fbi: not a phone call away
by Jason Bradley
Published: January 15, 2008
It’s hard to be awake and not have yet another economic indicator telling us that the United States economy is taking its turn in the toilet: sub-prime mortgage foreclosures, student loan lending practices called into question, bank after bank posting fourth quarter losses - not to mention our nearly $1.5 trillion dollar debt to China that grows by over $1 billion per day.
And then there’s the fact that the FBI has had a hard time paying its own bills.
On January 10, 2008, a U.S. government audit revealed that certain telephone companies contracted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation cut off the agency’s ability to wiretap international calls intermittently while telephone charges remained unpaid.
According to the audit, “late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence, including an instance where delivery of information required by a FISA order was halted due to untimely payment.”
That’s right: in our international political wranglings and wagings of war, we’ve created enemies to fight and borrowed and spent so much money fighting these new enemies that our own national security agencies cannot properly perform their duties to protect us.
But at least we’re winning the war, right?
Well, not so fast.
A new Brookings Institute report informs us that violence in Iraq has not decreased. In fact, violence against Coalition forces is up nearly 30% since the same time last year.
Tensions with Iranian Ahmadinejadists continue to escalate.
Israel continues to conduct operations over Syrian airspace.
Turkish opinion of the United States, who has supported Turkey as a NATO ally and its inclusion into the European Union, has fallen from 46 percent in 2002, to a mere 9 percent in late 2007. Furthermore, 64 percent of Turks, our friends, view the United States as the greatest threat to their future.
67 percent of the entire world wants us to remove all of our troops from Iraq within the year, which mirrors the public opinion of the United States where 61 percent of our own population supports such a withdrawal.
Obviously we should just leave, right?
Don’t count on it.
Ex-NATO ambassador and current senior advisor to the RAND Corporation Robert Hunter suggests there is a large faction within the current administration that vehemently craves war with Iran - and that Iraq is just a stepping stone.
In a public address last September, Hunter acknowledged that this faction of neo-cons will stop at nothing to engage in war with Iran - or that the region will be left to the new president in such a mess that no amount of responsible foreign policy and diplomacy will turn the situation around in any short amount of time.
In a recent address to Congress, Rep. Ron Paul (R - TX), said, “Common sense tells us the war in Iraq soon will spread to Iran. Fear of imaginary nuclear weapons or an incident involving Iran, whether planned or accidental, will rally the support needed for us to move on to Muslim country number three. All the past failures and unintended consequences will be forgotten.”
And the more of a debacle, the more money there is to be made.
Neo-con companies like Halliburton, which have intimate ties to the current administration, will continue to enjoy double-digit-profits that are directly tied to our ongoing involvement and military engagement. In fact, the website halliburtonwatch.org estimates that for every U.S. soldier that is killed in Iraq, Halliburton profits approximately $6.5 million (Halliburton has profited over $20 billion since the war’s inception).
And with profits like that, perhaps we would be better served if Halliburton took over surveillance from the FBI. At least they could pay the bills.
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