurers, and then don't require separate sessions for the President & VP, under oath, and on the record?
I am telling you that America is not rebuilding Iraq, Even the embassy is not a construction project.
I have been in the construction business my whole life.
Never in my lifetime have I seen construction sites look like the ones in Iraq. At the Huffington post they have a picture showing two long rows scaffolding set up down what I think is a street or an alley. But the point is in the street or alley and under all of the scaffolding is debris tons of dirt, rock, wood,metal all sorts of debris. You cannot work on a site that cluttered! It is very dangerous for all the workers having so much debris scattered around to climb over of fall upon. I would fire every man on the job if one of my jobs looked like that.
It just goes to show that who ever is doing this does not have a clue what needs to be done.
Must be someone bush appointed or someone chenny hired.
It is a total waste of money and people to do things in this manner and it just shows that there was no one involved with the reconstruction of Iraq that is serious about!
It started out as a way to make a few people very rich at taxpayer expense. The Iraqis are just collateral damage after all they are not white or rich like the people in the bush/chenny cabal!!!
This is from Afghan President Hamid Karzai at today's joint press conference with George Bush:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/...
"And Afghanistan will not allow the international community leave it before we are fully on our feet, before we are strong enough to defend our country, before we are powerful enough to have a good economy, and before we have taken from President Bush and the next administration billions and billions of more dollars -- (laughter) -- no way that they can let you go."
Ho, ho, ho... and merry Christmas.
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