how the Department of Defense can’t account for 8.7 billion for reconstruction in Iraq? So the House Committee on Oversight and Gov’t Reform has this hearing – stop me if you’ve heard this one – and all parties come to the conclusion that the missing money is a conundrum, a real head-scratcher. Having reached unanimous agreement on that salient fact, they then decide to adopt the procedure recommended by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction study; create new accounting processes so this doesn’t happen in the future. Or as Obama calls it, “Look forward, not back.”
Or how about the old one when Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon “lost” about 2.3 trillion dollars? You probably forgot the punchline for that one, since he talked about it on the day before 9/11; 9/11 WAS the punchline, I guess, since no-one has ever talked about the missing trillions since.
Or how about the one where Halliburton lost 10 billion in cash in Iraq and still got bonuses from the army immediately thereafter? The Halliburton jokes are just an endless source of amusement down Washington way. KBR/Halliburton gets no-bid contracts after it’s discovered they’ve been overcharging the government for years, KBR is linked to the vast majority of 13 billion in questionable or unsupported costs in Iraq and something like 43% of Halliburton’s Iraq expenses are not verifiable. It’s all just terribly funny.
Or how about the time… Oh, never mind, Texas is currently re-writing the story on that for us, so none of it will show up in the history books. Never happened.
The whole war on terror thingie is just about a few rich people getting richer. That is all. There is no more to the story, that is the end. But we are such dolts we’ll keep thinking we are saving democracy or helping the women in (fill-in-the-blank), and Congress is so craven, they’ll just keep shaking the piggy jar for those rich ones. Swear to God, at this point, Obama could just MAKE UP a country and get war funding. He’d say, “The Pentagon has just issued a new report on Lilliputia. It turns out that Osama bin Laden has been sheltered there for the past several years and there is a large contingent of al Qaeda members hiding in the foothills planning attacks against the United States as I speak.” Pointing finger, “This will not be tolerated. So today I am asking Congress for a gazillion dollars to protect our interests in the area and fight the terrorists there.”
Congress would approve the funding and Xe would receive the contract to protect Halliburton as they go in to build an air force base for us in Lilliputia.
Americans everywhere would talk about the fugitive bin Laden being sheltered by the rogue country. If one asked where exactly Lilliputia was, another would answer that he wasn’t sure, but he knew it was somewhere, because he was sure he had heard of the Lilliputians before. Somewhere, he heard of them.
The pundits, never willing to be left out of the Big Picture or to admit a limit to their Mighty Intellectual Prowess, would talk amongst themselves like this:
Chris M.: “I have heard from an unnamed CIA source that the president of Lilliputia just had the temerity to defend his aiding al Qaeda. You know, what’s his name? The president of Lilliputia?”
Pat B.: “It’s a hard name to pronounce, Chris. But, yeah, you make a good point about the sheer gall of it all.”
In the meantime, back in the real world, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2009 assessment of the infrastructures in the U.S. It looks like this:
2009 Grades
Aviation D
Bridges C
Dams D
Drinking Water D-
Energy D+
Hazardous Waste D
Inland Waterways D-
Levees D-
Public Parks and Recreation C-
Rail C-
Roads D-
Schools D
Solid Waste C+
Transit D
Wastewater D-
America’s Infrastructure GPA: D
Estimated 5 Year Investment Need: $2.2 Trillion
The highest grade goes to how we handle shit. Just sayin’.
teri's random thoughts 