Sunday night the show
”
60 Minutes
”
ran a piece on the privatization of the military and it’s happy,
and thoroughly coincidental, results for certain folks in high
places.
Sunday night the show “60 Minutes” ran a piece on the privatization of the military and it’s happy, and thoroughly coincidental, results for certain folks in high places. For example, while Secretary of Defense under President Bigbush, Dick Cheney commissioned a panel composed of top military contractors to make a recommendation as to whether or not it would be a good idea to assign jobs normally done by the DOD itself to private companies such as the ones headed by the panel members.
Well, to shock and amazement of everyone the panel recommends having the government pay lots and lots of taxpayer money to private outfits to do stuff traditionally done by agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers – private outfits like Bechtel and Halliburton. When Cheney leaves the Cabinet he immediately, despite having no business experience whatever – as in zero, none, zip, not a day’s worth – becomes the CEO of Halliburton, which promptly makes him very rich. Now that he’s back in the government as VP, guess who gets a major-money, no-bid, classified, open-ended, done-before-the-war-even-started contract to help rebuild Iraq? Halliburton, which was the best-qualified for reasons they can’t disclose, had the lowest price although no one else was even asked what they would charge for the same work, and was all signed up before we went in there by pure coincidence. OK, I buy that’ coincidences happen.
Of much greater significance is the mechanics of the Bush Doctrine in which we select somebody to be an enemy, declare they’re a threat to us or their neighbors or themselves or all of the above – the excuse isn’t important, we can always spin that later – than defeat them in war, and finally rebuild them, thus demonstrating our muscle, enriching our major corporations, and stimulating our economy all at the same time. Are you thinking about who Bush’s next target should be?
Right, it’s obvious: California.
Hey, it all fits. We’re bigger than Iraq, and a lot quicker for the armed forces to get to. Thanks to our temperate climate we can be attacked all year round with no extra stress on the troops. God knows we’re plenty evil, at least to Bush – it’s no secret he hates us and would love to see us humbled. I mean, we’re the actual location of Hollywood, for crying out loud, and the whole state is way too liberal for the neo-conservative True Believers Dubya surrounds himself with. We’re not sufficiently fond of his Master of the Universe Shtick, we like the environment and occasionally try to protect some of it; hell, we’ve even got a little oil he’d love to get his hands on. And weapons of mass destruction: We’ve got Barbra Streisand; need I say more?
So I say, let’s threaten our neighbors – Nevada and Arizona shouldn’t be too hard to scare. We could encourage terrorist groups, like maybe the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, to get out there and defiantly save a whale or a tree or something. There’s no doubt we’re being oppressed by our ruler, and simply recalling him may not be enough. We need to be invaded, with or without U.N. support; to just let us continue on our evil path will certainly pose a grave danger to the future of Republican zealots everywhere.
Of course we won’t resist, we’ll make Bush’s stomping of Iraq look like a tough war. Then we can get to the part we care about: We get rebuilt. California’s economy rockets out of the doldrums, fueled by the taxpayers of all the other states, and we’re back in our hot tubs guzzling in no time. And if the corporate friends of the administration make out like bandits, what do we care? It’s just a coincidence.
