From TomPaine.com comes this piece from an essay by Rumpler and Fidis:
Hey this isn't looting from the US citizens, it is merely increasing profits and offsetting expenditures to do so. Afterall the ability to bribe congress and be free from criminal sanctions is equal to the amount of dollars expended in such activities versus the perception that a PR campaign can wage on others to cover it up. Look over there, black people looting; do not look at the man behind the curtain. So thousands of children over the next several generations, mostly those of color, but certainly a significant degree of relatively wealthy white ones too, will suffer immeasureable and uncontrollable cancers and infections created by the toxic stews of this horrible mess, without any recourse to funds to help defray the costs of treatment or cleanup. No not looting, just blatant horrendous grand theft evil. But as if that isn't enough, the other story today out of the Independent online edition by Patrick Cockburn, itemizes another great military/industrial corporate engineered theft of billions.Sound public policy dictates that industries should be liable for the toxic contamination they create in the pursuit of profit. And it is hard to believe that the multibillion-dollar oil and chemical companies residing in Cancer Alley, along with their insurers, did not contemplate the risks their facilities and products would pose in a severe hurricane.
However, it is unlikely that American taxpayers will receive one dime of reimbursement from these powerful polluters. When Superfund became law in 1986, the oil and chemical industries persuaded Congress to include two liability loopholes. First, petroleum is exempted from the definition of hazardous waste. Second, “acts of God” constitute an affirmative defense for toxic spills. In exchange, the industry agreed to the imposition of “polluter pays” fees to provide a steady and reliable source of money to pay for toxic cleanups—especially in cases where liability could not be imposed.
Up front, this Faustian bargain with the likes of DuPont and Shell might appear as a reasonable and pragmatic calculation. In hindsight, the public was shortchanged by legislative sleight of hand: While the loopholes were drafted as permanent, the polluter pays provision required reauthorization by Congress.
And that’s where the chemical companies went to work—launching a multi-year PR campaign to smear Superfund and undercut support for polluter pays. In 1995, their efforts paid off; Congress failed to reauthorize the fees. As a result, the Superfund is now officially bankrupt. The Oil Spill Liability fund is expected to be bankrupt by 2009, although costs to clean Katrina oil spills may advance this date. And in case you hadn’t heard, Exxon/Mobil just reported record-breaking profits on the order of $8 billion earnings last quarter.
<>But the injustice does not end there. A combination of wars and tax cuts has left the federal treasury ill-equipped to finance the grand “Marshall Plan for New Orleans” that has been heralded in recent days. With limited resources, the pressure to cut corners will be great. Will cleanup standards be compromised to ensure adequate funding for jobs, food and housing? With no polluter money on the table, the risks of such unconscionable choices become graver by the day.
See, those damn Iraqi Arab colored types, and again the africans(kofi annan), are just despicable criminals bred from all of the social justice programs perpetrated by liberals. Just don't look at the paper and dig too deep into the files or mention how the US based military/industrial complex(think Halliburton/Fluor/Olin/et al) is so apt at removing billions of dollars from systems for which no audits can account. So far the affirmed missing billions just from Iraq alone, under the watchful care of a certain Paul Bremer(now in charge of NOLA cleanup and rebuilding) is $12 billion and climbing. But hey, those Swiss really need the investments in Euros into their accounts as does the Chinese and Russian agencies that are co-sponsoring the syphoning of petroleum supplies and other superior technologies. Stolen billions can provide a great deal of access as do record profits generated from avoiding paying cleanup fees and long term healthcare for those that they choose to destroy.One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.
The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.
"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.
"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."
The carefully planned theft has so weakened the army that it cannot hold Baghdad against insurgent attack without American military support, Iraqi officials say, making it difficult for the US to withdraw its 135,000- strong army from Iraq, as Washington says it wishes to do.
Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters. The manufacturers said they should have been scrapped after 25 years of service. Armoured cars purchased by Iraq turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour. A shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns, at a cost of $3,500 (£1,900) each, consisted in reality of Egyptian copies worth only $200 a gun. Other armoured cars leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned. A deal was struck to buy 7.62mm machine-gun bullets for 16 cents each, although they should have cost between 4 and 6 cents.
Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped. In Baghdad they often ride in civilian pick-up trucks vulnerable to gunfire, rocket- propelled grenades or roadside bombs. For months even men defusing bombs had no protection against blast because they worked without bullet-proof vests. These were often promised but never turned up.The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.
<>Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry.<> Mr Allawi says a further $500m to $600m has allegedly disappeared from the electricity, transport, interior and other ministries.
The sum missing over an eight-month period in 2004 and 2005 is the equivalent of the $1.8bn that Saddam allegedly received in kick- backs under the UN's oil-for-food programme between 1997 and 2003. The UN was pilloried for not stopping this corruption. The US military is likely to be criticised over the latest scandal because it was far better placed than the UN to monitor corruption.
