IRAQ FOR SALE. Last night, I attended the Washington premier of Robert Greenwald�s latest documentary, Iraq for Sale, about the abusive, sinister and wasteful state of private contracting in Iraq. As with Greenwald�s previous docs, especially his Wal-Mart expos�, I found myself so mind-numbingly angry and frustrated by the end that I wasn�t sure whether to punch a hole in the wall or crawl into one. Greenwald tracked down procurement officials in the Defense Department, retired Brig. General Janis Karpinski, truck drivers who worked for Halliburton/KBR, and a variety of experts, many of whom attended the screening at the new Woolly Mammoth Theatre. (Woolly�s digs are quite nice.) He works through the refusal to hold accountable any of the private contractors who supervised the torture and humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib. (Karpinski and a bunch of her reservist underlings took the fall, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon brass quickly shifted blame.) He then exposes the problems of �cost-plus� budgeting, which induces contractors to burn, crush and destroy vehicles so they can replace them with new ones that are then sent across Iraq, sometimes to carry a single bundle of mail at a time -- if they are carrying anything at all. And then there are the sordid details of the Blackwater contractors who were killed, mutilated and burned in effigy in Fallujah in 2004. It is a great film about a rather sore, sordid subject that President Bush (shown giving a pathetic, mocking answer to a questioner who dared asked about accountability for private contractors), former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and other neocons would rather not discuss, ever. Which is why people should buy the DVD and watch it, with friends. P.S.: During the post-film Q&A session, a Senate Democratic committee staffer informed the audience that Republicans in Congress -- shown repeatedly in the film blocking amendments by Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd that would have established some form of oversight and accountability for private contractors -- are actually moving to get some of the CEOs from the top contracting firms awarded civilian medals. Call it the Tenet-ization of the private military. All in all, another truly disgusting episode in this failed war. Awards all around, fellas!
--Tom Schaller
