The Political Whore

Let’s leave aside for a second whether the Iraq War to this point has been folly or necessity and take as given that any dollars we spend going forward are pretty much wasted. If that is true, the National Priorities Project has a very nifty trade-off calculator that tells us all the goodies we could have in Tampa Bay if we didn’t fund the war over the next two budget years:

Taxpayers in Tampa Bay Metro Area, Florida will pay $1.1 billion for the President’s request for additional Iraq war spending in FY2008 and FY2009. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

378,693 People with Health Care for One Year OR

754,817 Homes with Renewable Electricity for One Year OR

24,723 Public Safety Officers for One year OR

17,145 Music and Arts Teachers for One Year OR

334,774 Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR

74 New Elementary Schools OR

7,915 Affordable Housing Units OR

593,198 Children with Health Care for One Year OR

146,444 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR

18,300 Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR

13,043 Port Container Inspectors for One year

The calculator lets you run similar trade-off calculations for repealing Bush’s tax cuts and other administration priorities.

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This story is the hottest thing in the blogosphere, even if the MSM hasn’t played it much, except for ABC’s Brian Ross, who gives us the basic outline on his blog:

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.

“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

“It felt like prison,” says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming “20/20″ investigation. “I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened.”

It took the intervention of a congressman from Jones’ home in Texas to get her sprung.

Pushing Rope locally has weighed in (and a h/t to Michael for bringing this issue to my attention) that includes excerpts from Jennifer’s journals:

July 26, 2005 US/ July 27 Baghdad- I sent several e-mails to management to ask to be moved into a container because I was experiencing cat calls even when I was walking through the barrack to get to the restroom. I received the response that I would be fine if I “go to the spa.” There was no spa in Greenzone, Baghdad . I started socializing with some Halliburton/ KBR employees, including approximately four or so firefighters. One of these men prepared me a drink and joked that there were no “rooffies” in it, and handed it to me. After having a couple sips, I passed out. I was drugged.

July 28, 2005 US/ July 29 Baghdad- I awoke the next morning in the barracks to find my naked body battered and bruised. I was still groggy from whatever had been put in my drink. I was bleeding from between my legs and my breast implants were severely disfigured. (I found out later that my attackers tore my pectoral muscles due to the brutality of the attack). One of the men who had raped me was brazen enough to be lying in the bottom bunk of my assigned bunk bed. After getting to the clinic and having a rape kit performed, and pictures taken of my bruising, I was locked in a container with no food, no way to call my parents, and was placed under armed guard by Halliburton. I did not have access to soap, toiletries, a tooth brush, or any of my belongings. I was unable to leave, therefore I was imprisoned. After some time, one of the guards allowed me to use his cell phone out of sympathy. I called my father back in Houston, who quickly contacted Congressman Ted Poe, who then initiated a Congressional Inquiry to get me out of Baghdad . At this point I was in a state of shock, severely traumatized, and was scared for my life.

It’s hard to believe the MSM isn’t all over this story; it has every element they love: a young cute blond woman, sex, a congressman. Only problem is it involves rape (”eeee-yewww!” says the MSM) and criticizing Bush (”bad for the business model”) and slagging Halliburton (”been there, done that” they’ll claim). Also lost in the shuffle, as Shakesville points out, are all the human right abuses against and/or disappearances of some of the planet’s non-young-cute-blond population (as highlighted at Black and Missing).

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Great weather outside. Good day to sneak in a cigar:

• How exactly did the TV crew become part of the story, as the headline asserts? Other than emotionally?
• $250 million for Pinellas County turkeys/worthwhile local projects, your choice of terminology.
• $70 million for Palm Beach County turkeys/worthwhile local projects, your choice of terminology.
• $8 million for Hillsborough … you know the rest.
• $3.2 million in cuts to nonprofits in Tampa.
• “The newspapers are gone forever.”
  
• World Bank meets on Wolfie Tuesday.
• Does Mitt Romney believe in evolution? Maybe, sort of.
• Oh, and by the way, we’re winning the war in Iraq.
• State of the Democracy: More watched O’Reilly than GOP debate.
• Bob Ross is back; just not at the Tribune.
• The city of Tampa needs to straighten out the West Tampa overlay committee.

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