June 9, 2007
No Joke!
Keith Olberman reminded us yesterday that 1,500 suns have set since our president swaggered onto the deck of the Lincoln to declare MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! And yesterday another milestone as more than 3,500 of our soldiers have died. Injured? Tens of thousands. Cost to us--$433 billion and counting. Iraqi civilian deaths? Your guess is as good as mine but somewhere between 100,000 and 750,000. Also, there are 1.4 million refugees now living in squalor in neighboring countries; more than 3 million homeless. The professional class is fleeing the country, university grads face unemployment or death.
Some war, Mr. President. Some war.
Now comes a new book that will shock even the most cynical among us. Blackwater: The rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army is a must. Jeremy Scahill, our friend from Democracy Now, has blown the lid off the private army of Erik Prince, a radical right-wing Christian, who controls Blackwater.
While he has made hundreds of millions from the Iraqi mess (Prince not Scahill), Wisconsin's share of the cost of war exceeds $6 billion. Milwaukee's share could have made that city "the education city" by providing 51,000 four-year college scholarships. Yikes!
Scahill's book is scary. It reads like a novel and tells us that the corporate media has missed perhaps the most important event of all--the privatization of our armed forces.
I'm hoping Jeremy will speak at Bob Fest. If not, maybe the head of Blackwater could drop in so we can ask a few questions.
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