Despite all the obsession in the blogosphere these last few days regarding Senator Dodd’s noble effort to block a revision to the FISA law that would grant amnesty to telecomunications companies who acquiesced in Bush’s illegal spying program, Harry Reid’s cave in to Democratic activists, and Bush’s threats to veto any FISA bill that puts the interest of ordinary Americans over the interests of telecommunications companies who violated the law so the NSA could illegally eavesdrop on your telephone calls and email communications, the rest of the planet didn’t stop revolving, the Sun didn’t stop in the sky (as it allegedly did for Joshua during the battle of Gibeon), and other relevant news events continued to occur. Here is just one of the stories you might have missed:
Fifteen Security Guards for the American company US Protection and Investigations were killed yesterday in a Taliban ambush in Western Afghanistan:
Taliban fighters ambushed a convoy of fuel tankers travelling to Helmand province in Afghanistan today, killing 15 guards employed by a US security company.
The men, who worked for the Texas-based US Protection and Investigations (USPI), were travelling in a group of between six and eight vehicles guarding the tankers when the militants attacked.
A further five guards were wounded, according to Muhaidin Baluch, the governor of Farah province in west Afghanistan, where the attack took place. One fuel tanker was set on fire and one of the guards’ vehicles was taken.
The tankers were travelling from the western city of Herat to a military outpost in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place this year between Nato and Afghan troops and the Taliban.
Good thing Bush never declared “major combat operations are over” regarding the Taliban and Al Qaida, because six years later they are still fighting, and regaining control of, much of the territory that was lost to them in 2001-02 after we took our military assets off to fight that WMD hiding, terrorist supporting, mushroom cloud making, Hitler-like threat to all mankind, Saddam Hussein. Well, Hussein is dead and gone, his regime is kaput, but our miltary is still bogged down occupying Iraq and Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaida and the Taliban seem to be doing just fine thank-you very much.
Meanwhile, our tax dollars are financing the private armies guarding convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq just like the one which was ambushed above, or carrying out other missions typically reserved fro the military in past conflicts. We don’t usually hear about the deaths of these people because they aren’t officially counted as part of our military, but for all intents and purposes they should be. They are employed, as are our other “contractors,” at overinflated prices, by our government to carry out military missions. Which is one reason the Bush administration likes to use them.
No one in the American media reports on the deaths of “mercenaries” like they do on the deaths US troops, and his republican supporters get to siphon off our tax dollars to enlarge their companies’ profits. It’s a win-win for Bush — no negative publicity about his endless “War on Terror” while he bleeds the coffers of the federal government dry for the benefit of his friends. How many billions of dollars have been siphoned off to Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, and so many other private companies providing “services” to Mr. Bush’s war?
How much money has been wasted so that rich right wing nut case bastards like Eric Prince and his company Blackwater can wallow in record profits? How well does Dick Cheney and his friends at Halliburton and elsewhere rejoice each year when their corporations issue dividend checks? And how many of these lawless, unaccountable mercenaries we employ have committed war crimes which go unreported and unknown except to their victims’ families? Indeed, how many of these guns for hire have been killed or wounded, only to be replaced unceremoniously by the next round of hires from God knows where?
So be happy for the holidays that Senator Dodd accomplished one small delaying action to try to preserve our constitutional rights. Just don’t forget that in the big picture, where we are losing ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan every day to the people responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001, where our international reputation has been shattered, perhaps beyond repair, and where George Bush continues to get all the funds he needs, with no strings attached, from Congress to keep fighting the wrong war against the wrong people in the wrong place (Iraq), that what Senator Dodd did yesterday represents a very small victory indeed.
