August 30, 2011
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Feeding The Evil Beast
I was reading an article on Yahoo! yesterday about how up to $60 billion in war funds have been wasted over the course of the past 10 years on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no shortage of culprits for why this money was wasted, among them fraud, mistakes and lack of oversight. For a country with a raging debt and deep concerns about spending, this is an embarrassment.
A big part of the problem is something I’ve been saying for years: defense contractors. For example, I’ve heard from multiple sources that one of the biggest contractors, Halliburton, charges the military $103 to do one load of laundry and $48 for a case of soda. Can somebody explain to me why we let these fucking crooks get away with this bullshit? Well it certainly helps that before he was Vice President, Dick Cheney was president of Halliburton.
Thankfully though in 2008, Barack Obama campaigned that he would help cut the cost of spending on military contractors. Fortunately he won the election and that meant big trouble for these companies, after all, Bush and Cheney were gone; not replaced by another war hawking Republican itching to use contractors, but instead replaced by a Democratic president who would not stand for waste.
Except.
Since he got into office, Obama has INCREASED the use and spending of defense contractors. Seriously. What the fuck?
Fortunately we live in a country in which the people sometimes can make a difference. You can contact your representative and senators and tell them that contracting with these companies should no longer be tolerated. Look, I loathe the Tea Party as much as anybody, but the one good thing they have done is put the focus on spending and waste. And while many Republicans are not serious enough about spending to do something about the contractors, these Tea Party fuckers tend not to care only about spending and probably would do something about it.
And while you are at it, tell them that we need to leave these other countries. And I don’t mean just Iraq and Afghanistan, but I mean every other country we went to and forgot to leave.
Comments (5)
We are spending too much money on military efforts. My friend’s husband just got back from a deployment in South Africa. I didn’t even know we have troops there. Why??? It’s just a reflection of so many people in this country….charge it on a credit card and worry about paying it later. We are all about instant gratification and even the government is guilty of that. The Republicans claim they want to cut spending, blah blah blah, but they only look at cutting the GOOD programs…things like Head Start or Planned Parenthood. I do think we need an overhaul of all government assistance….and as i recall, Obama promised to look at each entity. But i know he’s busy with too many other things. At least he’s gotten things like healthcare changed even though it still has a long way to go. It’s depressing when i think too much about it, so i’m going to stop there
well our three biggest spending problems are social security, medicare and military spending. we could solve just about all of our debt problems if we had some sort of military reform that drastically, yet sensibly cut spending and brought home all of the troops. Honestly, why the fuck are we still in Japan and Germany? people give the bullshit excuse that if we werent there then another world war would break out but that is a load of shit.
There’s two forces going.
One has priorities on removing the people employed directly by the government from the mid east.
The other force wants to reduce spending.
Which force won?
there’s a middle ground, there’s always more things you can do to make it better but there’s usually something to give up.
What I don’t understand is, why we stay these places… I mean, frankly I say “Mind our own business and stay out to begin with” but I understand the thinking of putting a stop to psychopaths before they get too far gone… whatever… thats like an argument no one can win on either side… but once we got there and do what we felt necessary, then come home! Its a lovely idea, helping rebuild… but shit, just give them the money to do so and get the fuck out!!! We’ve got soldiers over there trying to help rebuild and they are still getting killed! My future son-in-law is there, and it pisses me off to think someone would blow him up while he’s trying to help. And on THEIR side of it… say the French (god forbid) came over there to rid of us a monster we, for some reason, couldn’t get rid of ourselves… and then they hung around “helping”…. I would not like that at all…. appreciate the thought, but GO HOME.
Maybe slightly off subject, sorry.