This is from columnist Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe. Why are defense industry CEOs making obscene amounts of money on the backs of our fighting forces?
The litany of US mistakes and excessive force has the Pentagon
commissioning at least two secret strategy studies in Afghanistan and
Iraq. ``This is a struggle for the soul of the Army," said Colonel
Peter Mansoor, the head of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency
Center.
Just as odorous, a mountain of corporate cash grows next
to the piles of bodies. In this bizarre war where Iraqi civilians fear
both suicide bombers and the United States, the biggest sacrifice that
President Bush asked of American civilians was to get on a plane and
show those terrorists a thing or two by going to Disney World.
Defense contractors took that request to a logical extreme. They built their own fantasy land.
There
is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual
Executive Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a
progressive think tank, and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy.
The report found that 34 defense CEOs have been paid nearly $1 trillion
since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
As soldiers have
died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between soldiers
and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of
publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190
to 1. Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a
year. The average defense CEO makes $7.7 million.
and
While
Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the
disgraced former CEO of body-armor maker DHB, made $192 million in
stock sales in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for
his daughter. The 2005 pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar,
head of the firm that most symbolizes the occupation's waste,
overcharges, and ghost charges on no-bid contracts, was $26 million,
according to the report's analysis of federal Securities and Exchange
Commission filings.
You won't hear about this in the mainstream media. It's more important that we find JonBenet Ramsey's killer.