“Iraq For Sale”

by tristero

I saw a preview of the new Robert Greeenwald film, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers last night and it’s very good. It’s directed at any and all Americans who “support the troops,” especially those who support the war and assume that the Bush administration is doing everything possible to prevent the troops from suffering unnecessary harm.

And if you support the troops, for any reason, you should be furious at the incredible extent of the greed, corruption, and incompetence of the companies the Bush administration is contracting with over in Iraq. We’re talking KBR/Halliburton, CACI, Titan, and of course, Blackwater, all of which have placed their CEOs’ obscene compensation above the safety of American soldiers, of innocent Iraqi civilians, and even of their own employees.

How obscene, exactly, is the compensation of these CEOs? We’re talking around $40 million each for the most part. Paid for with your tax dollars, of course. And what do the troops get? They get lousy food and stand in line for hours for the privilege. They get an incompetent laundry service that charges you and me a C note per each soldier’s wash. They get translators that barely speak the languages or understand how to translate. They get torturers and psychopaths – drooling sadists accountable to no one who have been doing their level best to destroy any small vestiges of goodwill towards the US and its soldiers that might still exist beyond our borders. And the troops get rubbed in the face every day with the simple fact that they’ve been played for real suckers. That’s because the “private contractors” – the euphemism of choice for mercernaries these days – make about 6 times what the average soldier makes, often for doing the same job.

None of this is news to many of us, of course. But it may very well be news for lots of Americans, if this film gets seen by the kinds of people who are interviewed in it: middle-class men and women who were bamboozled by the Bush administration into a war whose only point appears to be the further enrichment of the already rich over the bodies of dead American patriots and dead Iraqis. Some liberals might object that the film finesses the larger point, that none of these Americans should be over there in the first place. In fact, it simply makes that point in language that Americans to the right of Colin Powell can understand. And it pulls no punches.

Several times people in the film bluntly accuse the men running KBR, Blackwater, et al of deliberately endangering the lives of soldiers and their own employees in pursuit of profit. The term “cold-blooded murderers” is too kind a word to describe these men. The same goes for high-placed officials in this, the worst of all American presidencies, who have blocked investigations into the war profiteers and in fact rehired them, not only for Iraq but also to slurp up funds for the cleanup after Katrina.

Even for those of us who already know all this, the film dramatizes the sheer extent of it in such a way as to make it infuriating all over again. A must see.

[UPDATE] I Arianna says that “Iraq For Sale” will make a good tool for Democrats in Red States as it paints Republicans as corrupt, cynical, and even murderous in their pursuit of profit. True enough, and that’s probably what Dems should do, but I wouldn’t quite put it that way. The film is less about Republicans and Republicanism per se as it is about the betrayal of American soldiers and American interests overseas by very specific companies and very specific politicians (all of whom are, well, Republican). Its specificity is what gives it its power; it’s not a rant against Republicanism except by implication, and so it comes across as being bipartisan.

Even more to the point, the film doesn’t give any indication that Democrats care deeply about this issue. Few major Democrats in the legislature appear willing to oppose the profiteers with the intensity it will take to bring them to justice (and many surely have committed serious crimes against Iraqis, American civilians, and American soldiers). Where’s Hillary, where’s Schumer, where’s Reid, where’s Pelosi? My recollection is that the most prominent Dems in the film are Dodd and Waxman, no slouches, but where are the so-called top leaders? I don’t remember any of them appearing (and please let me know if I’m wrong, that many of the majors are, in fact, been on top of this issue in a deeply serious way).

All Americans – even Republicans – should be appalled by the disgraceful behavior of the war profiteers. It’s simply a film anyone who supports the troops should see.