Keith Olbermann's nightly segment on Countdown that features updates and developments on "the Bush Administration's 50
running scandals".
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THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoffs Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.
The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a new Iraq.
The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just 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. Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoffs math.
Whats most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace.
After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzaless Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of The Honeymooners would dismiss as a mere bag of shells. The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have defined deviancy down in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.
Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives. Two officials tasked with marketing oil on behalf of American taxpayers got so blotto at a daytime golf event sponsored by Shell that they became too incapacitated to drive and had to be put up by the oil company.
Back in the day, an oil-fueled scandal in that one department alone could mesmerize a nation and earn Warren Harding a permanent ranking among our all-time worst presidents. But while the scandals at Bushs Interior resemble Teapot Dome — and also encompass millions of dollars in lost federal oil and gas royalties — they barely registered beyond the Beltway. Even late-night comics yawned when The Washington Post administered a coup de grâce last week, reporting that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne spent $235,000 from taxpayers to redo his office bathroom.
Just a short list is staggering. Who put that bogus uranium from Africa into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the rotten apples at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagons elaborate P.R. efforts to cover up Pat Tillmans death by friendly fire in Afghanistan?
And, for extra credit, whatever did happen to Bushs records from the Texas Air National Guard?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11rich.html?_r=2
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6:31
Olbermann schools O'reilly.....AGAINby whoyouare1310,807 views
Demos, meaning people; and Kratos, meaning ruled by. Why the hell don't these leaders, who have manipulated U.S. Citizens emotions and consequentially caused them so much pain (not even considering the Iraqi's side of the matter), face any consequences for their actions? Yea, the good ol' democracy, it always changes form when you need it the most...
masofist 2 years ago
Why wouldn't Obby name the "chairman" of the Sands resort in Vegas? (it's Sheldon G Adelson, Right wing Zionist)
hornetobiker 2 years ago