Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Private Lawyers Suing Iraq Contractors for Fraud; Justice Dept Obstructing

Ohhhh. It's hard to be aware, awake, alive. Just watching the news or reading the paper, or opening up your Vanity Fair.

I avoided William Langewiesche's piece - The Mega-Bunker of Baghdad - because obviously that would raise anyone's blood pressure. I admire this guy's great writing and reporting - the piece he did on the prison riots of Brazil last year riveted. And he's hot; after hearing him at a talk last May at Politics and Prose my girlfriend nicknamed him, Mr. Linger-awhile because he liked to talk and talk and talk. That piece is not available online so you just have to go buy the November issue (John and Jackie Kennedy on cover) if you want to read it. I've not been able to bring myself to do so yet.

So I detoured to read the lengthy excerpt from Sally Bendell Smith's new book about the Clinton marriage, White House Civil War. It makes a pretty convincing case that but for Hillary's ambitions Gore would have won in 2000. It was sickening to read. Sickening because of the fear that it might not all be in the past. Smith's book also garnered a weaker one pager in this week's Newsweek, well entitled Not Really Feeling It. It's the top story at Newsweek online.

Disclosure: Intellectual honesty compels me to note that Sally Bendell Smith also wrote a Princess Diana biography which infamously put forth the theory that the Princess had Borderline Personality Disorder. That's been pretty much discredited elsewhere, most recently in Tina Brown's book. So while the Diana biography undermined Smith's credibility with me; she's now redeemed it. I believed every word of what I've so far read by Smith on Clinton mostly because it fits in with other pieces I've read on Hillary (see review in The New Yorker, The Lady Vanishes, of the Clinton books out this past Spring, in pertinent part: “That was it for me in terms of Hillary Clinton,” Senator Bill Bradley, of New Jersey, told Bernstein. “You don’t tell members of the Senate you are going to demonize them. It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy.” --- hmm -- doesn't that sound like any one named Bush???)

Had Clinton not run for Senate, then there'd not have been this fiasco with contractors with the Defense Department and Justice asleep. The People vs. the Profiteers by David Rose is UNBELIEVABLE and motivated me to post this blog. I am amazed that the news is this piece hasn't been featured elsewhere. Has anyone seen any television coverage on this, and the work that attorney Grayson is doing on behalf of US taxpayers?

I learned of Gonzalez's connection to Halliburton and KBR. The misdeeds of contractors hurting our soldiers - apparently not just gunning down innocent Iraqi citizens in the streets. Could Jeff Prince be any more repulsive? Private means private - not when it's ill-gotten gains from corrupt politicians using taxpayer money. The Today Show even gave him a forum to defend himself.

Rose's piece is horrifying and a powerful (powerfully depressing) story. Here's just one thought:
"Would it be so outlandish, he (Grayson, a lawyer suing on behalf of government whistle blowers) wonders, to suggest that the same Justice Department that has been accused of firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons might be suppressing war-related fraud claims for political purposes?"

I hate Hillary.

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