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Hissyspit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 02:54 AM
Original message
Families Demand Answers in Iraq Electrocutions
Edited on Sat May-10-08 03:02 AM by Hissyspit
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Families demand answers in Iraq electrocutions

Three years and three months before Ryan Maseth stepped into a shower Jan. 2 in Baghdad, an Army safety specialist identified electrocution as a "killer of soldiers."

Still, when the 24-year-old Shaler Green Beret turned on the faucet, water flowed from a pump powered by an improperly grounded electrical system manufactured in China. Borne on water, an electrical current surged through the pipes, out of the shower head and into his body.

His heart stopped.

Maseth's electrocution, the latest of 14 among service personnel in Iraq since 2003, set into motion a series of events to determine how and why these deaths occurred. In March, a congressional committee started an investigation into all Iraq electrocutions. A month later, Maseth's parents sued the defense contractor responsible for the Chinese electrical system, alleging it failed to meet U.S. safety standards. And now, families across the country say they want more detailed information about the earlier deaths of loved ones. "I want answers, not revenge," said Bart Cedergren of South St. Paul, Minn., who suspects his son died of electrocution Sept. 11, 2005, near Iskandariyah, Iraq.

- snip -

Altmire immediately asked U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California's 30th District and chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to investigate the deaths. Waxman wrote to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, seeking all reports concerning Maseth and the names of all U.S. military or contractor personnel injured or killed by electrocution in Iraq facilities maintained under U.S. government contracts. Waxman asked for contracts, orders and reports submitted by and issued to Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc., a Texas-based defense contractor whose nearly 18,000 employees in Iraq perform building maintenance and other services for the military at facilities where the electrocutions occurred. Karen Lightfoot, Waxman's spokeswoman, said the committee received some documents and expects to receive more as the investigation advances

Read more: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_566809.html





Ryan Maseth

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jeff30997 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 04:12 AM
Response to Original message
1. K&R
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Divine Discontent Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 04:35 AM
Response to Original message
2. the gov't just doesn't give a F(*(inG SH*T!
it's all about their profits for their buddies in connections at all levels of profiteering involved in this debacle of an invasion... how many new millionaires & billionaires have been made because of the invasion - That's my question...

Our country wallows in muck when the GOP drives the truck...
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judasdisney Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 04:44 AM
Response to Original message
3. "Military families"? Or Leftist-linked Al Qaeda sympathizers?
Why do they hate America?
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clixtox Donating Member (941 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 05:47 AM
Response to Original message
4. The "contractors" are above any laws and answer to no one, anywhere.


These opportunistic, deadly, treasonous scum haven't had any more consequences for their criminality other than having their wrists slapped so far, and it is going to continue be that way forever or until the war-mongering profiteers from both the major political parties, neo-con and neo-lib, are pried loose from the reins of OUR government.

The whole horrendous criminal enterprise in Iraq has been piteously bungled on absolutely every level from the very top in the executive branch to the thousands of clueless poor grunts sacrificed so stupidly. Every complacent person and compliant institution in between is complicit and culpable. The congress, the pentagon, the press, and the people of Amerikka, in whose name the carnage is perpetrated, are guilty of mass and individual murders, torture, numerous rapes of their own fellow employees and countless Iraqi women and children, kidnapping, infrastructure decimation, theft, gross ineptitude, lying, bribery, treason, poisoning, negligence and much, much more mayhem and disgusting war crimes..

The only truly universal motivation or ethic in Amerikkka is cupidity. Greed is the religion that drives the whole debacle. Capitalism is basically greed and exploitation. "Our" vast government and vast corporations are colluding to squander the world's resources, squash the spirit of the people and steal from our children's future to fuel their complete ruination of the planet Earth and their piggish rapacity.

While the American people twist in the dangerous winds of fascism and the "New World Order", the "Homeland Security" Department is eroding our constitutional protections guaranteed by the first ten amendments to our constitution, THE BILL OF RIGHTS. These guarantees are what patriots have died to protect, from our own revolutionary war against the British through the Second World War. Basically these are what protect us from being treated like those citizens of Iran, North Korea, Nazi Germany, Saudi Arabia, etc. This document is our main protection from government enslavement, or it was supposed to be.

The same forces that placed the treasonous contractors above the law is utilizing brand new repressive laws to control and enslave us Americans.

Really!

I wish I was joking or that this was just the corny plot to some scary political monster movie. Tragically we have been sold down the river by our spineless political representatives, our greedy conscienceless corporations and an ignorant, dumbed down populace willing to be bamboozled as long as they can consume profligately and unsustainably.

The present situation cries out for radical, fundamental changes, literally a second American revolution. The need and provocation is as evident today as it was when the original DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was promulgated in 1776....

.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...
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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 06:18 AM
Response to Original message
5. Disgraceful that they are allowed to get away with this. Here's
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soothsayer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 06:30 AM
Response to Original message
6. How are they able to get away with a 'Dems hate the troops' meme when it's clear THEY do
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H8fascistcons Donating Member (172 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 09:22 AM
Response to Reply #6
8. That's Easy....
Soothsayer, they can get away with it because we are represented on the Democratic side by a bunch of "suck ass" wimps and losers. Throw in some criminal Fascist enablers like Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer, Jay Rockefeller, Ted Kennedy, Rahm Emanuel and you have the "perfect storm" of criminal Democrats who are "Hell bent" on protecting the criminal republicans at any cost, even at the expense of our soldiers lives...
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Hissyspit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 09:15 AM
Response to Original message
7. .
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Barrett808 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat May-10-08 11:06 AM
Response to Original message
9. "If anything, it's the Iraqis' fault. Their rules for electrical grounding are not as strict..."
During an interview on the fourth anniversary of his son's death in a Mosul swimming pool, Whitham did not blame the military or the defense contractor.

"If anything, it's the Iraqis' fault. Their rules for electrical grounding are not as strict as ours," Whitham said.


Wow. Just wow.
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