From: Thomas F Barton
Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2007 10:21 PM
Subject: GI Special 5A29: The United States Congress
The United States Congress
Day after day after day...
They know nothing about
brotherly love in time of war.
They do not serve.
They do not get it.
They do not understand
the same blood that
flows between soldiers.
They do not see them
take their last breath.
They never put a dead teenager
on a chopper.
They never saw a dead soldier
put in the back of a lonely truck,
after the Medevac helicopter landed.
They never saw a soldier shoot
himself in the head with his M-16,
because he couldn't take it anymore.
He saw too much, too often, too many tours.
Congress never saw the splattered blood,
and brains inside the tent.
They never saw his urine soaked uniform.
They never had a Vet friend hang himself in
a motel room, because he couldn't take it anymore.
They never had a Vet friend die homeless.
They never had a Vet friend die from Agent Orange.
Congress really doesn't know that goes on.
They never met a veteran who was ordered to
take part in murdering over 50 innocent civilians.
They know nothing about being hated in another
country, because you are the invader.
Congress knows nothing about war.
Except
Funding
It.
Day after day after day...
Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
January 27, 2007
***
Copyright 2007 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
January 28, 2007 Sunday
4 STAR EDITION
CONTRACTOR DEATHS IN IRAQ NEARING 800;
Toll has surged in past months, but civilians still line up for the jobs
BY: DAVID IVANOVICH, BRETT CLANTON, Staff
Laboring in a war with no discernible front line, more than 770
civilian contractors have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion
began in March 2003.
Statistics kept by the Labor Department indicate fatalities among
civilian contractors working for American firms escalated rapidly
late last year, with at least 301 dying in Iraq in 2006 - including
124 in the final three months.
U.S. military deaths totaled 818 during the year, the Defense
Department has reported.
Despite the danger, job seekers continue to flood contractors'
offices with résumés.
Some 165,000 prospective employees contacted Houston-based
Halliburton Co.'s KBR last year about job opportunities in Iraq,
Kuwait and Afghanistan, company officials said. KBR now has half a
million résumés on file.
And the recent troop "surge" announced by President Bush has prompted
KBR to increase its hiring, company Chief Executive Officer Bill Utt
said Friday.
Many of the job seekers crowding into a recent KBR orientation
program at Greenspoint Mall were fatalistic about the risks.
"When it comes your time, it comes your time," said Robert Hulion,
59, of Crestview, Fla., before being deployed to Iraq to work as a
fumigation specialist.
"I've been through Vietnam, and I've been to New York City. But what
I call dangerous is Mardi Gras in New Orleans," Hulion joked.
Hulion has joined what the Pentagon estimates to be 100,000 civilians
working for U.S.-based contractors in Iraq.
Supplementing the 130,000 American troops serving in the country,
these civilians provide a wide variety of functions, including
serving up chow and interrogating prisoners.
The 100,000 figure is an estimate because, nearly four years into the
war, the Pentagon is just now conducting its first survey to
determine how many civilian contractors are working in Iraq.
And Pentagon officials, citing military regulations, don't track
contractor deaths.
Contract worth billions
Halliburton's KBR is the largest military contractor operating in
Iraq, with more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working
there, as well as in Kuwait and Afghanistan.
Working under a multibillion-dollar contract with the Army, KBR crews
drive trucks, wash clothes, deliver mail and provide a host of other
support services for U.S. troops.
KBR's workers are a critical component of the Pentagon's
privatization strategy, enabling the military to reduce the number of
troops needed in the country by turning over noncombat functions to
civilians.
The idea behind the privatization plan was to keep these
noncombatants away from the fighting. But that has proved impossible
in violence-riddled Iraq.
"The whole place is a front line," said Peter Singer, a senior fellow
at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and author of Corporate
Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry.
***
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:26:21 -0500 (EST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ThisCantBeHappening.net - Jan 25, 2007
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/
CONYERS PUTS BUSH ABUSE OF POWER BACK 'ON THE TABLE':
HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN SAYS SUPPORT FOR IMPEACHMENT
NOT NECESSARILY 'OFF THE MENU'
by Dave Lindorff
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have taken impeachment "off the table," but
House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) is about to put it back on the
menu.
Conyers may have been blocked by a timid Pelosi from initiating impeachment
hearings immediately into President Bush's crimes against the Constitution,
but he's taken the first step anyway, with the anouncement of plans to hold
hearings into what is surely the President's gravest abuse of power.
The congressman, a veteran of the Nixon impeachment hearings who recently
published a book on Bush's crimes, today announced plans to have his
Judiciary Committee hold hearings on Bush's rampant use of so-called
"signing statements." These are the documents the president has claimed give
him the power, as a commander-in-chief, to ignore laws duly passed by the
Congress.
Bush has used this bogus claim to ignore all or parts of some 1200 laws
passed by Congress. He has done it willfully, and he has done it
deceptively, often adding the signing statement saying he will be ignoring a
law after having first hosted a friendly photo-op signing session at which
he offer no indication that he had any problem with a measure.
The first Judiciary Committee hearing is set for January 31.
Hopefully this will be followed by more Judiciary hearings into the
president's other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Readers should encourage Conyers in his efforts, and urge him to follow
through, by sending messages of support to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Dave Lindorff is an independent journalist and the co-author, with Barbara
Olshansky, of "The Case For Impeachment" (St. Martins, 2006). Please visit
Dave's website here: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/ ]
***
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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