soldiers. and. a right-to-life.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

• unSupporting Our Troops

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-MA): So it is a little astonishing to me, and I think to others, the planning for what is going to happen to our troops, their meals, their water, their housing, the essentials of life, their protection, all of that doesn’t even begin to happen until May 2003, after Baghdad falls, but in the meantime the administration had your company planning for Iraq’s oil infrastructure months before it had a plan how to support our troops.

We’ve allowed our government to send our troops into harms way to protect the interests of private corporations. This link to your left… it’s to the 384,000 hits one gets when one googles “oil company profits since Iraq war.”

We’ve allowed our government to exploit all of us, both military and civilian, through blatant war profiteering. This link? To the 453,000 hits one gets when one googles “Iraq war profiteering.”

The war being waged on Iraq is not in the national interest of the United States of America. The war being waged on Iraq is specific in its scope and objectives: to control oil in the Middle East, to secure a continued physical presence in that region to maintain control of oil, and to deplete the Armed Forces of these United States in order to outsource its function to a mercenary army.

With almost no congressional oversight and even less public awareness, the Bush administration has more than doubled the size of the U.S. occupation through the use of private war companies. There are now almost 200,000 private “contractors” deployed in Iraq by Washington. This means that U.S. military forces in Iraq are now outsized by a coalition of billing corporations whose actions go largely unmonitored and whose crimes are virtually unpunished.

“The billions of dollars being doled out to these companies,” Ambassador Joe Wilson argues, “makes of them a very powerful interest group within the American body politic and an interest group that is in fact armed. And the question will arise at some time: to whom do they owe their loyalty?”

And while mercenaries can make between $650 and $1,000/day, this doesn’t seem supportive of our troops, does it? On the contrary… I found 1.5 million plus hits for Iraqi Veteran Suicides and over 500,000 for Iraq Veteran Health Problems. Then there are the more than 778,000 entries for Iraq vet homelessness. And when one queries Iraq war stop loss, an astounding 1,720,000 entries pop up.

Then there’s this. When one googles Iraq war atrocities,  two million three hundred forty thousand pop up. Yup. The heavy stuff. Life, limb, and sanity aren’t enough of a sacrifice. It appears our military men and women need to put their souls on the line as well…

But we need something funny, right? Like how KB&R, a subsidiary of Halliburton, has avoided paying $500 million in taxes. Yet BushCo continues to hire them. Despite the fact that Americans are drowing in debt from this war and to add insult to injury, they give our money to these blood suckers. Funny, right?

So this, in the bizarro universe, is what it means. to. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS.

• The Right-To-An Impoverished-Life In The USofA

I’m sure you’re wondering why I added “right-to-life” in the title. Because I felt like it. Because it’s a double feature, from the same crowd that brings us SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. It’s another of the multitude of ways in which they fuck us. It’s the ultimate in double-speak. Premeditated lying.  RIGHT TO LIFE. Because the politicians and theocrats don’t really mean a life with rights. They simply mean a right to be born. After that, sucker, you’re on your own. Yeah. Since the compassionate conservative crowd has taken over, we find poverty has increased by SIX MILLION PEOPLE. Increased by six million. In that number, you’ll find  1.4 million more children living in poverty.

The total number of children living in poverty is estimated at 13 MILLION.

The Right-To-Life crowd can boast some pretty impressive statistics, with an estimated 1.1 million Iraqis dead and millions of refugees. Over 4,000 American soldiers are dead, with an estimated 100,000 injured.

And the legacy of the compassionate conservative, the embracer and insister of the RIGHT-TO-LIFE, just gets better…

• Inflation-adjusted median household income in 2000………………………………….$49,158

• Median household income in 2006………………………………………………………….$48,201

• 8-year increase in median household income in 2001………………………………….$6,000

• 6-year decrease in median household income in 2007…………………………………$1,100

  ^{source: U.S. Census 2000 and 2006}

• Salary of full-time minimum wage employee without vacation, 2007……………….$12,168

• Average salary of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company……………………………….$15.2 million

  ^{source: CEO Compensation, Forbes Magazine. May 3, 2007}

• Number of Americans living in poverty in 2001………………………………………….31.6 million

• Number of Americans living in poverty in 2008………………………………………….36.5 million

  ^{source: U.S. Census Bureau, Aug. 2007}

• % Americans receiving employment-based health insurance, 2000…………………64.2

• % Americans receiving employment-based health insurance, 2006…………………59.7

  ^{source: U.S. Census Bureau, August 2007}

• Inflation-adjusted annual cost of family health insurance premium in 2000……….$7,643

• Annual cost of a family health insurance premium in 2006……………………………$11,480

  ^{source: Employer Health Benefits 2000 and 2006, Kaiser Family Foundation & Health Research & Educational Trust}

• Number of Americans without health insurance in 2000………………………………..38.4 million

• Number of Americans without health insurance in 2006………………………………..46.9 million

• Number of children without health insurance………………………………………………8.7 million

  ^{source: U.S. Census Bureau}

• Number of Bush vetoes for additional health insurance for children……………2

^{Above data compiled by OurFuture.Org}

All this, and yet Exxon Mobil Corp. posted the largest annual profit in U.S. history. And tax benefits and new contracts send Halliburton profits soaring. Yeah. This compassionate conservative right-To-life advocating group hires Blackwater to go to Iraq, where its mercenaries are killing for profit. This, while evangelicals become a growing force in the Military Chaplain Corps.

We can stop this madness. We can stop this madness. We can. We have to. We will.