No Cause For Alarm

What would make the Generals and Army Corps of Engineers view the situation in Iraq as a cause for alarm? That phrase—no cause for alarm—may be the single most loaded and weasel-worded string of words put together by the US warmongers in Iraq. A headline in this morning’s NYT screams: “100,000 Families Are Fleeing Violence, Iraq Official Says”. But half-way down in the article General Rick Lynch says "Some of them truly are moving because they're concerned about their own personal security or their family's security, I'm sure of that…some of them are moving for economic reasons. Some of them are moving to be with their families. But we're not seeing internally displaced persons at the rate which causes us alarm." Now we finally know when the Pentagon and the Generals running the show in Iraq will recognize the mess they’ve made. It will be when they see the state of affairs as a cause for alarm. And that may be the day after Armageddon. Then again, probably not. The Army Corps of Engineers, which has blown every job it has ever had including “correcting” the Mississippi River in 1879, has blown it again in Iraq. But apparently the corps sees no cause for alarm. The NYT reported this morning: “A $243 million program led by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build 150 health care clinics in Iraq has in some cases produced little more than empty shells of crumbling concrete and shattered bricks cemented together into uneven walls, two reports by a federal oversight office have found.” The NYT says that the reports released yesterday “detail a close inspection of five of the clinics in the northern city of Kirkuk as well as a sweeping audit of the entire program, which began in March 2004 as a heavily promoted effort to improve health care for ordinary Iraqis. The reports say that none of the five clinics in Kirkuk and only 20 of the original 150 across the country will be completed without new financing.” The NYT article goes on to say, “Lax oversight by the Army corps is responsible for the failure of the overall program. Cowed by security fears that the reports suggest may have been overblown, the corps sometimes inspected the work only through what it called "windshield surveys" — hasty drive-bys.” But what the hell, folks. Relax. Feel good about giving more money to the Army Corps of Engineers for them to misappropriate, mismanage and steal. Feel good about doddering Donald Rumsfeld killing more US soldiers in Iraq. Rest in the knowledge that everything is going well in Iraq because the President, the Generals, Halliburton, Cheney, The Army Corps of Engineers and the guys recruiting more naïve and ignorant soldiers for the US Army see no cause for alarm.