Auditors: Billions squandered in Iraq By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 28 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.
The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.
Who locked the Bush Supporters thread and why? What was wrong with it?
I had some fresh questions for the neanderthals.
I guess too many of us non supporters crashed their hero worshiper thread. The thread seems to enjoy special status and protection from the powers that be in A2k.
Ican, I'm just going to point out a single point from your post which highlights why your position is completely built on lies you have convinced yourself of:
Quote:
Quote:
The PR problem was that people found out about the perfidy that our 'bad apples' were accomplishing all by their lonesomes. You see, noone other than yourself and maybe a few other Republicans actually believe that the US gov't didn't order and know exactly what was going on there. Huge PR disaster, not predicated by the 'liberal media' at all.
Quote:
MALARKY! This malarkey pumped up and spread far and wide is what actually led to OUR PR disaster.
I think it's appropriate to say that the underlying actions lead to the PR disaster, not the fact that they were reported on. Reporting on something does not create a disaster. You have a fundamental problem with your worldview if you think that informing people that torture, rape, and murder are occurring is the
actual problem, not the fact that they were taking place.
Quote: The US gov't did not order and did not know exactly what was going on there.
This is 100%, corn-fed bull sh*t. You have absolutely no knowledge that this is true. Those who were told to investigate AG - internally within the military - were
not allowed to look at the higher ranks to see who knew what. So there's no way you can say this at all.
We CAN say - now, this we have proof for - that those in the higher levels of government wrote and approved of documents supporting the use of torture. Re-defining torture, twisting words. Rumsfeld in particular has quite a bit of evidence laid against him in this respect.
The abuses in AG didn't show up until the 'Tiger Team' of interrogators was shipped over from Guantanamo and told to get information immediately. You're telling me that these interrogators didn't know what was going on? That they didn't order it? You're willfully deluding yourself.
Quote:But the US gov't did know what horrorible crimes the terrorists were perpetrating on the Iraqi people.
You are conflating two completely different issues - those held and abused at AG were by and far completely innocent. The vast majority of them were not terrorists.
Those who were rounded up into AG, held there for no reason, released after weeks or months - those who were beaten or tortured - you think they needed to have the
media get the word out about the place, in order to be a PR disaster for the US? You don't think that the very Iraqis we were trying to convince to join our side, kept hearing horror stories about the way we treated prisoners?
AG was a PR disaster long before Sy Hersh exposed it. You should realize that if someone hadn't linked, you probably would never have known about the torture and beatings, and it probably wouldn't have stopped. I'm sure you have no problem with this at all.
Cycloptichorn
Quote:
Malarkey! These investigators were allowed to look and investigate where they thought they should, including interrogating higher ups.
Post me a link showing that this is true - that all levels of command where investigated - and I'll happily retract that claim.
Quote:
Unsupported claims by people captured in war that they were innocent and/or abused are not credible to me.
Noone gives a damn what is credible to
you Ican, in terms of the 'PR war.' It's pretty well understood that the admin's PR has worked on people like you completely. You don't find any allegations of impropriety to be credible.
What we're talking about, on the other hand, is whether or not the
Iraqi citizens - the true target of the PR war - found claims that torture and abuse were going on in credible or not. And I would unhesitatingly say that they did, as there is every evidence that those who came back from the prison were in fact found credible by their countrymen.
Cycloptichorn
Cycloptichorn wrote:
...
What we're talking about, on the other hand, is whether or not the Iraqi citizens - the true target of the PR war - found claims that torture and abuse were going on in credible or not. And I would unhesitatingly say that they did, as there is every evidence that those who came back from the prison were in fact found credible by their countrymen.
Cycloptichorn
Post me a link showing that this is true.
Cycloptichorn wrote:ican711nm wrote:
Malarkey! These investigators were allowed to look and investigate where they thought they should, including interrogating higher ups.
Post me a link showing that this is true - that all levels of command where investigated
...
Cycloptichorn
Post me a link showing that this is true: that all levels of command
in Iraq were
not investigated.
Tell me again why concentrating mostly on the militias is helping anyone but the insurgents who are killing everyone else including our troops. In my opinion, the militias had to arm themselves in order to at least fight back from getting bombed to smithereens with no retaliation, we sure haven't tried to too hard to stop their violence.
Suicide blast kills 9 in northern Iraq
Quote:BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber rammed into a crowded market in northern Iraq moments after a booby-trapped vehicle exploded Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring 60, police said.
The back-to-back blasts in the oil hub of Kirkuk contrasted with a lull in major violence in Baghdad as U.S. and Iraqi forces try to regain control from gangs and militias in the capital.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced stop in Baghdad before heading for scheduled talks in Israel. She is the highest-level Washington official to visit Iraq since last month's announcement of the coordinated sweep against militant factions.
"If in fact militias decide to stand down and stop killing innocent Iraqis ... that can't be a bad thing," Rice told reporters traveling with her.
"But how the Iraqis use the breathing space that that might provide is what's really important," she said before meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Some believe militants have made a tactical retreat to avoid the stepped up pressure and could regroup later. The attacks in Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad, again showed the willingness of extremists to strike busy urban areas for maximum bloodshed.
Shops and a bus depot were filled with people when the first explosion occurred. Minutes later, a suicide car bomber slammed into the area in a mostly Kurdish district of the city, police said. The blasts also damaged about 20 shops.
At Kirkuk's main hospital, beds and cots quickly filled and some of the injured were placed on floors. Saman Ahmed, a local restaurant owner, was splashed with hot cooking oil as one of blasts hurled him onto the street. He lay on the sidewalk with burns and a broken leg as people fled amid burning cars and debris.
Kirkuk is a major oil center with a mixed population of Kurds and Sunni and Shiite Arabs. On Feb. 3, a series of car bombs in the city killed two people and injured 30.
Iraqi authorities said they foiled a potential suicide bomber near Karbala, about 50 miles south of Baghdad. A minivan came under fire after the driver failed to slowdown at a checkpoint, and then detonated the explosives and was killed in the blast, said Karbala police spokesman Rahman Mishawi. There were no other casualties.
In Baghdad, new checkpoints were set up around the city, creating long traffic jams as vehicles were thoroughly searched. Iraqi tanks pushed into districts that recently were ruled by roaming gunmen and militant groups.
Violence in Baghdad has dropped off sharply since the military push began earlier this week. U.S. military planners, however, caution that any attempt to stabilize Baghdad could take months and it's likely militants will not leave without a fight.
"We are very optimistic," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor. Then he quickly added: "Things aren't going to change overnight."
Washington has pledged 21,500 additional troops for the operation, which is expected to reach a total of 90,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces.
"I would say that it is way too early to establish any trends," Lt. Col. Chris Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, said Friday. "We've just started to focus our operations. We have months to go to see if we are going to succeed or not."
Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, attributed the reduction in violence not only to the increased security presence but also to an apparent decision by the militias and insurgents to lay low for a while.
"But make no mistake, we do not believe ... that's going to continue, and we do expect there are going to be some very rough, difficult days ahead," Fil said. "And this enemy knows how ?- they understand lethality and they have a thirst for blood like I have never seen anywhere before."
The U.S. military said Saturday that a Marine was killed during combat operations in western Anbar province. The Marine, who was assigned to Multinational Forces-West, died Friday, the statement said, but no further details were released.
The death was the first reported among U.S. forces since Wednesday when five soldiers were killed ?- all but one of them in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
Bush and the generals just don't get it! As soon as the surge is finished, and those 21,500 troops return home, the violence will continue to escalate. They've tried "surges" before, and failed. We need 200,000 more troops to remain indefinitely to quell the violence. That would only be seen as an occupation that will only exacerbate the problems.
It's a no-win situation for the long term.
the u.s. government may not have known "exactly" what was going on .
reading the latest issue of vanity fair however provides a pretty good insight into what "those in command" know about the treatment of prisoners .
have a look and judge for yourselves .
hbg
Quote:The whole purpose of setting up Guantánamo Bay is for torture. Why do this? Because you want to escape the rule of law. There is only one thing that you want to escape the rule of law to do, and that is to question people coercively?-what some people call torture. Guantánamo and the military commissions are implements for breaking the law. Why build a prison here when there are plenty of prisons in Nebraska? Why is it, when we see photos of Abu Ghraib, we think that it is "exporting Guantánamo"? That it is the "Guantánamo method"? ?-Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift to the author, January 2007.
full report (9 pages !) :
VANITY FAIR REPORTS ON GUANTAMANO
cicerone imposter wrote:Bush and the generals just don't get it! As soon as the surge is finished, and those 21,500 troops return home, the violence will continue to escalate. They've tried "surges" before, and failed. We need 200,000 more troops to remain indefinitely to quell the violence. That would only be seen as an occupation that will only exacerbate the problems.
It's a no-win situation for the long term.
cicerone imposter just doesn't get it. The surge previously forecast by cice to fail to reduce terrorist mass murders of Iraqi non-murderers, now that it looks like it has a real chance of succeeding, is now forecast by cice to fail to be sustained after the surge is ended.
Cice doesn't grasp the obvious. If we maintain an
effective surge long enough, the Iraqis themselves will come to develop the capability to defend themselves. That will of course be a win-win situation--Iraqi and Ameican win situation.
ican wrote :
Quote:If we maintain an effective surge long enough, the Iraqis themselves will come to develop the capability to defend themselves. That will of course be a win-win situation--Iraqi and Ameican win situation.
you would have to believe that the shias and sunnis would be able to become allies .
just this morning i was listening on CBC-TV to an interesting program about islam . many islam women (this is in canada) are trying to "modernize" islam , eg. no separation of sexes in the mosque , no need to wear veil ...
there were some islamic scholars and immans interviewed for the program - mostly younger ones . they all seemed to agree with the women - that the koran was free of any restrictions on women . they were all very well educated people and have no problems living in a western society , canada , in this case .
what also came through loud and clear was that the sunnis consider the shias heretics - much like the catholic church considered non-catholic christians as heretics until fairly recently .
imo that will be an obstacle in the reconciliation of the iraqis - unless you have another ruler who is a dictator .
of course , this is no different from europe during the 15th , 16th and 17th century , when catholic nations and protestant nations in europe waged horrendous wars with each other . i'm not sure how well those wars are covered in american history lessons - those wars were probably as bloody as anything we've seen lately .
if anyone had suggested in those times that the different "religious tribes" should live in peace with each other , he would likely have been boiled in oil by both groups .
as many scholars have stated , the peace (and perhaps democracy of some kind) will have to come from the inside . of course , helping iraqis to achieve peace , is a laudable goal , but i doubt it can be achieved by invading the country .
hbg
Hillary is calling for redeployment to begin in 90 days.....so will Obama call for it to begin in 60 days to trump her???
just watched senator chuck hegel (republican) on "meet the press" .
"there is a SECTARIAN war going on in iraq - in addition to a civil war - , you can't win a sectarian war by using the military of a third country " , was pretty much what he said .
imo he has a better grasp of the problems in iraq than most u.s. government "leaders" .
hbg
If nothing else, this paragraph from a BBC article today explains it all.
"Where is the security plan?" shouted grieving relatives outside one of the city's hospital, as dead and injured were transported to the emergency room.
Why the US already lost the war in Iraq.
February 18, 2007
Jailed 2 Years, Iraqi Tells of Abuse by Americans
By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET
DAMASCUS, Syria ?- In the early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three months in captivity.
He struggled to quell his hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for letting his family discuss his case with a reporter.
But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. They swapped his yellow prison suit for street clothes, he said. They snipped off his white plastic identification bracelet. They scanned his irises into their database.
Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:
"I didn't go through any abuse during detention," read the first option, in Arabic.
"I have gone through abuse during detention," read the second.
In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.
"Even the translator told me to sign the first answer," said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. "I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands," as if to say, Who knows?
"I thought if I don't sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place."
Shoving the memories of his detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running through a cold rain to his waiting parents. "My heart was beating so hard," he said. "You can't believe how I cried."
His mother, Intisar al-Ani, raised her arms in the air, palms up, praising God. "It was like my soul going out, from my happiness," she recalled. "I hugged him hard, afraid the Americans would take him away again."
Just three weeks earlier, his last letter home ?- with its poetic yearnings and a sketch of a caged pink heart ?- appeared in The Times in one of a series of articles on Iraq's troubled detention and justice system.
After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.
Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.
American detention officials acknowledged that guards used electric devices called Tasers to control detainees, but they said they did so rarely and only when the guards were physically threatened. The officials said that detainees had several ways to report abuse without repercussions, and that all claims were investigated.
Officials declined to give specific details about why they had detained Mr. Ani or why they had freed him.
"He was released because the board that reviewed his case didn't believe he any longer posed a threat," said First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, a spokeswoman for detention operations, in a written answer to questions. "He was originally detained as a security threat. I don't have anything more."
The Detention System
The American detention camps in Iraq now hold 15,500 prisoners, more than at any time since the war began. The camps are filled with people like Mr. Ani who are being held without charge and without access to tribunals where their cases are reviewed, the Times examination published last December found.
Mr. Ani, a women's clothing merchant, said he was detained in 2004 after American soldiers who were searching for weapons in his six-family apartment building found an Iraqi military uniform in the basement. His joy upon being released in January was short-lived. Days later, he said, a Shiite militia ransacked his home in Baghdad, looking to kill him. He hid, going from house to house, until he could move his family out of Iraq.
Now he is among the estimated 1.5 million Iraqis who have taken refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan, where sectarian rifts are springing up.
In one area of Damascus, Shiite refugees from Iraq have established a mini version of Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood. Sunni refugees, in turn, are forming their own enclaves. In interviews, former detainees seethed with rage at the United States.
One, a 43-year-old man from Samarra, Iraq, said he was released last year despite having fought American troops.
"I wish to go back to Iraq and fight against the Americans, God willing," vowed the man, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his nom de guerre, Abu Abdulla, for fear of reprisal.
Mr. Ani has other priorities, still exhausted from his detention and preoccupied with finding a permanent home. But he regularly turns his television to a new station called Al Zawra, transfixed by its running montage of videotaped attacks on American troops.
The station is owned by a Sunni, Meshaan al-Juburi, a former Iraqi politician who was indicted last year on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars; he denied the charges and returned to Syria, where he lived before the war. The station has become an information center for the Sunni insurgency and in the process has exasperated American and Iraqi forces. In an interview at his office here, Mr. Juburi said that he opposed Al Qaeda's use of suicide bombers to kill Iraqi civilians but was soliciting support for Iraqis intent on killing American troops. When the image of a roadside bomb blowing up an American Humvee appears on the large flat screen on his office wall, his eyebrows rise and he urges his visitors to watch, "This is a good one."
I have a question for Americans and I don't know where best to ask it...short of starting a new thread, that is....but what do you know about a new satirical TV show featuring Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter? Seemingly, a kind of right-wing counter to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show?
Has anyone started a thread on it? I believe it airs this week. Thanks
They were terribly humiliated and caged. They were not tortured and beaten. Unsupported claims by people captured in war that they were innocent and/or abused are not credible to me.
