I have been thumbing through this thread and it is obvious that very few posters have ever been in the Middle East. If you have not spent time in this area of the world and had dealings with the locals whether business or confrontational you have no idea how silly some of you sound. Forget everything you know about freedom, religion, shopping, bathing, using the toilet, your word of honor meaning that, standing up for your fellow countryman, stealing being wrong, killing being wrong, beating Holly Hell out of women being wrong, etc., etc., etc. You have no idea how things operate on a day to day basis. Everything is a negotiation. Need bread, clothing, electronics. You go to store or bizarre and haggle over price. This can go on for a few seconds or hours. There are no Wally Worlds or Targets. No set in stone prices. Same goes for our dealings with them. They may say they will deliver truckload of bottled water for X amount. But they will also refuse to deliver at last minute unless they get additional funds. Same with everything. Who you going to call a cop. Going to take them to court. They have been wheeling and dealing for a thousand years and they are damn good at it. Catch em' stealing. They laugh. Ali Baba the thief is a hero to these people. I assume most reading this use toilet paper. Not in Iraq. They use their hand and then wash it afterwards. A Texan sees a New Yorker in trouble and they stand together. And visa versa. Not in the Middle East and especially not in Iraq. You can see next door neighbors for 30 years that will not raise a finger to help each other because of some 30 to 1400 year old squabble. And I mean they will sit there and watch them DIE. Your wife {or one of your wives} piss you off. Kick her butt. Right in the bizzare, or theater, or in the street. And I mean you can hurt her bad if you so desire. Want a divorce. Just drag her butt out in the street , say I divorce you three times and she is toast. And she is the one she is shunned by the community. I guess what I am trying to say is you have to forget everything you know and are used to. Once we went in there we were going to get hosed on a lot of our dealing with the locals. And we have to deal with them. They have lots of truck drivers and they use their Scanias, Volvos, Mercedes, etc trucks to haul our guys food, water, plumbing a/c electric supplies, and more than I can list. KBR has a huge truck fleet, but they can only handle so much. I get a kick out of guys like Henry Waxman ragging on KBR. I personally sent him a list of things I saw the US government getting ripped off by KBR officials and foremans and supervisors. He never bothered to answer my repeated reports of theft and waste of money ranging from $100 to over $30,000. Too busy in front of cameras I guess. Same with Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstien. Their husbands have made a fortune off this war. They all sit up there and flap there lips but accomplish nothing. It's all just a big dog and pony show to them. Just do what ever it takes to get more political power. I wish they would do a real audit of Kellogg, Brown & Root. Ask current and former employees for info. I know scores that would cooperate. But that would surely lead to their own friends with their hands in the till. Same with Bush and the GOP.
As for the private security contractors that is a completely different story. I spent time with women and men from Blackwater, Aegis, Erines, Dyn Corp, and a few others. These guys are not the out of control cowboys that Katie Koran and others are trying to make them out to be. For the most part they are very intelligent, very well trained, and very nice people. They operate a lot outside the walls of a friendly Coalition base. This is a lot wilder than our wild wild west ever was. Most have extensive military backgrounds. Lots of Army Rangers and Special Forces, Marine Force Recon, Navy Seals, etc. They have spent years working for us and they are offered a chance to make up to $250,000 a year. But they earn it the hard way. They don't just wander around the streets of Iraq willy nilly. They have to interact with the locals both good and bad. Lots of wheeling and dealing. Lots of bribes. All Hell can break out at any time and often does. They are armed with sidearms and nice automatic weapons. But no gernade launchers, RPG's, tanks, etc. They have to be able to think on the fly. If they are attacked they will fight like mad as they get the heck out of there. I have never been anywhere else where everyone runs to danger instead of away like they do in Iraq. And that is a good way to get killed if you run at these highly trained body guards in the middle of a intersection as the fighting breaks out. And after it is over all will say it was the 6 or 10 contractors in their uparmored Suburban who opened fire on 900 Iraqis who were just minding their own business. What naivety.
Oh well I ragged long enough. Like I said if you have never been there you will have a hard time making a factual post from what you hear on the US news. As for cleaning up KBR and other LOGCAP contractors-GO FOR IT. There is a lot of waste and theft that WE are paying for. I'll believe they really care about it when I see either the Dems or Reps do a probe asking for inside info from people who were there. As for the private security contractors-don't believe most of what you hear and see on the news. They don't have a clue. They sit in the Green Zone where they can eat and drink like kings and buy footage from Iraqis who have the guts to go out and film the carnage after it is finished. These guys are paid to KEEP OUT of trouble, not go around shooting everything that moves as the New York Slimes and others would have you believe. I'm sure PM Maliki would like to get rid of them to now that they are taking our diplomats to meet with Suni leaders that he and his buddy fat Boy Al Sadr and the Iranians hate.
10.24.2007
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