Poison for the Troops

Today the Pentagon reported that our Army is stretched unreasonably, almost to the breaking point. I wonder if the reason there has been such a recruiting slump is that, not only are there myriad dangers in the New Iraq, but you can't even trust the contractors:

Troops and civilians at a U.S. military base in Iraq were exposed to contaminated water last year and employees for the responsible contractor, Halliburton, couldn't get their company to inform camp residents, according to interviews and internal company documents.

Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, disputes the allegations about water problems at Camp Junction City, in Ramadi, even though they were made by its own employees and documented in company e-mails.

"We exposed a base camp population (military and civilian) to a water source that was not treated," said a July 15, 2005, memo written by William Granger, the official for Halliburton's KBR subsidiary who was in charge of water quality in Iraq and Kuwait.

"The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River," Granger wrote in one of several documents. The Associated Press obtained the documents from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry into the allegations Monday.

While bottled water was available for drinking, the contaminated water was used for virtually everything else, including handwashing, laundry, bathing and making coffee, said water expert Ben Carter of Cedar City, Utah.

The Euphrates River routinely has dead Iraqis floating in it. This is what Halliburton has been giving our troops.

This movie Why We Fight that's out now looks very intriguing to me, because it documents the rise to prominence of the military-industrial complex, and how decisions on foreign policy have more to do with what the contractors want than national security. You have to wonder why the Army has contracted out so much of the work in Iraq. Defense budgets are still sky-high; instead of the money going to the military, it gets shuttled to private contractors. This is supposed to REDUCE corruption and mismanagement, we're told. Iraq is the poster child for both.

We owe it to the troops not to make them sick. We owe it to them to provide them with body armor that could save their lives. We owe it to them not to tell them to take off this life-saving body armor or risk losing medical benefits (this is the most shocking; it's almost like somebody doesn't WANT these guys to come home).

And incidentally, the GOP isn't exactly getting off their asses to fix this:

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who will chair the session, held a number of similar inquiries last year on contracting abuses in Iraq. He said Democrats were acting on their own because they had not been able to persuade Republican committee chairmen to investigate.

Support the troops my ass. How many times have I said that?