Sunset at Camp Anaconda, in 2004.
One of my weekend activities is a derivative of the ol’ tried-n-true pastime of “sitting upon one’s rear end, doing nothing.” But in my version, I’m sitting at my workbench, tinkering with plastic models.
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Now, you may recall the models you built as a kid, usually warplanes of some kind. You may have done some other kits too, like Monogram’s old Lunar Lander kit. I remember that one too; mine was a big, gray wad of rubber cement by the time I was finished with it. But the kits that I build these days are of WWII military subjects, primarily Axis and usually armor-specific.
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None of this is the point. But I’m getting there.
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While I’m doing this, I’m listening to the little AM radio I’ve installed on my workbench. Sometimes it’s the usual AM-radio political yap-yap, and sometimes it’s an Astros game. On the weekends, I get to hear several hours of gardening shows (I’m not a gardener), property tax tips, legal advice, and celebrity gossip. But it’s always interrupted every half-hour with the headlines of the moment.
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Oh, and late nights it’s Coast to Coast.
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So, this weekend, on one of these programs (it wasn’t Coast, but other than that I couldn’t say which one it was), when I heard a lady call in. They were talking about the use of Memorial Day observances to protest the Iraq war.
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Now, I don’t have much of an opinion on this one, one way or the other. I mean, on the one side, some people feel that Memorial Day should be just a day of remembrance, and that it’s wrong to use it for political purposes – while others see an obvious link between war and Memorial Day, and feel that it’s perfectly appropriate to use the occasion to voice their opposition.
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Either way, more power to ya. Not talking about the war itself, mind you, but the use of Memorial Day to protest it.
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But this lady who called in said something that I couldn’t let go. It stuck in my heart like a three-inch thorn, and I had trouble sleeping. Of course I didn’t have any trouble eating, but that’s another post.
What she said was that she had a grandson who was serving in Iraq, and that it was up to her to provide for her grandson, by sending packages and what-not – because Halliburton wasn’t doing its job.
Not only that, but there’s clearly no way forward on this issue, because Halliburton has the only supply contract. And that’s not going to change until Bush is out of office.
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Because Halliburton was only brought into Iraq by way of a no-bid, non-competitive contract, through the Cheney connection. Everybody knows that, she said.
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Now, I’m trying (honestly, I am) to take this blog in directions other than political. It would be a major milestone in its evolution if I could just steer my posts away from these petty, narrow-minded issues. In feudal Japan, politicians were considered far beneath the warrior class, and I feel like we’d do well to adopt that particular vestige of the warrior culture.
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But I have to respond to this. I just can’t simply let it go.
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First of all, when people talk about Halliburton in conjunction with the war, they’re usually talking about KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root), which at the beginning of the war was a subsidiary of Halliburton. It was KBR that landed the LOGCAP III contract with the US Government.
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It was also KBR that landed the LOGCAP I contract with the US Government under the Clinton Administration. But no one complained then. No one cried corruption, even thought that was clearly one of the most corrupt administrations in recent memory.
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But never mind that. This woman actually contends that she can do a better job of providing for troops in the field than KBR can.
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This is what I’m been ranting about all this time. She rates a degree of sympathy and compassion, as she's obviously hurting from the fear of what can happen to her grandson. I get that. But when did compassion come to be so one-sided? When did compassion cease to be universal, and come to mean only compassion for her? What about the thousands who've put themselves on that line, out there in the middle of dust-swept nowhere, to feed her grandson? I know they're getting paid, but they're also getting killed. And how much money offsets being burned alive? I mean, at what point do we step back and say, wait a minute, maybe there's something more to civilians being there than a paycheck?
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This is the kind of asinine, inane drivel that pervades the liberal-controlled airwaves and newsprint in this country. This is the kind of moronic, out-of-control hate for the Bush Administration and all things therewith related that we’ve become so accustomed to hearing on a daily basis. It’s really growing to shameful proportions.
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Because not a single thing this woman said is based on fact. Not a single thing. But I can just see thousands of listeners sitting by their radios, nodding in approval.
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Halliburton never had the only support contract. I was in the Middle East on the LOGCAP III contract, with KBR, for nearly a year and a half, and I ran into people from dozens of other companies. Fluor, Bechtel, Parsons, etc etc etc (the list would be quite long), not to mention the non-US companies involved. Dozens of them. Also, there’s no such thing as a no-bid contract. Many companies bid on that contract. KBR won it because of KBR’s proven track record of doing exactly this kind of work (goes back to before WWII). What you've accepted as truth on this is mere BS, based on assumptions about the difference between a contract and a task order. None of this information is difficult to dig up, with a half-hour of research online.
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But we’ve heard all this before. What really offended me was the accusation that our people aren’t doing their job over there. I personally knew a guy who got blown apart bringing a truckload of handy-wipes to a post PX north of Baghdad. I knew another who got abducted by insurgents while delivering a load of hot dinners to some guys on an FOB (I won’t go into what that means, it’s not important for this post).
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It’s true that the profit motive looms big and strong over there. Personally, I see that as a good thing, because that’s what gets a lot of our civilians over there to support those guys. But then, lots of folks disagree with me, and that’s fine. But you can’t say we’re not doing our job. Whatever happens, you can’t say that KBR isn’t supporting the troops. We handle everything from food service to laundry to entertainment. We build everything from gyms to barracks to dining facilities for our troops, embassies for our stuffed suits, and schools, oil infrastructure, military and medical facilities for the Iraqis. We’re laying sidewalks, planting friggin’ trees, surveying roads, and training engineers. We’re helping. We’re doing our part. More than our part, really. And some of our people have died doing it.
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Whether you see what’s going on over there as a good thing, a bad thing, or something in the middle, it’s time some folks take off the anti-Bush glasses for a moment and look at what’s really going on. See it for what it really is. And stop dumping all over the memory of my fallen comrades just to make a political point.
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For you KBR guys:
I’m not a driver and I stayed behind the wire. But I knew some of those April 9th boys, and I understand. These people who sat over here and watched it on the evening news won’t understand, no matter what you say. Don’t let that tarnish their memory.
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