Wednesday, March 30, 2005
"The administration has turned the Iraq occupation into a 'free-fraud zone....'"
Image courtsey Newsweek
Finally!
"The final report of a presidential commission studying American intelligence failures regarding illicit weapons includes a searing critique of how the C.I.A. and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles, according to officials who have seen the report's executive summary." (full article "Panel's Report Assails C.I.A. for Failure on Iraq Weapons" from The New York Times)
"A new report says U.S. intelligence agencies still haven't learned to share information, despite the lessons of 9/11." (Newsweek)
Watchdogs are warning that the contractor corruption in Iraq is out of control:
By many accounts, Custer Battles was a nightmare contractor in Iraq. The company's two principals, Mike Battles and Scott Custer, overcharged occupation authorities by millions of dollars, according to a complaint from two former employees. In the fall of 2004, Deputy General Counsel Steven Shaw of the Air Force asked that the firm be banned from future U.S. contracts, saying Custer Battles had also "created sham companies, whereby [it] fraudulently increased profits by inflating its claimed costs."
Yet when two whistle-blowers sued Custer Battles on behalf of the U.S. government—under a U.S. law intended to punish war profiteering and fraud—the Bush administration declined to take part. [emphasis added] "The government has not lifted a finger to get back the $50 million Custer Battles defrauded it of," says Alan Grayson, a lawyer for the two whistle-blowers, Pete Baldwin and Robert Isakson.
Full article "Follow the Money" from Newsweek.
Bush faces decline in approval ratings.
The Fox Blocker - is this for real? Cute idea but doesn't a remote control (with or without a channel blocker function) work just as well?!
