Codifying Riches Above Honor

The Liberal Patriot

J.G. Schwam - November 2, 2003

The GOP will stop at nothing to prevent its crony capitalist partners from getting as rich as possible. As the allegations of over payments and price gouging by US government contractors operating in Iraq surfaces, there sits an entire party in the capital that took direct action to codify their desire to look the other instead of decrying potential frauds against the American taxpayer.

Today the office of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) distributed a press release that points out that, despite the repeated efforts of its member Democrats the Senate Appropriations Committee refused to allow the insertion of a provision putting the teeth of Federal prosecution against those would seek to profiteer from their Iraqi War and reconstruction contracts into the bill authorizing Bush’s $87 billon Iraq war appropriations request.

Leahy said; "We are about to spend a lot of money in Iraq, quickly and with few real controls on how it is spent," said Feinstein. "The least we can do is prevent private companies from taking advantage of the American Government, its people, and the men and women who are risking their lives every day to make Iraq, and the world, a better, safer place to live. It was a mistake to strip the anti-profiteering provision from the conference report, and restoring it through this bill would send a clear signal that this kind of activity will not be tolerated."

The amendment cosponsored by Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) would create new laws making it a federal crime to engage in war profiteering or overcharge taxpayers for any good or service with the specific intent to excessively profit from the war or reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The bill would also prohibit perpetrating fraud or making false statements in any form involving a contract or the provisioning of goods or services in Iraq.

Upon learning that the provisions of the amendment were stripped from the appropriations bill including the $87 billion in Iraq war spending Durbin said: "I fail to understand how anyone can be opposed to prosecuting those who want to defraud and overcharge the United States government and the American taxpayers."

By these calculated actions the GOP has made it clear that they support looking the other ways amidst allegations involving Halliburton’s overcharging for fuel distribution in Iraq. Despite even mainstream reports about such allegations the senate appropriations committee refused to criminalize fraud in war contracts. How can clear acts that dismiss the inclusion of laws requiring US contractors to comport their financial relations with the taxpayers in a decent honorable, above board manner many be condoned?

Raymond Chandler wrote in a 1949 letter to his publisher, “Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck” Chandler was correct then, today the GOP placed their lust that for velvet touch above honor. The begging question however is why? What gain could the GOP’s appropriations committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK), Texas’s Kay Bailey Hutchison (R), the already proven to be morally bankrupt, Arlen Specter (R-PA) and others have to gain from legitimizing or at best looking away amid emerging allegations of war profiteering by their parties biggest crony partner.

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