Would you accept a million bucks if you knew soldiers & innocents died for it?

[Philosoraptor]

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200703/032007.html

No Law expressly prohibits War Profiteering. Why the hell not?

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WASHINGTON (Tuesday, March 20) – The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, “''Combating War Profiteering: Are We Doing Enough To Investigate and Prosecute Contracting Fraud and Abuse in Iraq?” on Tuesday focusing on the widespread contracting fraud, waste and abuse in Iraq.

“Our Nation has sent nearly half a trillion dollars to Iraq with few or no controls over how that money has been spent. The Bush Administration has chosen to use private contractors in this war to a greater extent than at any time in our history. This trend has raised the cost of this military action by untold billions,” said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chairman of the Committee. “Predictably, these actions by the Bush Administration have led to widespread fraud, waste and abuse in Iraq, on a scale that may be unprecedented in our history.”

Leahy has introduced the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 (S. 119), which would create criminal penalties for war profiteers and cheats who would exploit taxpayer-funded efforts in Iraq and elsewhere around the world. The legislation builds on earlier efforts by Chairman Leahy, who is also a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, to crack down on this type of rampant fraud and abuse. It is similar to legislation Leahy introduced in 2003, that was subsequently passed by the Senate as part of an appropriations bill but later torpedoed by the White House and the House Republican leadership, which stripped out the Leahy provision.

Congress has sent billions upon billions of dollars to Iraq with too little accountability and too few financial controls. More than $50 billion of this money has gone to private contractors hired to guard bases, drive trucks, feed and shelter the troops and rebuild the country. Too much of this money is unaccounted for, and many of the facilities and services that these funds were supposed to pay for are still nonexistent. We in Congress must ask: Where did all the money go? We need to press for more accountability over the use and abuse of billions of taxpayers’ dollars sent as development aid to Iraq.

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Why do we even let war profiteers live among decent people? And why do we have a pres. and vice pres. who are war profiteering swine?

3,500 dead soldiers mean only one thing to these monsters, profits, so that on their death beds they can be at peace at having accumulated so much money with so little personal sacrifice.

[maine_raptor]

1. If there was an anti-profiteering law, then

there would be no incentive for the MIC to gin up a war in the first place.

[porphyrian]

2. Who would get it if I didn't accept it myself? - n/t

[Philosoraptor]

3. Even Ceasar shared the spoils of war with the citizens.

Where's our cut of all these billions?

[maine_raptor]

5. Caesar would hold Games for the average Roman.

Sword-fights, to the death, between POW's. Maybe throw in a few wild beast hunts and executions to mix things up. Oh yea, free bread too.

Aside from not having to go to the Colosseum anymore (it comes to you via HD TV nowadays), I don't really see how things have changed all that much.

[JVS]

4. sure. soldiers are currently getting killed and i don't get squat, wetting my beak would be better

;-)

On a more serious note, how can war profiteering be prevented? There is no way that you can have a privately owned economy at war without someone turning a profit. If the government is going to tear another country apart, someone's going to have to sell the bombs, guns, planes, food, steel, paper, computers, oil, etc. Then when you get to the rebuilding phase, someone's got to sell the stuff to put the place back together again.

[liberal renegade]

6. and we certainly know who the profiteers are, don't we...