Privatization doesn’t work! It has brought us nothing but scandals, like the deregulation energy debacle in California a few years back, huge corporate disintegrations like Enron (ironically tied to the CA energy scandals), and the worst disgrace of them all, the horrifying actions of private companies in Iraq.
The appalling actions of Blackwater can fill volumes on why privatization doesn’t work. It’s tied the U.S. mission to the actions of a rag-tag group of misfits armed with assault riffles and RPGs. While they’ve been in the headlines a lot lately, they are now, apparently, only part of the privatization problem in Iraq.
Halliburton & former child company KBR, contractors in Iraq, have been implicated for rape charges and are being sued for punitive and compensatory damages. The accusations are pretty serious, not to mention disturbing. What’s even worse, the accuser, Jamie Leigh Jones, is one of a growing number of victims coming forward to accuse KBR of sexual misconduct. The recent actions have prompted one Texas Republican Congressman to call Iraq, “the wild West.”
Halliburton is claiming it’s been wrongly named in the lawsuit. Unfortunately for justice, the evil corporation may be right. After all, they so cleverly took their former company, KBR, and made it into it’s own separate entity for just such an occasion. Can they get any more evil than this? Seriously, the Devil himself must be inspired.
War is hell, and technology cannot clean the blood as quickly as it produces it. Bringing capitalism to the battlefield is a bad idea and complicates the already confusing war zone of Iraq, where us and them can be answered 10 different ways. It’s just another reminder why it doesn’t make sense to hire private companies to do what our soldiers can just as easily do, and did for so many decades, for far less money I might add.
Now had these rape charges come from within the military, which did occur in the miserable Tailhook scandal, I can’t say that justice would be all that remarkable either. However, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about the prospects of suing companies that recently moved their base of operations to Dubai, like Halliburton.
Despite my undying belief in the Constitution, I have little faith in the people who currently run the U.S. government. That being said, I trust Corporate America even less. They serve only one nation, one God and one philosophy: money. Corporate America is an oxymoron anyway. Multi-national corporations have no nationality (it’s even in the name). Like Halliburton and Wal-Mart, they betray their supposed home nation’s interests time and time again to a level that is virtually treasonous.
The recent actions of Halliburton and it’s partner in crime, KBR have created yet another self-inflicted wound that reminds us, that America will continue to bleed while it battles desert snakes for all the wrong reasons.
