Ask the executives at Bechtel, Halliburton, and Blackwater to empty their pockets

And don't tell me it must have fallen out of your pockets. This from 2003:

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

Though Defense has long been notorious for waste, recent government reports suggest the Pentagon's money management woes have reached astronomical proportions. A study by the Defense Department's inspector general found that the Pentagon couldn't properly account for more than a trillion dollars in monies spent. A GAO report found Defense inventory systems so lax that the U.S. Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

And before the Iraq war, when military leaders were scrambling to find enough chemical and biological warfare suits to protect U.S. troops, the department was caught selling these suits as surplus on the Internet "for pennies on the dollar," a GAO official said.

In case you think anything's changed, guess again:

.S. Marine Gen. Peter Pace admitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday equipment will be a problem when U.S. forces in Iraq are increased.

During testimony over the $481.4 billion fiscal 2008 defense budget, Pace said the military has about 41,000 armored vehicles in Iraq -- fewer than will be needed "to cover all of the troops that are deploying."

Pace said it will be July before enough equipment is in place.

So where is the money going? Maybe Senate Democrats ought to be looking into this:

The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday.

The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.

Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members.

It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 28.

Paul Bremer, who as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq after initial combat operations ended, said the enormous shipments were done at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance.

If you thought those of us who draw parallels betweeen the Bush family and the Corleones were exaggerating, the Corleones could only marvel at the way the Bush Junta has elevated the suitcase full of cash to such truly astounding levels.

Somehow I get the feeling that the Bush/McCain/Lieberman agenda in Iraq isn't about "winning"

...at least not in the military victory sense.

The Iraq war has been a bonanza for military contractors. From Halliburton and its many subsidiaries to Dyncorp to Bechtel, some of the most heinous corporations in the United States have turned Iraq into a cash cow, using OUR money -- money that could have been spent on education, infrastructure, research into alternative fuels, medical research, providing universal health insurance, or perhaps even fighting the REAL battle against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Instead, proving on an even more massive scale what I said back in 1988 when I posited that the Bush family regards the entire country as a private fiefdom for itself and its friends, the Bush/Cheney administration has bankrupted the country for generations to come shoveling cash into the pockets of these corporations.

And this is what we got for our so-called "investment":

The U.S. government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and a never-used camp for housing police trainers with an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say.

The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion and left the region near civil war.

"The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort," according to the 579-page report, which was being released Wednesday.

Calling Iraq's sectarian violence the greatest challenge, Bowen said in a telephone interview that billions in U.S. aid spent on strengthening security has had limited effect. Reconstruction now will fall largely on Iraqis to manage — and they're nowhere ready for the task.

The audit comes as President Bush is pressing Congress to approve $1.2 billion in new reconstruction aid as part of his broader plan to stabilize Iraq by sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.

[snip]

According to the report, the State Department paid $43.8 million to contractor DynCorp International for the residential camp for police training personnel outside of Baghdad's Adnan Palace grounds that has stood empty for months. About $4.2 million of the money was improperly spent on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-size pool, all ordered by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior but never authorized by the U.S.

U.S. officials spent another $36.4 million for weapons such as armored vehicles, body armor and communications equipment that can't be accounted for. DynCorp also may have prematurely billed $18 million in other potentially unjustified costs, the report said.

Bowen, whose office was nearly eliminated last month by administration-friendly Republicans in Congress, called spending waste in Iraq a continuing problem. Corruption is high among Iraqi officials, while U.S. contract management remains somewhat weak.

With America's $21 billion rebuilding effort largely finished, it will be up to the international community and the Iraqis to step up its dollars to sustain reconstruction, Bowen said in the interview. "That will be a long-term and very expensive process," he said.

According to the report:

_Major U.S. contractors in Iraq, including Bechtel National and Kellogg, Brown and Root Services Inc., said they devoted an average 12.5 percent of their total expenses for security.

_Bowen's office opened 27 new criminal probes in the last quarter, bringing the total number of active cases to 78. Twenty-three are awaiting prosecutorial action by the Justice Department, most of them centering on charges of bribery and kickbacks.

Meanwhile, John McCain, who has completely lost his mind and thinks he's back in 1972 and he is the only person standing between victory and loss in Vietnam, along with Joe Lieberman, who seems to think that nuclear war in the Middle East somehow benefits Israel, and Lindsey Graham, are committed to propping up this failed presidency by continuing to fund this war in perpetuity, no matter how many American kids have to die to do it.

And what of those American kids? Remember the opening scene in Three Kings, in which Mark Wahlberg says, "Are we shooting people, or what?" That was fiction. This is the real-life mirror image of that scene:

"Who the hell is shooting at us?" a US soldier yelled last week. His platoon was in a strife-torn part of Baghdad, teamed with an Iraqi Army unit. Gunfire was coming from all directions. "Who's shooting at us? Do we know who they are?"

Those of you who were alive during the Vietnam era just felt a chill, didn't you? Because we have all been here before. The ghosts of Vietnam hover over this war like the crazy aunt in the attic about whom no one wants to talk. Vietnam wasn't lost due to a lack of will; it was lost because we had no business being there in the first place. Putting the generations to come into debt to China in perpetuity to pay for another escalation of another senseless war will not change history in Vietnam, nor will it prevent a similar outcome in Iraq. It will, however, make a whole lot of Bush/Cheney contributors, as well as the Vice President himself, even wealthier than they are now.