Investigations! (sung to the tune of "Tradition" from "Fiddler")
Oh me, oh my. I can't wait for the new Congress to be seated. I can't wait for the new chairmen, especially Henry Waxman to start holding hearings and issuing subpoenas. Pass the fracking popcorn, bay-bee ... it's gonna be a show! What the rubber-stamp republicans who manifestly claimed to support our troops, and put the beat-down on anyone not deemed sufficiently "Patriotic" by their standards managed to ignore will be fodder for the next twenty years, if the Democrats play this right.
In one instance, Interior officials bought armor to reinforce Army vehicles from a software maker.
There ought to be a whole fucking raft of people going to a federal lock-up over that one, starting with whatever Congressional Committees were charged with overseeing that shit.
Bunnatine (Bunny) H. Greenhouse is a former chief contracting officer (Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (PARC)) of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. On June 27, 2005, she testified to a Democratic Party public committee, alleging specific instances of waste, fraud, and other abuses and irregularities by Halliburton with regard to its operations in Iraq since the Iraq War. She described one of the Halliburton contracts (secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR)—a subsidiary of Halliburton) as "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."
A long-time government employee, Greenhouse was hired by Lieutenant General Joe Ballard in 1997 to oversee contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers. After Ballard retired in 2000, Greenhouse's performance reviews, which had been exemplary throughout her public career, suddenly soured. Greenhouse filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint alleging race and gender discrimination, which her attorney states has never been investigated. In August 2005, she was demoted in what her lawyer called an "obvious reprisal" for her revelations about the Halliburton contracts.
I suspect Ms. Greenhouse may have a lot to say to a House committee not forced to literally hold hearings in a coat closet next to a janitorial supply room and a garbage shaft.
I like my popcorn with just a bit of salt and a bit of real butter ... it's better that way. I figure if I'm gonna die of sodium and fat while watching investigations of the corrupt motherfuckers who were ruining our country while enriching themselves, I'm dying happy.
