About the best dang magazine on the market today is Vanity Fair. Sure it's got Paris Hilton news and too much Italian fashion coverage for my tastes, but mixed in between is some of the best reporting, best investigating, and hardest hitting information you can find today on the cancer that is killing our country. No need for me to fumble around and tell these stories, you need to read them first hand.

A careful reading of this article best explains New America. In my opinion Old America died the day the US sanctioned torture. Our Founding Fathers are waterboarding in their graves....American Torture...who would have thought? However that is not what this article is about. It clearly shows the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex that Ike warned us about nearly 50 years ago. The history of this giant company most of us have never heard of before, helps explain the cheer leading for a war that has killed over 3200 of our soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. As quoted in this article, 9-11 was a horrible day for Americans, but the best thing that ever happened to big business in the US. Read it and weep and then think about ....oh.....say how easy it was for Senator Mark Pryor to raise almost 1 million dollars at his fund raiser last week.......

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow

Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele March 2007

The McLean, Virginia, offices of Science Applications International Corporation, a "stealth company" with 9,000 government contracts, many of which involve secret intelligence work. Photograph by Coral von Zumwalt.

One of the great staples of the modern Washington movie is the dark and ruthless corporation whose power extends into every cranny around the globe, whose technological expertise is without peer, whose secrets are unfathomable, whose riches defy calculation, and whose network of allies, in and out of government, is held together by webs of money, ambition, and fear. You've seen this movie a dozen times. Men in black coats step from limousines on wintry days and refer guardedly to unspeakable things. Surveillance cameras and eavesdropping devices are everywhere. Data scrolls across the movie screen in digital fonts. Computer keyboards clack softly. Seemingly honorable people at the summit of power—Cabinet secretaries, war heroes, presidents—turn out to be pathetic pawns of forces greater than anyone can imagine. And at the pinnacle of this dark and ruthless corporation is a relentless and well-tailored titan—omniscient, ironic, merciless—played by someone like Christopher Walken or Jon Voight.

To read the rest of this story click here.

Posted by Death by Inches on March 24, 2007 11:24 AM | Permalink

Comments

Holy shit. What incestuous relationships between SAIC, the military, and the Federal government (especially the intelligence community)!

And to think we taxpayers are footing the bill.

There is much in this story to shock the reader, but this blew me away:

(snip)

It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS.

______________________

I feel like we've been fiddling while America burns.

Posted by: hugh mann | March 25, 2007 03:05 AM

As to the numbers 8 billion is not that much but little hinges turn big doors.

Check out Lockheed-Martin sometime, over 3x the amount SAIC gets. I think Boeing is next. Saic would be in the top 10. Defending America gets expensive more so each time an R is elected.
------------------------------------------------
Clinton estabished a new "contractor responsibility" standard on December 20, 2001, clarifying that "integrity and business ethics" included compliance with tax, labor, employment, environmental, antitrust, consumer protection laws, and regulations. More specifically, the standard directed bidding companies to report any violations from the previous three years, and directed government contracting officers to consider this information in awarding contracts.

Nonetheless, it didn't take much to convince the Bush administration, as it eagerly, and not surprisingly, overturned the contractor responsibility standard just two days after Christmas when Congress was on recess and no one was around to object. The administration has proven it is truly unwilling to make any demands on corporate interests.

Posted by: Lwood | March 25, 2007 05:13 AM

Sorry on the above post. Got my copy and paste out of order. Clinton had previously establed the contractor responsibilty standard and Dec 2001 is when Bush overturned it.
_

Posted by: Lwood | March 25, 2007 05:17 AM

"You've seen this movie a
dozen times."

Indeed, I saw it again just yesterday. The new movie is called Shooter with Marky Mark and it's great (if you like action adventure, which I do.) It's the story of a former army sniper who gets framed for a Presidential assassination by a bunch similar to SAIC.

Speaking of the sniper, the movie takes several snipes at Mr. Bush and his war.

Posted by: Spirit | March 25, 2007 07:54 AM

"...sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war."

My god...we actually paid twice for the idiocy behind the Iraq war?? I thought the 'brilliant' minds behind the execution/planning of the war came with the Supreme Court's selection of monkeyboy and his gang...a package deal.

At that pay schedule, the collective brilliance of this blog should be worth an astronomical amount...and it's free!

Posted by: zelda | March 25, 2007 12:22 PM

i totally agree with you about vanity fair. i have subscribed for 5 or 6 years. they seem to break a lot of political stories of hard news among the fluff. i must admit it keeps me up to style on what jeans and t shirts to wear to keep up with the fashion and the proper plaid for my flannel in winter. therefore with the combination of sydney blumenthal and the high fashion my needs crave vanity fair, sports illustrated, us news and a few others keep me the person i am today.

Posted by: zonker | March 25, 2007 04:21 PM

Billiken Man

Dedicated to the god of things as they ought to be.

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow

Washington's $8 Billion Shadow

Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.

by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele March 2007

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