12/10/2007 10:35:37 P.M. Pacific Standard Time

Dear Kent,

This is a version of the exchange of letters that I had with a very conservative, lifelong friend of mine, and I thought you ought to see it.  In any case, here it is:

With best regards,



-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: ABC News: Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
Date:	Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:55:39 -0800
From:
To:

I totally agree that the drumbeat of downer news tends to make people withdraw from a condition of concern to one of calcified apathy, a sense that, as the New Testament has Jesus saying to Judas, "The poor are always with us," as if that somehow made their plight any less awful or any less amenable to solution if there were concentrated, coordinated action to do something about it.  Part of the problem is that news is now reported without a sense of proportion or priority and has been redefined to include breathless updates on the latest selfindulgences of the Britannys, Parises, Lindsays and whatever other slut/heiress/star is the flavor of the minute immediately adjacent to a story that Halliburton/KBR once again failed to perform even remotely adequately a contract in Iraq that was let to it at no bid for over six billion dollars and that Halliburton claims that it did a bang up job even though the sewage is flowing out of the ceiling into the offices at police headquarters and no one in the U.S. Government seems to have a problem with this use of our money in our name.  The news media have allowed themselves to become trivialized by such practices and to content themselves with merely reporting the parades of horribles without relating them to the larger picture (as used to be done) so that people could see how what Halliburton has been doing relates to the war overall and how the whole thing is nothing but a damned boondoggle in which good American and allied men and women are being killed and maimed in the interests of profiteers and in the interest of distraction of the polity from noticing that the President and his grey eminence Vice President are executing the largest authoritarian power grab since the Civil War or the days of the Alien and Sedition Acts.  But we do nothing because of being numbed by the ceaseless cacophony of "news" that consists of a chili grind of violence, angst, absurdity and inertia in the face of desperate challenge, presented as if each event were somehow untied to the whole, while the tyrants toil to end the American Dream, or, at least, restrict its access to the privileged few.

Hitler succeeded in German political life because, as now, the people were so weary of the endless cascade of disaster followed by ineffectual "action" that they would turn to anyone who promised to take the problem and do something, and do it quickly, and not just sit on the their rumps and make like "right-wing Social Democrats" in Mort Sahl's immortal phrase that pretty well sums up the treasonous Pelosi-led Democratic Party and its limp-wristed response to the people's call at the ballot box in confronting the grotesque, fascist excesses of the Bush Administration. You're right about the media.  And you're right that people have been so hammered with disgusting news and disappointments by our leaders that they no longer expect anything of any of them, hoping erroneously that by ignoring them they can render them harmless.

No, of course I don't believe that the top management and board of directors of Halliburton/KBR expressly approved of or planned the rape and sodomizing of this beautiful young woman.  However, it must have taken the tacit approval of someone fairly high in the corporate organization to go forward with the coverup, threats and stonewalling for it to go on so long without someone in upper management calling this unspeakable vileness to a halt.  And, in assessing the corporate culture of Halliburton/KBR, it is important and perhaps illuminating to bear in mind that the top management and board have presided over serial abuses of contractual trust in Iraq and elsewhere involving the virtual theft of billions of our dollars and the effective undermining of what are supposed to be our national policy objectives in Iraq.  Further, it was Halliburton/KBR that cheerfully and proudly announced in January of 2006 that it had been awarded (once again, on a no-bid basis) a half a billion dollar contract to build detention camps all over the U.S.A. to deal with sudden immigration crises "and to support other government programs."  And what might those be?  What programs does the Bush-Cheney government have that require the erection of half a billion dollars worth of concentration camps on our soil?  And how is it that the mighty Halliburton/KBR has no problem as a corporate citizen building these tools of nascent tyranny?  These guys aren't just businessmen (except in the "Godfather" sense); they're co-conspirators with the darkest government our country has ever seen.  They are Krup to Bush's Hitler.  And in their arrogance and intoxication of power, communcated from the top on down, they infected their underlings with the sense that a beautiful young American woman working in Iraq would be okay to gang rape and gang sodomize because the Big Boys would cover it up as "bad for business."  And they were right.  Do I think that the top management planned or endorsed what their people did to this poor woman?  Of course not!  But the point is that they don't give a damn once informed of it, because all that matters is their profit, their power and their political clout now that their boy Dick is de facto President of the United States.  And what is the ruin of one young woman's life next to all that and when compared to all the crimes that Halliburton's management has already committed and plans to commit in the near future?  THAT'S THE POINT.

We have allowed the concentration of wealth and power to get so out of hand that those who possess it now regard us as mere slaves and serfs in a manner akin to Darius' view of his polyglot hordes and their disposability as objects of exploitation and "acceptable" levels of slaughter.  This attitude now infects not only Halliburton, but every board room and hall of power in America, Europe and Asia, making a mockery of all that our fathers and their fathers fought and died for.  AND THAT, TOO, IS THE POINT.

I don't know how old Barack Obama is and I don't care.  I agree that he's the only guy in this sad race of the intellectually and ideologically bankrupt who even seems to remember why our ancestors founded this country in the first place, the only one with any sense of the purpose of government or the potential of concerted action and the effects of a clarion call to higher goals.  Is he too young?  Probably.  Does he lack experience?  Absolutely.  Will he make mistakes that will cost him and us?  Almost certainly.  And will the old lions who have grown fat on the scraps thrown them by the privileged try to eat him alive or kill him in a motorcade?  You bet!  But for better or for worse, he's the one who somehow made it up into the light where his words could be heard and touched a nerve, offering for the first time in two generations at least a glimmer of hope that maybe someone really is serious about trying to lead this country instead of just doing the bag work for the rich.  And for those of us who remember JFK and RFK, we recognize the call to higher purpose, the challenge to work for something better than just grabbing what we can.  This guy will probably disappoint in the end or be cut down by another one of those three-named assassins that the Big Boys always seem to have on call for moments like this, but at this time in history, whatever his shortcomings and his flaws, and the slip ups that will surely serve as the initial milestones of an Obama Administration, he is the best of what is possible for us and one hell of lot better than all the rest.  And that is why I am voting for him no matter what the servants of the rich in the media  and the halls of power do to disparage him.  I fear for his life but will vote for him nevertheless and hope that this time the Secret Service does its damned job.  We're long overdue for a break in this country and this man looks like the nearest thing to it we're going to see.  It's not about Democrats versus Republicans, right versus left, black versus white, religious versus secular, or any of those other trumped-up divisions that the rich exploit to distract and weaken us; it's about reviving the principles and purposes that saw our forefathers and and our parents through the storms of history near and far and a vision of freedom, democracy and a dedication to the common good that allowed them to found and the rest to preserve the highest and best hope that humankind has ever had.  Obama convinces me that he knows all this and I don't think that the rest of them relate to it on any level.  AND THAT, RESOUNDINGLY, IS THE POINT.

I apologize for all the run-ons, etc., but I just typed this out while fielding conference calls, etc.  I want to elect someone whom I can at least hope that I'll be proud of, and I don't give a damn if he's black or white, Republican or Democrat.  Hell, i'm still an Orange County Republican, but the Republicans have been hijacked by the boardrooms and televangelists while the Democrats are the bought dogs of the special interest groups and the same pork barrel lobbyists who buy the GOP.  We need somone who can see above all that, speak to it inspiringly and be a leader, not a poll-follower.  And Obama is the closest that we've got, it seems.  He'll have my money and my vote because I love our country and what it stood for and I despise what all these filthy bastards have done to it.  My family helped to found, lead and shape this country, and they didn't do it to hand it over to felonious fixers like the Bushes, Cheney and the Clintons.  No matter what we do, even electing Obama, we cannot restore that young woman to the life she knew before these cowardly monsters had their way with her, but what we can do is restore our country to the point that the next time anyone does something like that they and any corporate pig who tries to protect them will pay and pay dearly for their perfidy such that no one will even think about attempting it again.  We have to start somewhere and electing Obama is as good a place as any to begin!  AND THAT'S THE ULTIMATE POINT.



ANON wrote:

What is unbelievable (check that, too believable) is that the news-wires are filled with stories that neither enlighten nor promote positive action or improvement of the human condition. Reading the news is such a downer today. It would be too easy to direct attention to the domestic urban violence and daily tragedies of our misfortunate people in order to redirect the attention away from Iraq, Afghanistan or Iran or justify the failures witnessed in these areas. The problem is that there is such an overload of negative news and opinions that I feel has resulted in that too many people just don't give a shit about anything outside their private zone. We have lost our way, not because the poor execution of some of the people involved, as that should be seen as a consequence of human actions. Instead we have condemned the efforts of anyone who has attempted to change the status quo, like that is some holy condition to be perpetuated.

Does anybody believe that the executives at Halliburton/KBR approve of the gang raping of anyone other than a porn-actor earning their living?

I hate to admit it but Obama,  taps into the positives of the human condition far better than the other idiots. How old is he? I thought he was 36, but on the radio I heard someone say he was 46 or 47.