The Road From K Street to Yusufiya

[Divernan]

This is one of the most powerful, fact-filled condemnations of Bush and his government that I have read. It was very difficult to select the four allowed paragraphs to quote, so I ended up going with the first two and the last two. PLEASE use the link to read the entire column and include a few other quotes in your replies - it's a knock out of an effort by Mr. Rich.

Frank Rich: The Road From K Street to Yusufiya
Frank Rich, The New York Times, June 24, 2006
http://rozius.blogspot.com/2006/06/frank-rich-road-from-k-street-to.html
(First Two paragraphs)
As the remains of two slaughtered American soldiers, Pfc. Thomas L.
Tucker and Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, were discovered near Yusufiya, Iraq,
on Tuesday, a former White House official named David Safavian was
convicted in Washington on four charges of lying and obstruction of
justice. The three men had something in common: all had enlisted in
government service in a time of war. The similarities end there. The
difference between Mr. Safavian's kind of public service and that of the
soldiers says everything about the disconnect between the government
that has sabotaged this war and the brave men and women who have
volunteered in good faith to fight it.

Nearly 40 cents of every
dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.
In this favor-driven world of fat contracts awarded to the
well-connected, Mr. Safavian was only an aspiring consigliere. He was
not powerful enough or in government long enough to do much beyond petty
reconnaissance for Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying clients. But the Bush
brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and
do-little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout
the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced
victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these
months later. It explains why New York City and Washington just lost 40
percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why American
troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more
than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(Last Two Paragraphs)

If we had honored our grand promises to the people we were liberating,
Dick Cheney's prediction that we would be viewed as liberators might
have had a chance of coming true. Greater loyalty from the civilian
population would have helped reduce the threat to American soldiers, who
are prey to insurgents in places like Yusufiya. But what we've wrought
instead is a variation on Arthur Miller's post-World War II drama, "All
My Sons." Working from a true story, Miller told the tragedy of a shoddy
contractor whose defectively manufactured aircraft parts led directly to
the deaths of a score of Army pilots and implicitly to the death of his
own son.

Back then such a scandal was a shocking anomaly. Franklin D. Roosevelt's
administration, the very model of big government that the current
administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to
run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time
to win World War II than George W. Bush's privatized government is
taking to blow this one.

[babylonsister]

1. The truth is indeed refreshing. I'll bet the wh loathes Rich. Thanks! nt