Darleen Druyun, enemy combatant
in the war against US taxpayers
Darleen's $5.7 billion surprise. Darleen Druyun, an Air Force acquisitions officer, apparently notified Boeing that a competitor had underbid them by several billion dollars.

She's no longer with the Air Force. Guess where she works now...

[Forbes/Reuters:] Boeing Co. rejected published reports on Friday that it might have obtained rival bidder Airbus SAS's proprietary information en route to a proposed $22.5 billion refueling tanker lease-purchase agreement with the U.S. Air Force.

Darleen Druyun, hired by Boeing after leaving her job as a top Air Force acquisition official last year, told the Chicago-based company "several times" that Airbus's price was $5 million to $17 million less than Boeing's, an internal Boeing e-mail published on Friday said.

[...]

The lease of 100 tankers based on the Boeing 767 would cost as much as $5.7 billion more than an outright purchase, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office said in an Aug. 26 report.

This is the issue recently alluded to by Paul Krugman as evidence of the American press missing or barely covering important stories (via Arms and the Man).

⇒ This post was updated on November 24, 2003.

{ 12:27 PM }

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The profitable War on Terror. We know where more than $2 billion of that $87 billion interim price tag is going (Wall Street Journal, sub. req'd):

HOUSTON -- Halliburton Corp.'s (HAL) U.S. government contracts to restore Iraqi oil production and provide support services to troops will cost taxpayers an estimated $2 billion and are expected to rise further, Army spokesmen said Wednesday.

An Army Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate the country's oil fields is now valued at $948 million, more than $200 million above the level projected last month. Halliburton's Army Field Support Command contract is now estimated to cost $1 billion in Iraq alone, up more than $400 million from the level in late May.

Although only a small fraction of the value of the contracts will end up as Halliburton profits, the higher price tag could pose political challenges for the Bush administration because Vice President Dick Cheney was previously the company's chief executive.

As with the cost of the overall U.S. effort in Iraq, the Halliburton contracts have escalated in value as Iraqi infrastructure continues to be plagued by looting and sabotage.

[...]

Halliburton reported $292 million in Iraq-related revenues for the quarter ended June 30. Analysts said the Iraq work added two or three cents per share. Halliburton reported second-quarter net income of $26 million, or 6 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $498 million, or $1.15 a share, in the same period the year before.

A Halliburton spokeswoman said the company wouldn't comment on the future earnings impact of its Iraq-related work.

What a difference an invasion makes: a net loss of $498 million versus a quarterly profit of $26 million. That's over a half billion dollar swing to the plus side for Halliburton in a single quarter, comparing 2003 to 2002. And it's in the exact opposite direction of the swing our federal budget has taken from the plus to the minus column. Coincidence, or chicanery?

Did you catch that other detail? Looting and sabotage increase the value of the Halliburton contracts.

Now we know why there's so much chaos in Iraq since the invasion — it's so fucking profitable.

{ 8:54 AM }

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110 Stories

A poem by John M. Ford

Via Making Light

{ 12:25 PM }

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"California receives less than $5 per person in first responder grants, while Wyoming receives more than $35." This column by Christopher Cox, California Republican, who is chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Committee on Homeland Security, was published in the Washington Times. Via Cryptome:

The September 11, 2001, attacks drew immediate attention to the key role of our "first responders" -- the police, firefighters and emergency medical teams who are the first on any crisis scene.

Subsequently, the nation's attention has also focused on the deficiencies in information sharing within our federal government, notably the FBI, CIA and other intelligence community agencies.

These two crucial elements of homeland security are inextricably linked, because information about an attack that reaches the front lines of local authorities could potentially reduce its impact if not stop it entirely.

In the two years since the September 11 attacks, the focus on first responders has increased awareness that federal money isn't reaching them where it is needed. But while much of the discussion has focused simplistically on calls for ever-higher spending, an even greater problem is that information gathered by counterterrorism experts at significant taxpayer expense is ignored in the disbursement process.

[...]

All sides agree this takes money. And Congress has responded. Since that terrible day in September two years ago, Congress has spent more than $20 billion on first responders -- an increase of more than 1,000 percent. Even for Washington, this is an incredible amount of money.

But the involvement of such large sums only accentuates the importance of spending wisely. That means all funds should be disbursed on the basis of hard-nosed threat assessment. However, current federal funding for first responders is parceled out among the states with a guaranteed minimum for every state (presumably, because every state has two senators). One obvious distortion is that California receives less than $5 per person in first responder grants, while Wyoming receives more than $35. The same result obtains in other large states, including New York.

Dick Cheney's home state is financially buffered against the threat of terrorists, while California and New York are left dangling in the wind.

Wyoming is to states as Halliburton is to corporations.

There seems to be a pattern here.

{ 12:46 PM }

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Department of Redundancy Department.

Monthly premiums for employer-sponsored health care in the United States jumped by 13.9 percent between spring 2002 and 2003.

+

Nearly every publicly traded HMO posted record profits in recent quarters.

{ 5:50 PM }

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Correct answer: 7) All of the above. We have William F. Buckley to thank for this concise summary (NRO):

The inquiry continues: Why the [hateful] feelings toward Bush? The answer, as agreed upon in this improvised study, was: 1) He is not legitimately president of the United States. The other guy got more votes. Bush slipped in because of capricious conduct by the courts. 2) Bush is a Christer. He takes every opportunity to inform the American people that he is in touch with the Lord and therefore that, by deduction, what he does is the Lord's work. 3) He gravely miscalculated the onus of what he set out to do in Iraq. The consequences of that miscalculation are deaths unending, and more money spent than King Solomon dreamed of. 4) The economy lacks the kind of resiliency it might have shown if more resourcefully tended. 5) His truckling to the rich in his tax cuts shows a callous disregard of civil adjudications between America's poor and America's rich. And finally, 6) He is a liar. He specifically informed the public that Iraq had in hand instantly deployable weapons of mass destruction. These, it proved, did not exist.

I especially like the passive, tortured double-conditional construction of #4.

{ 5:05 PM }

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"People in the wider world don't care." Lies, facts — it's all the same to the propaganda machine supporting Jessica Lynch, Caucasian poster girl for the fraudulence behind the invasion of Iraq by the US (Moby Lives, see 8 September 2003):

Knopf announced last Tuesday that it had signed a book deal with recently discharged Private Jessica Lynch concerning her rescue from an Iraqi medical facility, with the book to be written by recently discharged New York Times writer Rick Bragg. A Publishers Weekly report by Charlotte Abbott says, "Called I'm a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story and set for publication on Veteran's Day, November 11, it has become one of the fall's most anticipated books almost overnight." But as Abbott points out, the publisher will also have to deal with "lingering questions" about Lynch's rescue — subsequent reports showed she was under little threat and her wounds were perhaps exaggerated — and "Bragg's reputation in the wake of his resignation from the Times on May 28" for having filed reports lifted largely from the work of an assistant. Says Knopf publicity v.p. Paul Bogaards, "People in the wider world don't care."

Regarding Bragg's recent troubles: "In bylining a story that he did not witness, and writing vivid descriptions of things he did not see, Bragg comes perilously close to the techniques of Jayson Blair," says Jack Shafer in Slate.

Rick Bragg couldn't write the "vivid descriptions of things he did not see" in Showtime's "DC 9/11" because that job was already taken, not because the things he purports to describe existed.

What propagandists who call themselves journalists write cannot even disparagingly be called "fiction" — it's just deception, pure and simple. But, as we're constantly reminded, "People in the wider world don't care."

For her role in the charade, Jessica Lynch will receive 100% of all book royalties and split the $1 million advance with Bragg, who receives the sole author credit. Ka-ching!

And now please join me in a silent prayer for Leni Riefenstahl.

{ 3:29 PM }

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A brief hiatus. Back soon.

{ 1:26 PM }

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