No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The Greenhouse Effect

I was toying with using "Bunny Greenhouse is Missing" as a headline, but figured the reference was too obscure. Hey, you try coming up with a steady supply of cutesy or snarky headlines in response to the never-ending avalanche of sleaze and scandal pouring out of the RRR regime.

Anyway, in case you missed the story buried in the links in yesterday's post, Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the highest-ranking civilian at the Army Corps of Engineers and by all accounts an outstanding public servant with a 20-year record of integrity and top performance, has been demoted in reprisal for testifying to Congress about rampant waste, fraud and abuse in the no-bid process by which Dick Cheney (with a little help from partner-in-crime Rummy) awarded billions of taxpayer dollars to his own company, Halliburton (or to be precise, the KBR subsidiary).

Greenhouse called it "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." She observed much that was flat-out illegal, such as KBR representatives sitting in on what was supposed to be a confidential Corps meeting to decide the terms of the contract. She exposed the waste and misuse of billions of dollars on the public's money, so the Junior Junta reacted instinctively in the only way it knows how - firing her, Swift-boating her, and working to destroy her career. (Valerie Plame, Colleen Rowley, Sibel Edmonds - do we see a pattern yet?)

The lunatic extreme-right useful idiots at the Clue-Free Republic were spewing their hatred and racism against Bunny Greenhouse last year, when the media briefly covered her story. Even as we speak, the droids are no doubt getting the memo from Karl Rove and gearing up for an even more despicable and mouth-foaming attack.

Amidst all the carnage and destruction of the Iraquagmire cluster-cheney, it's east to forget that our lords and masters in the religio-corporatist industrial complex see things very differently and in a much sunnier (no pun intended) light. The war against Iraq has brought them astronomical amounts of cash in a feeding frenzy of corruption and corporate pork with virtually no oversight or accountability. Literally billions have disappeared without a trace, out of our paychecks, out of the budgets of our schools, hospitals and police departments, and into their Cayman Island numbered accounts.

For the ruling elite, every day is Christmas on steroids. They're already richer than God, but the longer this Iraqi nightmare drags out, and the more our troops and the Iraqi people suffer, the higher the elite's ill-gotten gains pile up. It's the most lucrative crime in human history. How long will they continue to get away with it?