By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Five years in Iraq.

That’s 1,825 days since “Shock and Awe” lit up the skies above Baghdad, all of which was captured live and in living color by unblinking CNN cameras with unobstructed views of the carnage.

3,991 United States soldiers have died in Iraq since then. That’s a little more than two United States soldiers killed per day. Every day. For five years.

More than 40,000 United States soldiers have been wounded in Iraq since then. That’s more than twenty-one United States soldiers wounded per day. Every day. For five years.

The last Congressional Budget Office report on the monetary cost for Iraq dates back to October of last year, and tabulates that cost at $421 billion. The CBO cannot be censured should that number prove lower than what has actually been spent, as it is understood that all the other millions pilfered by profiteers and passed on in bribes were not duly recorded in the books, and thus cannot be accounted for.

The CBO’s number must be considered inaccurately low on spec, thanks in part to a nifty little cash-and-carry hootenanny from three years ago in July of 2005. A report from the UK Guardian tells the tale: “The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4 billion appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance ‘security’.”

But wait, there’s more: “Pilfering was rife,” continues the Guardian report. “Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11 million and $26 million worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the Coalition Provisional Authority was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work. Some $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for ‘personnel not in the field performing work’ and ‘other improper charges’ on just one oil pipeline repair contract.”

This one example, just one among the multitudes, makes the existence of significant gaps in the accuracy of the information supporting the CBO’s conclusions a safe assumption. As for the money not present on the official balance sheets, well … to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith, that cash went to the same place your lap goes when you stand up. Even the guys who stole it probably don’t know what happened to it all, not completely, not for certain. If the Federal Reserve had stuffed those bills into the belly of a ballistic missile and launched the thing into deep space, they’d know exactly as much about where it is as they now know about what happened to the cash literally dumped into Iraq. It’s somewhere, and nowhere, and all the way gone.

$421 billion spent over 1,825 days in Iraq comes to $230,684,931 plus change per day. Every day. For five years.

And that number is low.

Continue reading →

Andre Latallade, hip-hop artist and prison rights activist also known as Capital-“X”, will walk from New Jersey to Texas to advocate for the abolishment of capital punishment in the United States.
Latallade will begin his “Walk 4 Life” on March 31, 2008 at 5AM at the state house in Trenton, NJ, the first state to abolish the death penalty in the last 40 years. He will walk 1700 miles through 10 of the highest executing states and arrive at Governors mansion in Austin, Texas, “the busiest killing state in the country,” to await the Supreme Courts’ ruling on the constitutionality of capital punishment.

Latallade estimates it will take 54 days walking eight hours a day at 3.5 mph. He will take a break to participate on a panel at the Hip Hop Association’s HHEAL Festival in the Bronx, New York April 18-20.

Latallade wants to “build bridges between two groups; the families of murder victims and the families of the condemned. Separated we call for life or death, I say we unite and call for resolution.” Latallade promotes life sentences without parole as opposed to death sentences. Currently there is a moratorium on state-sanctioned executions while the Supreme Court rules whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

“I want to unite everybody fighting injustice and mobilize the international community to put pressure on the USA to abolish the death penalty. I have Italy, England, France, Denmark and Croatia behind me and am also reaching out to Puerto Rico.” Non-profit organizations, human rights groups, and abolitionists from around the world are supportive of Andre on his “Walk 4 Life.”

Anyone interested in supporting “X” can e-mail him at projectrevolution2010@gmail.com. Donate online here. Funds raised during the walk will go to victims’ families and abolitionist groups.

View X’s “Walk 4 Life” promotional clip and daily video blog documenting his journey at www.ONLOQ.com, a hip hop network that will be covering his expedition. There you can also view his profile and online show, “From the Frontlines.”

By Eric Lotke
Campaign for America’s Future

Modern conservatism is dying. There’s still an election to be held, but conservatism as we’ve known it since Ronald Reagan is failing – ground down in the desert of Iraq, drowned in the floods of Hurricane Katrina, foreclosed by the housing crisis and poisoned by toys imported from China.

The American people are figuring this out. While conservatives repeat their time-worn slogans – “small government, low taxes, high security” – the American people are living the consequences.

We’ve seen eight years of a conservative presidency, six years overlapping with a conservative Congress, and 30 years of broadly conservative ideology. Now reality is showing how the values embodied in those slogans have been betrayed.

Conservatives say “shrink government.” We get inadequate levees, exploding steam pipes and schools without textbooks. Conservatives say “deregulate,” and now Thomas the Tank Engine is painted with toxic lead. Conservatives say “low taxes,” but it primarily applies to millionaires, billionaires and crony corporations.

What follows is a history of these problems, and the direction people want to go instead.

Appealing Slogans, Disastrous Results

The conservative shibboleth – “small government, low taxes, high security” – has timeless appeal, founded on genuine moral and constitutional values. But the application of those values by today’s conservatives is frightening.

Shrinking Government

“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
– Ronald Reagan, First inaugural address, January 1981.

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
– Grover Norquist, Executive Director, Americans for Tax Reform.

The modern conservative movement is united less by belief in small government – a traditional constitutional value – than by disdain for government. They don’t just want to shrink it. They want to drown it in a bathtub. Such disdain courts exactly the kind of disasters we got.

Hurricane Katrina. A shrunken government failed in fundamental responsibilities when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Crucial levees had been left to rot and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been “systematically downgraded and all but dismantled.” Reconstruction remains a forgotten promise.

Continue reading →

The head of Sen. Barack Obama’s church rallies his congregation. Shades of things to come?