SOMEBODY STOP ME!!

[hang a left]

I am thisclose to sending a reply all email response to yet another California wingnut racist mexican immigration email.

The email is already constructed but I am afraid to send it. I have typed in the re: Poll/If you really want to get angry read this:

The Great Iraq Swindle
How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury
--From Issue 1034

Posted Aug 23, 2007 8:51 AM

Page 1 2 3 4 5
How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: "We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that "during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member's shirt." The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.

When Congress gets wind of the fias­co, a few members on the House Oversight Committee demand a hearing. To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill -- after all, you're a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this kind of contracting operation for the government. So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of shit.

You blink. Fuck if you know. "I have some conjecture, but that's all it would be" is your deadpan answer.

The room twitters in amazement. It's hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all might have gone.

snip>

much more if you are interested

www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

Not mind you these people are total wingers. I am associated with them through my son's sports teams. They continually send me this crap. I have never commented upon my political leanings, so they think I am one of them.

What would you do??

[Robbien]

1. One small change

I would change the headline from
How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury
to
How an Army of For-Profit Contractors Invaded the U.S. Treasury

If you really want them to read past the headline, all mention of Bush blame needs to wait until later. And really it is not Bush, but the entire cabal of elite corporatists who allowed this to happen.

It would be great if the article got a wider audience.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. I can't imagine what good could come of it...

...I can imagine your son, all of the sudden, instead of being the starting shortstop gets moved to 3rd string right fielder, or some such similar retribution -- just a thought.

[frogcycle]

3. actually, if one could get the close-minded idiots to read the article

it COULD do some good.

If the "America, love it or leave it" crowd actually understood that their country is under attack, they'd be apoplectic.

I agree with the suggestion to remove reference to bush.

Maybe sending this to that crowd would backfire, but it sure as hell needs to get seen by them somehow.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. I tend to be pragmatic in these situations...

...and try to weigh potential benefit against potential loss, and also to assess the risk of the loss scenario actually occurring -- a very subjective process in a case like this.

I can't say I know for sure what's best here -- just throwing in my two cents.

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. Ah...and the other side of that coin...

The son learns it is a good and noble thing to act on principle, to believe that the idiocy must be outed, and that by standing up can make a difference, if only to himself.

In 2001, after Bush had his bloodless coup of the US voting system, many told me that I needed to whisper about my "disagreement" to the situation. I stood tall and spoke loudly, and exercised and stated my First Amendment right to free speech. I was not going to be silenced or live in fear of retribution for the war on the US by BushCo/PNAC. And, I will not tolerate the narrow and bigoted BS emails that are getting greater circulation.

To the OP:
What I do is I let the sender know that the next time they send me any of the crap, I will use "Reply All" in response.
One warning to the relative, friend or co-worker, and that's it. Pretty simple.
And I have used "Reply All" because there is always someone who still thinks I need the real deal "information".

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

7. Lessons of acting on principle are all well and good...

...but let's don't lose sight of what we're talking about here. Hang a Left is receiving emails from some admittedly pretty vile, racist, rednecks who apparently don't know they're not welcome, but this is not the same as being harassed by phone, accosted on the street, or confronted about political ideology at work -- it's just some emails which are not even intended to inflame or incite confrontation with Hang a Left.

Is that serious enough to risk imposing costs on the son by making some kind of confrontational response?

I'm not sure there's any right or wrong answer here -- it's something one has to sort out for themselves.

I don't think a confrontational alternative should be pursued without consulting the son to see how he feels about it first.

[porphyrian]

6. No, do it! - n/t

[hang a left]

8. Thanks for everyone's input.

I have decided against it. You can't change their minds. It would only be inflammatory as I have discovered in the past.

At least I know the truth. I wish it set you free.