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POPSKBR in Iraq dodges paying taxes KBR's top competitors in Iraq do not appear to have gone to the same lengths to avoid taxes. Other top Iraq war contractors - including Bechtel, Parsons, Washington Group International, L-3 Communications, Perini, and Fluor - told the Globe that they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their American workers. KBR has almost completely stopped hiring Americans anyway, even though they receive $16B in American taxpayer dollars. Bosnians were preferred to Americans, but now even they are being replaced by workers from India - cheaper labor. Any hiring of an American has to be justified in writing.
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POPSThird of Iraqis 'Need Urgent Aid' The Iraqi's have endured years of sanctions plus invasion, occupation and insurgency. No matter what happens in the end, no matter who is in control, what kind of future does a country have when 92% of its children suffer from learning disabilities? This entirely avoidable disaster is so barbaric it makes want me to vomit.
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POPSUS Accuses Saudis of Telling Lies About Iraq See also my clip: US Planning $20 bn Arms Package for Saudi Arabia posted 28 July. These articles coincide date wise. Perhaps this kiss and make up, or a deal to to reassure the Saudis that the U.S. is not on the side of their religious enemy, the Shi'a: a loyalty deal.
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POPS24: Torture Nation With the help of the hit TV show, 24 , torture has reached pop-culture (even punchline) status in America. Mayer helps show how Charles Krauthammer's near-non-existent "ticking clock" scenario has been popularized by "24" in such a way as to normalize torture in the public consciousness. In five seasons of "24", there have been sixty-seven torture scenes, and all of them are portrayed as effective, productive, and justified. Military cadets, weaned on '24", now tend to see nothing wrong with it. Soldiers in the field have internalized the show's ethics. One witness to this is Tony Lagouranis, a former army interrogator in Iraq. He tells Mayer that some soldiers in Iraq just replicated the "24" scenes in real life - even though torture is still nominally illegal under American law for the regular military (the Bush administration has created a special CIA torture unit to do the job instead).
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POPSA Case for Impeachment Evidence from the Scooter Libby trial shows that the Valerie Plame outing is small potatoes in comparison to the deliberate fabrication of evidence that led the United States into an ill-conceived war. Did Bush know that he lied to the Nation when he claimed in his State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein planned to obtain enriched uranium from Niger? I've often wondered why Bush rewarded Tenet with the Medal of Freedom when at the time he was considered to have failed in his job to prevent 9/11 and the supposed weapons of mass destruction had not been found. An impeachment trial is needed to answer many questions about the conduct of this Administration.