121Contact

End the Wounded Warrior Project

The recent Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) funding/spending scandal is a red herring. The WWP raises about $300 million a year. That’s a minuscule amount (about .05%) compared to our total military budget. There is no logical reason, moral or economic, for wounded veterans to have to rely on charity for total support of their physical and mental needs.

Aid to Flint delayed by heartless Republican obstruction.

Democrat $600 billion plan includes immediate cash and as well as loans. Repubs want to know how to pay for it while Flint's children are being maimed for life. How about we just trim a little off the defense budget? It would hardly make a dent. @Flint @bruce121Contact

Focus on Syria. Focus anywhere, but don't look at Americans making money in Iraq.

As the death toll continues to climb in Iraq, the U.S. military supply chain continues to profit. It ight be a good time to buy FLIR stock...it's climbing.

FLIR Systems Inc. of Wilsonville, Ore. was awarded a total contract value of $43 million. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville handled the contract for Expeditionary Targeting and Surveillance Systems, Cerebus and Cerebus Lite systems [IraqBusinessNews] This is in addition to its 43 million dollar contract with the Navy and the 81 million dollar army contract recently awarded.

$355,080,049,827 in contracts have been awarded since 2006.  From the 18th to the 25th of this month over a billion dollars have been awarded to military contractors. It adds up quickly. $76 billion was awarded from january through March of this year.

As the American infrastructure cont inures to crumble along with education and social supports, the government still finds ways to feed the insatiable military industrial complex. The U.S. is spending more than ever on death and less than ever on life. And the American people bury themselves in reality TV that has little to do with reality.

 

 

 

and away goes tax money, down the drain...are the contractors worth it?

In case you were wondering if the U.S. is still, after all those reports, charges,  and convictions, heavily invested in mercenary forces as part of our foreign policy:

[these are DoD Numbers]

                         Contractors         U.S        non-U.S      Host Country

                                                      Military      Mil.            Mil.

 

Afghanistan          109, 564          31,814       39,480           38,270

Iraq                             9,000            2,314           4,621            2,065

Other
Countries                 18,843            8,764           9,297               782

TOTALS             137,407        42,892      53,398         41,117

And then we started wondering  about just what those ‘other country’ 28,000 are doing…and who they are doing it to…and what are we getting out of it…

Taxpayer monies are going down the drain into the sewers of the manufacturers of weapons and private ‘security’ companies.  And the result:  the number of terrorist attacks, globally, is rising, not falling. In some places, like Pakistan, the number of terrorists acts has risen in proportion to the military aid we deliver.

Maybe it's time to test a new theory. Less military spending will reduce overall violence.

Shock and Awe: It didn't work in Iraq; it doesn't work in Afghanistan

Shock and Awe: It didn't work in Iraq; it doesn't work in Afghanistan
December 12, 2012 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

When the Taliban tried to overrun Forward Operating Base Fenty yesterday they came with plenty of explosives. Three suicide bombs were set off and a two hour gun battle ensued. There were deaths and casualties but the numbers are unclear as both sides tend to distort the numbers.

In an echo of an earlier day, when the Bush machine was intent upon totally subduing the Iraqis with a 'shock and awe' attack, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Paul Haverstick, a spokesman for the coalition's Regional Command-East said, "It was more shock and awe than anything successful."

The original Shock and Awe campaign against Iraq was touted by Harlan Ullman, back in 2003. The retired Naval Commander had written Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance in 1996 and sold the idea to a Bush administration eager to show its strength-against-terrorism and get a quick win in an easy war.

The idea was simple: smash fast and hard and the enemy will be so distraught he'll physically and mentally collapse and then surrender quickly. That's not quite the way it worked. Instead, we ended up in a war that lasted 8 years and all we gained was

• the enmity of an enormous amount of people around the world,
• a loss of military prestige as our tactics failed again and again (we're thinking of Shock and Awe followed by COIN followed by extensive use of mercenaries followed by enhanced interrogation techniques),
• a huge cost in money as some 10 billion dollars a month flowed out of our tax revenues into the pockets of the war business that grew over the years, and
• a huge cost in American lives and a large group of casualties whose pain will persist for years to come.

and, of course, that's ignoring the devastation we delivered to the innocent Iraqis who suffered the most from our 'bringing them Democracy.' The hundreds of thousands killed or wounded, the million or so orphans, the destruction of Iraqi society, the millions affected by prolonged trauma...

In the end Lt. Col. Haverstick was right. "It was more shock and awe than anything successful."
Let's hope we don't do it again; anywhere, anytime.

 

Related articles

How we lost the war in Iraq

Petraeus and the Other Side of the COIN

KBR (remember them from Iraq?) OFF THE HOOK FOR BILLIONS

KBR (remember them from Iraq?) OFF THE HOOK FOR BILLIONS
November 15, 2012 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Do you have to be honest to be valued?

While nobody was looking the Justice Department dropped a case against KBR for allegedly charging an unauthorized sum of some billions of dollars. This False Claims Act suit is not the only KBR mess being unraveled.

Soldiers are suing because they say they were exposed to toxic chemicals. Their their exposure was to sodium dichromate, and they fear that a carcinogen the toxin contains, hexavalent chromium, could cause cancer later in life. [AP]

"Earlier this month, a jury awarded the 12 plaintiffs in that case $10.2 million in actual damages and $75 million in punitive damages. KBR said it was deciding whether to appeal." [Rueters]

KBR was one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq  and  its evident mismanagement was transferred to Afghanistan, like Petraeus' failed COIN policy, even though it apparently reached the level of illegality in its dealing with the U.S. Government.

"Government officials have raised many questions about KBR's fulfillment of its contracts, everything from billing for meals it didn't serve to charging inflated prices for gas to excessive administrative costs. Government auditors have noted that KBR refused to turn over electronic data in its native format and stamped documents as proprietary and secret when the documents would normally be considered public records." [Politifact]

The Justice Department has not responded to requests for an explanation of why it dropped the False Claims Act case.

KBR stock fell today, but there seems to be no end to new contracts for them. Honesty seems not necessarily the best policy.

 

 

 

Aug 24 2012 The Drone Economy: U.S. shifts profit center to long-distance-murder.

Iraq was costing us US$10-12 billion a month, and probably a total of US$3 trillion if you take everything into account. As the war wound down we shifted the expenditures to Afghanistan. These expenditures were profits to our military industrial businesses. Now we have to find ways to keep that machine going...so we are going global.  After all, it's a global economy, isn't it?

We are looking at U.S. companies making some US$90 billion dollars in the next 10 years as they sell drones domestically and to foriegn nations. We use them ourselves to kill people that the President declares valid targets (without judge, jury, trial, or any other semblance of justice). We've already turned Iraq into a customer, and many others are sure to follow. [RT] Profit from Death will continue.

There is now a 58 member Drone Caucus in the U.S., with powerful members of Congress at its head. Caucus members have already received millions of dollars in campaign donations from "unmanned systems" purveyors, and more will follow. In a recently published study, the Teal Group estimates that UAV spending will almost double over the next decade from current worldwide UAV expenditures of $6.6 billion annually to $11.4 billion, totaling just over $89 billion in the next 10 years. [infowar]

That's a lot of bucks, and the buck stops at the top, whether it's Romney or Obama. Congress has the power to halt all international sales of American-made robot killing machines. It is an immoral business to be in but it's SO profitable, and doesn't our economy need every stimulous it can get? In a bottom-line world, the answer is "Yes, sell the damn things. It's not our fault if others use them to kill." Of course it will be a sad day when they are turned on our own people, won't it?

Check out the catalogues of these few. There are lots more.

U.S. Microjet LLC - Cincinnati, OH / Tele Air International - Oxnard, CA / JMP Industries, Inc. - Edison, NJ / AAI Corp. - Hunt Valley, MD / United States Motor Power - East Troy, WI / Alliant Techsystems, Inc. - Edina, MN