Tuesday, November 25, 2014

OBOF TYMHM & MORE Vol 14 No 36


OPINOINS  BASED  ON FACTS (OBOF)

&

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR ONE

YEAR TWO

YEAR THREE

YEAR FOUR

 

OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
 
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01
Jan. 02, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02
Jan. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03
Jan. 15, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04
Jan. 24, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05
JAN 30, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06
Feb. 06, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA
Feb. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07
Feb. 13, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-08
Feb. 21, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-09
Feb. 27, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-10
Mar. 08, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11
Mar. 13, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11    EXTRA
Mar. 15, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-12
Mar.  21, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-13
Mar.  29, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-14
Apr.  03, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-15
Apr.  12, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-16
Apr.  19, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-17
Apr.  26, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-18
May  03,  2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-19
May  10,  2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-20
May  20,  2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 21
May 28,  2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - Ho 22
June 10, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 23
June 20, 2014
noteOBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 24
July  04, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 25
Aug. 04, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 26
Aug. 25, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 27
Sept. 03, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 28
Sept. 10, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 29
Sept.  14, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 30
Sept.  21, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 31
Sept.  29, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 32
Oct.    10, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 33
Oct.    31, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 34
Nov.   09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 35
Nov.   16, 2014
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 36
Nov.   25, 2014

 

 

Agenda

1.  Thought about ISIS war.

2.  Senate rejects Keystone XL pipeline.

3.  Obama's Immigration Ex. Order.

4.  The last days of Tamas Young.

5.  Prosecutors troubled by extent of military fraud.

 


 


 


 


 


 


THOUGHTS ABOUT FIGHTING


THE ISIS


 


By Floyd Bowman


Publisher "Opinions Based On Facts."


November 23, 2014  


 


I was flipping around on the tube  the other day, and I came across a western movie entitled "Monte Walsh."  The description of what to expect was "In early 1800s, western cowboys were fighting back against eastern corporations that were buying up land in the west."  The items we are fighting against now may be different, but not entirely.  We are still fighting against corporations about land rights from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.   Also, land rights for protecting our precious wildlife, plus many other things.  It is still the people fighting the corporations. 


 


Over in the middle-east they have been fighting about ethnic problems and land since before Christ time.  And, of course, they are still fighting.  The only difference is that they keep drawing us back into it.  What goes around comes around and what comes around goes around.  It's a vicious cycle.


 


WHY ANYONE THINKS THAT WE CAN CHANGE THAT, HAS TO BE OUT OF THEIR EVER LOVEN MIND.  


Looking back at the beginning of the action against the ISIS,  BB GW         `2 President Obama said that we would not be sending ground forces into Iraq.  That we would be jointed by other countries, and that we would limit our action to air strikes.  Shortly thereafter, he sent 1,400 ground forces to Iraq as, he said, "training personnel," what next?  Yes, you probably either guessed it or already know, that last week, on Nov. 10 he deployed an additional 1,500.  That is almost 3,000 ground troops in Iraq. 


Yes, they are suppose to "advise and train," but folks, I have heard this tune before.  One account I read, said that these troops will "advise and train troops that are on the front line."  If they are going to train and advise troops on the front line, it seems to me that our training troops would have to be on the front line also.  So, that is the beginning of our troops in a ground war.  He has said that there is one thing that would bring about our troops fighting a ground war over there and that would be if he found out that the ISIS had obtained a nuclear weapon. 


Now don't get me wrong, if that is what he feels is necessary then so be it, but we have gone down this same road before.  I personally, do not want to see us in another all out ground war in Iraq for another 10 years.  The cost in terms of money and more important than money, the cost in American lives, to fight, yet, another war over there, particularly when I would very much doubt that we can win, is just plain stupid.  We cannot stop wars that have been going on for centuries.


When I write something like this, I always have to stop and realize that I am sitting here in the comfort of my home, writing my opinion based on the information that I am able to obtain.  BUT, I, nor you, do not have the information that the President has and that could make all the difference.  So, I will give him the benefit of the doubt.


~~~


 
Senate Rejects Bid to Force Approval of Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline

Susan Casey-Lefkowitz’s Blog


Posted November 18, 2014


 

Despite strong lobbying by oil-industry allies, the U.S. Senate tonight defeated an effort to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  The Senate vote reaffirms a commitment to fight climate change.  Taking leadership sometimes means saying “no”.  This bill would have turned Congress into a permitting authority, overriding environmental law, and giving a green light to a pipeline project that would worsen climate change and threaten water quality.  The Senate did the right thing to reject the misguided bill, and now the president should do the right thing and reject the tar sands pipeline.

Today was a good day for American leadership, showing that the big polluter agenda doesn’t stand up.  There are likely to be many attempts to undermine our health and environment in the coming months, and we will need the same kind of leadership we saw tonight to protect our air, climate, lands and water. 

If we are to be serious about fighting climate change, we can’t allow climate-busting projects like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to move forward.  In this case, the decision on Keystone XL is where it belongs — with the president. After reiterating the need to allow the State Department process the time to conclude, the President recently noted:

“I have to constantly push back against the idea that Keystone is either a massive jobs bill for the U.S. or is somehow lowering gas prices.  Understand what the project is, it will provide the ability for Canada to pump their oil and send it through our land down to the Gulf where it will be sold everywhere else.”

The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is all risk and no reward for America.  The pipeline would carry Canadian tar sands oil across America’s heartland to the Gulf coast, where much of it would be exported to foreign buyers. Once built, the pipeline would create fewer than fifty permanent jobs.  It would take us backward at a time when many communities across our country are experiencing the impacts of climate change through severe weather, coastal storms, and crippling droughts.

The fact that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would enable a significant increase in carbon intensive tar sands production is what makes it so undermining of American leadership to address climate change.  Tar sands crude is significantly more carbon intensive than conventional crude.  Just the additional emissions from the tar sands in Keystone XL — above average emissions from producing non-tar sands oil — are equal to Americans driving more than 60 billion additional miles every year.  Meeting climate stabilization will be practically impossible if the tar sands resource is developed at projected rates and Keystone XL is critical to this expansion.  With climate change already harming our communities and pocketbooks across America now is the time for clean energy, not expansion of dirty energy such as tar sands.

American leadership on climate comes in many forms. We saw it as 400,000 people turned out in New York City in September to march for climate action.  We see it in President Obama’s climate action plan. We see it in the US-China climate agreement.  And we saw it as the Senate voted to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in our national interest.  It’s not a plan to help our country.  It’s about big profits for big oil — and big pollution for the rest of us.  It’s a terrible idea, and it needs to be denied.

~~~

Everything You Need To Know About Obama's Executive Amnesty

Conn Carroll | Nov 21, 2014


From Floyd:

 

Just want to write some thoughts about this action and others that he is contemplating.  I believe that the President has decided that, while he has said he will continue to reach out to the Republican Congress, he is going take a number of actions on his own.  He knows that the Congress is not going to work with him so that he can get things done that he really wants.  Couple that with the fact that he is done politically and that he really wants to accomplish some more before his time is over, he just is going to move ahead, regardless of what others think. 

 

He knows that there will be more talk of impeachment, but it will never happen.  He knows that if they, the Congress, threatens to shut down the government, he can stop it.  It is a very bold move, but he can.  It was done during the Clinton administration.

 

I believe this is the type of governing we will see during the next two years.  If, he does this, he will go down in history as a successful President.  I, for one, hope this is the route he is going to take. 

~

In a primetime address on November 20, President Obama made his sales pitch to the American people for a series of immigration executive actions he will sign on November 21 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Here is what you need to know:

 

What actions is Obama taking specifically?

 

The key to Obama's new immigration policy is the creation of one new amnesty program and the expansion of another.

Specifically, Obama's new amnesty program will give illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for at least five years, and who are parents of U.S. citizens or legal residents, a three year work permit.  This permit will also allow them to obtain a Social Security number and get a driver's license. Pew estimates that 3.5 million current illegal immigrants will qualify for this program.

 

Obama is also expanding the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals amnesty program.  Previously only those illegal immigrants who were born before 1981 and entered the U.S. as a minor before 2007 were eligible for benefits. Now all illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as a minor before 2010 will be eligible for amnesty.  Like the parents above, DACA recipients will also get work permits, Social Security numbers, and driver's licenses. Pew estimates that 235,00 illegal immigrants will gain eligibility for benefits through this program expansion.

 

Is this legal?

 

Obama didn't think so.  As recently as this spring, and on more than 20 other occasions, Obama said he could not rewrite immigration law by executive action. 

 

Specifically, this March Obama told Univision, "But what I’ve said in the past remains true, which is until Congress passes a new law, then I am constrained in terms of what I am able to do. ... t at a certain point the reason that these deportations are taking place is, Congress said, ‘you have to enforce these laws.’ They fund the hiring of officials at the department that’s charged with enforcing.  And I cannot ignore those laws any more than I could ignore, you know, any of the other laws that are on the books.

 

More damning, in 2011, Obama told the National Council of La Raza, "Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting.  I promise you.  Not just on immigration reform.  But that's not how our system works.  That’s not how our democracy functions.  That's not how our Constitution is written."

 

How is Obama justifying this amnesty?

 

The Office of Legal Counsel memo released before Obama's speech cites Obama's Article II Section 3 constitutional duty to "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed" as the source of his power to grant this amnesty. 

 

The memo reasons that since there are 11.3 million illegal immigrants in the country today, and DHS only has the resources to remove 400,000 illegal immigrants every year, Obama must choose which immigrants to deport and which to ignore.  This "prosecutorial discretion" power, the memo claims, allows Obama to choose which illegal immigrants get work permits, which illegal immigrants will continue to be ignored, and which illegal immigrants will be deported.

 

Under this legal theory, Obama could give all current 11.3 million illegal immigrants work permits and driver's licenses, as long as he kept deporting at least 400,000 illegal border crossers every year.

 

Will courts let Obama get away with this?

 

They already have.  In 2012, after Obama announced his DACA program, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sued the Department of Homeland Security challenging the legality of Obama's first executive amnesty program.

 

But while the court found that the border agents "were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the Department of Homeland Security has implemented a program contrary to congressional mandate."  The court also ultimately determined that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue DHS since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 already established an administrative process for resolving disputes between federal employees and their employer.

 

The harms from Obama's illegal amnesty programs are just too diffuse for any one litigant to establish standing in federal court.

 

If courts can't stop Obama in time, who can?

 

Only Congress can stop Obama's amnesty program by defunding it.

 

Now it is true that since the federal agency that issues work permits, the United States Citizen and Immigration Services office, is self-funded through fees it would keep issuing permits in the event of a federal government shutdown.

 

But that does not mean Congress does not have any power over the agency.  Congress could still attach a rider to any appropriations bill forbidding USCIS from using any federal funds, including those collected through fees, for the purpose of carrying out Obama's amnesty programs.

 

Will Congress stop Obama?

 

Some in Congress, like Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), have said they will use the power over the purse to defund Obama's amnesty.

 

Others like House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) have said they want to pass a long-term government funding bill which would essentially rubber stamp Obama's amnesty.

 

How would Obama's amnesty effect legal immigrants?

 

After Obama enacted DACA, wait times for visas for legal immigrants tripled from 5 months to 15.  Obama essentially allowed illegal immigrants to jump in line in front of law-abiding legal immigrants.  Since Obama has requested no new funding from Congress to pay for his new amnesty, and since his new amnesty is three times larger than his last amnesty, legal immigrants should not only expect to head to the back of the line again, but they should also expect much longer delays.

                                                                                                     

Obama claims all these amnestied immigrants will get background checks, Is that true?

 

If history is any guide, no.  Background checks are expensive and time consuming and USCIS does not have the resources to process additional amnesty programs on top of their normal duties. Judicial Watch uncovered documents in June 2013 showing that instead of full background checks normally used by the agency, DACA recipients got cheaper and less comprehensive "lean and lite" checks.

 

33Obama said illegal immigrants will be held accountable by paying taxes. Is that true?

 

It is true that the IRS already allows illegal immigrants to pay income taxes by obtaining a tax identification number. Most illegal immigrants also already pay state and local taxes. Obama's amnesty program changes none of this.  In fact, Obama's new amnesty lets illegal immigrants of the hook but not paying any fines or penalties for breaking the law.

 

How will Obama pay for this new amnesty program?

 

The White House has not explained that yet.

 

What about Democrats who claim Reagan and Bush also acted unilaterally on immigration?

 

President Reagan did pass an amnesty program through Congress in 1986, but it failed to accomplish its goals.  At the time there were just 3 million illegal immigrants in the country and today there are more than 11 million.  This is why most Americans do not support amnesty today.

 

Reagan also used an executive action to ease immigration standards for 200,000 Nicaraguans who feared persecution from the communist Sandinista regime.  President Bush used similar powers to grant deportation relief to hundreds of Kuwaiti nationals who had been evacuated to the United States during the first Gulf War.

 

But both of these executive actions were perfectly in line with the true scope of a president's prosecutorial discretion powers. They were limited in nature, applied to specific smaller groups of immigrants, and were not designed to thwart congressional intent on immigration policy.

 

Obama's amnesty is the exact opposite.  It is a broad-based program in response to no crisis other than Congress isn't doing what Obama wants it to do.  As Obama once said, "That's not how our system works.  That’s not how our democracy functions.  That's not how our Constitution is written."

~~~

The Last Days of Tomas Young

Tomas Young was shot and paralyzed below his waist in Iraq in April 2004 when he and about 20 other U.S. soldiers were ambushed while riding in the back of an Army truck.  He died of his wounds Nov. 10, 2014, at the age of 34.  His final months were marked by a desperate battle to ward off the horrific pain that wracked his broken body and by the callous indifference of a government that saw him as part of the disposable human fodder required for war.

Young hung on as long as he could.  Now he is gone. He understood what the masters of war had done to him, how he had been used and turned into human refuse.  He was one of the first veterans to protest against the Iraq War.  Planning to kill himself by cutting off his feeding tube, he wrote a poignant open “Last Letter” to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in March of 2013 on the 10th anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.  He knew that Bush and Cheney, along with other idiotic cheerleaders for the war, including my old employer The New York Times, were responsible for his paralysis and coming death.

After issuing the letter Young changed his mind about committing suicide, saying he wanted to have more time with his wife, Claudia Cuellar, who dedicated her life to his care.  Young and Cuellar knew he did not have long.  The couple would move from Kansas City to Portland, Ore., and then to Seattle, where Young died. 

Young, who had been in Iraq only five days at the time of the 2004 attack, was hit by two bullets.  One struck a knee and the other cut his spinal cord.  He was already confined to his bed when I visited him in March 2013 in Kansas City.  He was unable to feed himself.  He was taking some 30 pills a day.  His partly paralyzed body had suffered a second shock in March 2008 when a blood clot formed in his right arm (which bore a color tattoo of a character from Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”).  He was taken to the Veterans Affairs hospital in Kansas City, Mo., given the blood thinner Coumadin and released.  

The VA took him off Coumadin a month later.  The clot migrated to one of his lungs.  He suffered a massive pulmonary embolism and went into a coma.  When he awoke in the hospital his speech was slurred.  He had lost nearly all his upper-body mobility and short-term memory.  He began suffering terrible pain in his abdomen.  His colon was surgically removed in an effort to mitigate the abdominal pain.  He was fitted with a colostomy bag.  The pain disappeared for a few days and then returned.  He could not hold down most foods, even when they were pureed.  The doctors dilated his stomach.  He could eat only soup and oatmeal.  And then he went on a feeding tube.

Veterans Affairs over the last eight months of Young’s life reduced his pain medication, charging he had become an addict.

From Floyd:  So what did it matter that he was addicted to the pain medicine.  They knew he was going to pass on before long.  Why on earth they should take that medication away is beyond me.  I have personally experienced the same thing.  I have, so far, had 20 more good years because I have a doctor that understands that if you can extend your good years, why not?

I have been to pain clinics and as far as I can tell they are nothing more than a brain washing machine.  They try to tell you to get it out of you mind.  To some degree a person can do that, but it gets to a point that you can't function at all without medication.  If it isn't hurting you more in other ways, WHY NOT?   

 It was a decision that thrust him into a wilderness of agony.

Young’s existence became a constant battle with the VA.  He suffered excruciating “breakthrough pain.” The VA was indifferent.  It cut his 30-day supply of pain medication to seven days.  Young, when the pills did not arrive on time, might as well have been nailed to a cross.  Cuellar, in an exchange of several emails with me since Young’s death, remembered hearing her husband on the phone one day pleading with a VA doctor and finally saying: “So you mean to tell me it is better for me to live in pain than die on pain medicine in this disabled state?”  At night, she said, he would moan and cry out.

“It was a battle of wills,” Cuellar told me in one of the emails. “We were losing.  Our whole time in Portland was spent dealing with trying to get what we needed to be at home and comfortable and pain free.  THAT’S ALL WE WANTED, TO BE HOME AND PAIN FREE, to enjoy whatever time we had left.”

Last month they moved from Portland to Seattle. They would be closer to a good spinal cord injury unit.  Also, Washington was one of the states that had legalized marijuana, which Young used extensively.

When I saw Young in Kansas City last year he told me he had thought of having his ashes sprinkled over a patch of soil on which marijuana would be planted, “but then I worried that no one would want to smoke it.”  After they moved to Seattle he and Cuellar again pleaded with the VA for more pain medication, but the VA staff said Young would have to be evaluated over a two-week period by a “pain team.”  This, in my opinion, is ridiculous.  Floyd.  The pain team could not see him until the last week of November.  He was dead before then.

“Last week I called because his breakthrough pain started happening throughout the day,” Cuellar said in an email. “I was using more and more of the morphine and Lorazepam. I was running out of pills. He had a high tolerance for pain, but it was getting bad. I called to report to the doctor that it was getting bad fast. I would not have enough pills to bridge him to the appointment on the 24th. The doctor was unsympathetic.  He gave me a condescending lecture about strict narcotics regulations.  I said, ‘but my husband is in pain what do I do?’ ”

Young tried to take enough sleeping pills to sleep away the pain. But he was able to rest for a prolonged period only every few days.  The pain and exhaustion began to tear apart his frail body. He was dispirited. He was visibly weaker. He felt humiliated.

“Maybe he got so exhausted by the enduring of it all that he took a last sleep and never came back,” Cuellar wrote. “My conclusion is that he died in pain from the exhaustion of having to endure it.  Early morning Monday, when I thought he was sleeping, I heard a silence I had never heard before.  I couldn’t hear him breathing.  I was scared, but I knew.  The first thing I did was liberate him from all the tubes and bags on his body. I cut off the feeding tube.  I took off the Ostomy Bags.  I removed the Foley Catheter.  I cleaned his body.  I played music.  We smoked a last joint together.  I smoked for him.  I started making calls.”

“The funeral home instructed me to call the police,” she wrote. “They arrived and concluded that there were no issues, but because of his young age they had to refer this to the Medical Examiner. The Medical Examiner came. He made the determination that due to his age that they would have to perform an autopsy.  I said, ‘Hey look at his body don’t you think he has been mutilated enough?  Are [you] going to desecrate his body even further?’  So he was cut open some more.”

The VA called her to ask for the autopsy report.

Young’s final days, Cuellar said, were often “hopeless and humiliating.”

It is an old story.  It is the story of war. Two days after the 9/11 attacks, Young enlisted in the Army, hoping he would be sent to fight in Afghanistan.  He was seduced by jingoism and calls for a crusade against evil that he eventually came to realize were a mask for lies and deceit.  He became a voice for other young people who bore the physical and emotional scars of war.  He became our conscience.  He spoke a truth about war, a truth many do not want to hear.  And he condemned our war criminals and demanded justice.  He wrote in his “Last Letter” to Bush and Cheney:

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration.  I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician.  We were used. We were betrayed.  And we have been abandoned.  You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian.  But isn’t lying a sin?  Isn’t murder a sin?  Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian.  But I believe in the Christian ideal.  I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
 
My day of reckoning is upon me.  Yours will come.  I hope you will be put on trial.  But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live.  I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

We must grieve for Tomas Young, for all the severely wounded men and women hidden from view, suffering their private torments in claustrophobic rooms, for their families, for the hundreds of thousands of civilians that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, for our own complicity in these wars.  We must grieve for a nation that has lost its way, blinded by the psychosis of permanent war, that kills human beings across the globe as if they were little more than insects.  It is a waste.  We will leave defeated from Iraq and Afghanistan; we will leave burdened with the expenditure of trillions of dollars and responsible for mounds of corpses and ruined nations.  Young, and here is the tragedy of it, was sacrificed for nothing.  Only the masters of war, those who have profited from the rivers of blood, rejoice.  And they know the dead cannot speak.

~~~

Prosecutors Troubled

by Extent of


 Military Fraud


 


The Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fabian Barrera found a way to make fast cash in the Texas National Guard, earning roughly $181,000 for claiming to have steered 119 potential recruits to join the military.  But the bonuses were ill-gotten because the former captain never actually referred anyone.

Barrera's case, which ended last month with a prison sentence of at least three years, is part of what Justice Department lawyers describe as a recurring pattern of corruption that spans a broad cross section of the military.

In a period when the nation has spent freely to support wars on multiple fronts, prosecutors have found plentiful targets: defendants who bill for services they do not provide, those who steer lucrative contracts to select business partners and those who use bribes to game a vast military enterprise.

Despite numerous cases that have produced long prison sentences, the problems have continued abroad and at home with a frequency that law enforcement officials consider troubling.

"The schemes we see really run the gamut from relatively small bribes paid to somebody in Afghanistan to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of contracts being steered in the direction of a favored company who's paying bribes," Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said in an interview.

In the past few months alone, four retired and one active-duty Army National Guard officials were charged in a complex bribery and kickback scheme involving the awarding of contracts for marketing and promotional materials. A trucking company driver pleaded guilty to bribing military base employees in Georgia to                                                                                                                                                                                                          obtain freight shipments - often weapons which required satellite tracking - to transport to the West Coast.

More recently, a former contractor for the Navy's Military Sealift Command, which provides transportation for the service, was sentenced to prison along with a businessman in a bribery scheme in which cash, a wine refrigerator and other gifts traded hands in exchange for favorable treatment on telecommunications work.  Also, three men, including two retired Marine Corps senior officers, were charged with cheating on a bid proposal for maintenance work involving Marine One helicopters that service the White House.

Justice Department lawyers say they don't consider the military more vulnerable to corruption than any other large organization, but that the same elements that can set the stage for malfeasance - including relatively low-paid workers administering lucrative contracts, and heavy reliance on contractor-provided services - also exist in the military.

Jack Smith heads the department's Public Integrity Section, which is best known for prosecuting politicians but has also brought multiple cases against service members.                                        He said there are obvious parallels between corruption in politics and in the military.

"When an American taxpayer is not getting the deal that they should get, someone is inserting costs that the taxpayers ultimately have to bear, I think anybody would be offended by that," Smith said.  Some cases have stood out.

Defense contractor Leonard Francis was arrested in San Diego last year on charges that he offered luxury travel, prostitutes and other bribes to Navy officers in exchange for confidential information, including ship routes.  Prosecutors say he used that information to overbill the Navy for port services in Asia in one of the biggest Navy bribery scheme in years.  Ethan Posner, a lawyer for Francis, declined comment.

Yet many others involve more mundane cases of contracting or procurement fraud.  Consider the trucking company operator in Afghanistan who bribed an Army serviceman to falsify records to show fuel shipments that were never delivered, or the former Army contractor who demanded bribes before issuing orders for bottled water at a military camp in Kuwait.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated that between $31 billion and $60 billion was lost to fraud during U.S. operations in those countries.  The Justice Department says it brought 237 criminal cases from November 2005 to September 2014 arising from war-zone misconduct - often contracting fraud.

"We just were not equipped to do sufficient oversight and monitoring on the front end, and we didn't have sufficient accountability mechanisms on the back end, which led to enormous problems," said Laura Dickinson, a national security law professor at George Washington University.

The Defense Department has acknowledged the problems and taken steps in the past decade to tighten controls and improve training.

Domestically, more than two dozen National Guard officials, including Barrera, the Texas National Guard captain, have been charged with abusing a recruiting incentive program in which soldiers could claim bonuses of a few thousand dollars for each person they said they had recruited.                                                                                                                                                   But prosecutors said soldiers repeatedly cheated the system by claiming bonuses for ghost referrals.

Army National Guard spokesman Rick Breitenfeldt said the military takes the matter seriously and two years ago suspended the problematic recruiting program, known as G-RAP.

"We acknowledge that fraudulent activity took place with this program and continue to work with law enforcement agencies to identify the accountable individuals and take appropriate action," he said in a statement.

Caldwell said the Justice Department, even with limited resources, must have a zero-tolerance policy as a deterrent.  "It's really not worth risking your military career and your reputation - not to mention your freedom - for this kind of thing," she said.

~~~

If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next week.

God Bless You All

&

God Bless the united States of America

Floyd

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