Frankly, I don’t know if Mr. Haveman is a Christian or not, but because the guy who hired him obviously is making people pass some sort of Roe v. Wade/ideology test, I find it ironic and sad that we’d take the free health care away from the Iraqis after we just bombed their country to kingdom come. It belies a certain, sad, common-sense blindness that seems to be the pervasive in the Republican Right these days. I hope moderate Republicans take over soon, because we’re truly seeing the head-shaking effects of religio-political mindset at work.

Point taken. Two different points in time. I tend to drift off during the longer posts.

“…private contractors and their money grubbing ways”

heh – that’s why he signed on with Black water. The money is very good. GOD, I love Capitalism!

“…long days and long nights, US Army typical BS, lack of resources and support…”

and that’s why he left the Army.

I judge from your post that you were in the Army there.
If so, thank you for your service!

Where did this come from? The article had many good points, but I don’t think there is anything in it to suggest that Mr. Haveman’s questionable ideas had anything to do with him being a Christian.

The period of time spoken of is right after the administration, the neo-conservatives, and the water-carrying pundits felt vindicated by their moves into Iraq. Andrew Jackson had “To the victor goes the spoils.” Iraq was the spoils for their support of the administration and the deeds in which the regime replacement was done. I would also suspect whoever is running the staff over there is going to be a little more selective on who is to be hired – the Wild West days should be over.

You had asked, “Should I believe my relative or the WP?” Again, the Post article is about the early days in the CPA. It sounds as if your relative is a recent addition to the staff over there. Different periods of time.

Just to show a sign of the times, when I had gotten to my duty station, we used to drive on Irish with two unarmored vehicles with a driver and a shooter in each vehicle. Six months later, we were ordered to get in a military convoy with lots of vehicles and guns or to use a privatized security firm one of our sister units had a contract with. If a newspaper writer were to write a story of those earlier days does not mean the same stimuli and events are there today.

While I was there, I bad-mouthed: Halliburton, ALL privatized security firms (I disagree with the Roman model the US has gone with getting people with guns to do the job over there), private contractors and their money grubbing ways, CPA employees (on a continual basis, especially those yahoos who were bottlenecks in getting the job done), the food, the Saddam Revenge, long days and long nights, US Army typical BS, lack of resources and support, and so forth. What does that say about me? I am not being confrontational about this – I complained about a myriad of things while I was there. Some of it I think are legitimate gripes, and some were because of my discomfort.

I have relative who served as an Army Ranger in both
Afghanistan and Iraq. When his 6 years was up, he got out and
signed on with BlackWater. He provides security for visiting State
department employees. He says 90% of them spend their time
mouthing off about Bush, the war, and Blackwater or Haliburton.
They all try to get a short stint in Iraq just to build their resumes.

My question is: How do these people get past this O’Beirne guy?

Should I believe my relative or the WP?

That made us look around…and we realized

We now have a Katrina war on terror
We have a Katrina Iraq reconstruction
We have a Katrina education system
We have a Katrina deficit
We have a Katrina health care system
We have a Katrina army

Everything they touch turns to Katrina!

The guys came over with the State Department’s exception to be given these appointments while their salaries were GS-15 and SES positions. The GS-15 civilian rate is equivalent to an O-6 in the military and a fair number of political hacks with no business knowledge were able to pull up to $140,000 for four months of work after regular pay, overtime, hazard and post differential pays, and probably a bonus at the end. So people were padding their resumes, pulling in some big bucks for a short period of time, making decisions that a number of them SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MAKING, and HIDING either in Palace or the LSA trailer parks – what exactly did we get?

About three or four weeks ago, an appeals court overturned a decision to have Custer Battles (CB) to repay $10M to the US Government for a variety of over-charging and other wrong doings. CB is a private security firm over in Iraq. The appeals court said even though the monies paying the Contractors by the CPA were from the American folks, the way the Contracting Office was set up by these yahoos caused office to be a non-entity even though both parties signed contracts. The Contracting Office had a very big part in the reconstruction part and it was flawed by enabling various Contractors to walk away and over-charge on the contracts with no means of retribution for wrongdoing. We might as well as have given the Contractors a blank check and tell us what we needed.

You cannot reason – or change – someone with that outlook. I know, I’ve been trying for 3 years now!