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November 19, 2005
New Meaning for 'No Child Left Behind'
Okay, so if you can't cut it in high school, there's always the military option, and the US military is now beating the bushes for every possible recruit it can find.
A provison to help out Pentagon recruiters was tucked inside the Bush Administration's much boasted "Leave No Child Behind" education reform of 2002. Although the controversial reform package is aimed at improving public schools, the law also requires schools to provide student contact information to military recruiters, according to a little gem in The Dallas Morning News.
School Districts apparently send letters to families that allow them to ""opt out" of sharing information about their children with the Pentagon, but many parents say it is too late to say no by the time they have a clue about the intent of the program.
The mother of college-bound Michael Galdiano complains that the family mailbox is now filled with military brochures, and that recruiters call the house and even on her high school senior's cellphone. Here are some Morning News excerpts:
The law's opponents argue that teenagers aren't equipped to fend off repeated overtures from well-spoken recruiters who befriend them. And they complain that the military's sales pitches, which sometimes include giveaways and promises of college scholarships, play down the dangers that new recruits could face....
Ms. (Felicity)Crush, spokeswoman for Leave My Child Alone, said recruiters use "hard sell" techniques, developing friendly relationships with students and offering appealing incentives while leaving some parents and students feeling harassed. Families need to make an informed decision about the military without feeling pressured, she said."This is not an anti-military thing," Ms. Crush said. "This is pro-privacy."
Posted by davidphinney at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Tim Robbins on Impeachment: Bush and Clinton
"In one case, you have thousands of deaths, and in another, you have a dry-cleaning bill for a dress."
That's actor Tim Robbins cleverly comparing the Bush Administration's false claim about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction with Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky affair and her seman-stained dress.
Robbins served up the comment Wednesday night while hosting the United Nations International Year of Microcredits awards dinner (how could you miss a dinner like that?) as reported in The Daily News.
Robbins was talking about "Scooter" Libby's indictment and predicting that it may just be the beginning of matters turning from bad to worse at the Bush White House.
"I don't think it stops there." Robbins said of the indictment. "I've been asking for 2 1/2 years why, if you can impeach a President for lying about an extramarital affair, why can't you impeach a President for lying about weapons of mass destruction that led to a war that led to thousands of deaths."
Ain't it odd that public opinion polls for President Bill Clinton made historical highs as Congress impeached him for lying about extramarital mischief in the Oval Office? (Or was it because the Republican-held Congress just imepeached because it could?)....Meanwhile, public opinion polls for President George W. Bush have been sinking to crushing all-time lows.
Meanwhile, Tina Fey's Saturday Night Live joke is ricocheting around the pipelines of cyberspace:
"A new poll shows that 66 percent of Americans think President Bush is doing a poor job of handling the war in Iraq. The remaining 34 percent think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church."
Posted by davidphinney at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2005
Civilian Contractor Casualties in Iraq Climbing
Seth Borenstein with Knight Ridder Newspapers notes what is previously unnoticed by the news media:
The government's listing shows the contractors' casualty rate is increasing. In the first 21 months of the war, 11 contractors were killed and 74 injured each month on average. This year, the monthly average death toll is nearly 20 and the average monthly number of injured is 243.
Posted by davidphinney at 03:14 PM | Comments (1)
More than 500 Contractor Deaths in Iraq?
The human cost of war in Iraq may be higher than previously thought, although the Pentagon has been slow in producing -- or even counting -- the numbers of casualties among civilians working for contractors in Iraq.
Even while Congress repeatedly asks for definitive numbers, most of us, i.e. journalists and other interested parties, have had to rely on the Web site Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a valued volunteer effort. That Web site has documented 278 fatalities with links to news stories about the deaths.
Now we find the number is even greater than previously thought, thanks to the latest report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The IG's October 30, 2005 Quarterly Report to Congress states that non-Iraqi contractor deaths have reached 412 during the period from March 11, 2003 through September 30, 2005.
Those sacrifices continue climbing, according to one trustworthy second-hand source who cites the total has jumped "to 524 in the last couple weeks." (Thank you, Seth.)
All of these various numbers are no solace to the families with loved ones now working in Iraq. Jana Crowder, who runs a the Web site American Contractors in Iraq, says she regularly hears from wives looking for their husbands. "Sometimes they haven't heard from them in months," she says, and the contractors and government are of little help in locating them.
Who knows what the husbands my be up to? A wild, lost weekend in Dubai? Or forgotten along some lonely Iraq highway.
Surely there are instances of attacks on contractors that go unreported. I got this e-mail from one truck driver about a Sept. 20 attack on a KBR convoy:
I was medevaced back to Anaconda (Balad Air Base) where I underwent three and a half hours of surgery. KBR never called my wife. I called her after I was out of surgery. I had been shot in the upper left leg, upper right leg (damaged the main artery and vein) and across the pelvic area. I had also been shot at least twice in the heart area but the vest stopped those rounds.
As for insurance data tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, there have been 4,208 Defense Base Act death and injury claims filed since April 2003 -- a 24 percent from the previous quarter.
Most of the contractors killed or injured listed as of now by Labor, which seems to be lagging behind the data used in the IG's Quarterly Report to Congress, are non-U.S. citizens. Of the 147 U.S. citizens Labor lists as killed, 120 (82 percent) were American contractors, 12 (8 percent) were U.S. government or UN workers, ten (7 percent) were non-governmental organization workers, and five (3 percent) were journalists.
The U.S. Department of State sheds further light on the dangers facing U.S. personnel in Iraq with its own tracking system, which also is lagging behind the IG's report. Of the 147 civilian deaths, the State Department reports that 117 were caused by terrorist action, 15 by vehicle accidents, 12 by other/natural causes, and 3 by homicide.
Posted by davidphinney at 04:16 AM | Comments (17)
November 01, 2005
Halliburton Sued for Back Wages and Salaries by Iraq Workers
It's a complaint I hear repeatedly from disgruntled workers returning home from Iraq. Employees working for Halliburton's subsidiary, KBR, frequently tell me they were stiffed on their paychecks and didn't get paid what they were promised.
Now there's a class action lawsuit seeked to resolve the complaints on behalf of employees saying they are sometimes owed up to $50,000 in back wages while working in support of the U.S. military under Halliburton's massive $10 billion-and-growing LOGCAP III contract. (My math tells me it's nearing the $20 billion mark.)
Filed Oct. 31, in Federal District Court, (Fifth Circuit, Harris County), the lawsuit contends that Halliburton fails to pay employees for all hours actually worked and that the company performs incorrect calculations of employees' straight pay as stated by employment agreements. There also are disputes about holiday and overtime pay.
The law firm representing the case recently placed an ad in Stars and Stripes last week seeking claimants and the response has already drawn hundreds of inquiries from KBR workers according to attorney Vincent Howard with Lopez, Hodes, Restaino, Milman & Skikos in San Diego.
Howard thinks he soon will be representing thousands of workers.
Posted by davidphinney at 03:52 AM | Comments (11)