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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (241786)	7/15/2005 2:05:21 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570999

Outrageous Outtakes Ari Berman 2 hours, 19 minutes ago The Nation -- Before the war, Paul Wolfowitz famously predicted that Iraq's oil revenues would pay for the country's reconstruction. Twenty-eight months later, Iraq may bring in $20 billion in revenues but "very little, if any, of that money will actually be used in the country's stalled reconstruction," the Christian Science Monitor reports. The botched occupation, coupled with smuggling and "outright theft" of revenues, are major reasons why. Case in point: $9 billion of oil money given to Iraqi ministries last year went missing. Millions more were recently discovered after being "misplaced" in unauthorized Iraqi and Jordanian bank accounts. Much of the legit funding is earmarked for the Iraqi budget. The rest, presumably, goes toward Halliburton. Judges back in America seem none too concerned about Iraq's corporate lawlessness. A Federal District Court judge ruled this week that Iraqi oil money dished out to American contractors by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004 is not subject to the False Claims Act. The Act, which rewards corporate whistleblowers and penalizes corporate criminals, "is widely regarded as the government's most potent weapon against contractor fraud," the New York Times reports. A Department of Justice lawsuit against Custer Battles, a now-defunct Virginia contractor who double-billed its salaries and charged the Army for work never completed, will still move forward, but whistleblower cases in their early stages may not. "Abu Ghraib Tactics Were First Used at Guantanamo," the Washington Post wrote yesterday. How's that for Dick Durbin's vindication?! A military investigation released to the Senate Armed Services Committee strongly debunks the claim by the Pentagon that prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was the product of a few bad apples. In fact, the general who set up US operations at Abu Ghraib first commanded the detention facilities at Gitmo, where he introduced the hoods and attacks dogs which became staple images of last April's prison scandal. Of course, the Post's conservative uptown competitor, the Washington Times, adopted a sunnier (and entirely misleading) approach to the new revelations: "No Gitmo torture, Senate panel told." The Republican political establishment of Ohio is knee-deep in a "pay-to-profit" political scandal "in which millions of dollars were raised by trading unbid state contracts for campaign contributions," the Associated Press reports. As a last recourse, Ohio's Republican chief justice, Thomas Hoyer, recently dismissed all 34 judges on the Cuyahoga County court set to hear the corruption charges. Hoyer's problem: a majority of the court appointees are Democrats. In Hoyer's view, only Republicans are qualified to judge a case about Republican corruption. The law need not apply. ** And finally, a Orlando ministry ("Zion's Hope") devoted to converting Jews to Christianity has been granted a property tax exemption for its Christian theme park. In what can only be described as the set of Aladdin designed by Pat Robertson, the "Holy Land Experience" presents a "Bible-believing, Christ-centered ministry" in Orlando's own version of Judea. The $16 million, 15-acre park opened in 2001, was originally deemed a bizarre tourist attraction with only limited exemptions. Now tax-free Bible study is held in the "Temple of Kings," as true believers munch on "Goliath Burgers."