Bernie Sanders Confronts Defense Contractor Fraud

Eric Dolan Raw Story

Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Senate floor Wednesday urged lawmakers to make the Pentagon fight against defense contractor fraud as they debated the National Defense Authorization Act.

“This country has a record breaking deficit and a $15 trillion national debt,” he said. “What many people do not know is that one of the reasons our deficit is as high as it is, is because there is a significant amount of fraud from defense contractors who sell their products to the Department of Defense.”

The Pentagon paid more than $1.1 trillion during the past decade to 37 contractors that had defrauded the Department of Defense, according to a report released in October. Another $255 million went to 54 defense contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period.

“I think the American people are very clear that when we pay a dollar for a product that goes to our military, we want to get a dollar’s worth of value,” Sanders continued. “That we do not want to see the taxpayers of this country or the Department of Defense ripped off by fraudulent contractors.”

Sanders has proposed an amendment to the annual defense bill that would require the Pentagon to step up its efforts to fight fraud and submit annual reports.

“What this amendment does is tell the DOD, ‘get your act together,’” he said.

One of Bush’s criminal accomplices dares to show her face on the TV. She’s unable to leave the country for fear of arrest so Condi attempts to re-write history. She will go down in history to be a traitor to the American people. This war criminal is currently employed by Stanford University. Apparently the folks at Stanford are all too happy to look the other way when it comes to the slaughter of a million Iraqis two thirds of which were women and children.

The World’s most famous Genodecider  claims it wasn’t his idea. He was just following Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s orders. This man should stand trial in the Hague for Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Then again he’s need to answer treason charges here first. This man will live the rest of his life with the knowledge and shame of his own actions. Satan will be happy to see his right hand man again.

Former President George W. Bush considers himself "a dissenting voice" in the decision to go to war with Iraq.

In the first interview of the publicity tour for his new book, Decision Points, Bush told Matt Lauer that he didn't want to use force.

"Not everybody thought you should go to war, though," Lauer said. "There were dissenting voices."

"I was a dissenting voice. I didn't want to use force," Bush said. "I mean force is the last option for a President. And I think it's clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world's better off without Saddam in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis."

Bush went on to say that he still feels like going to war was the right decision. And as he wrote in the book, "No one was more sickened or angry than I was when we didn't find weapons of mass destruction."

Pathetic

WASHINGTON — The annual cost of U.S. intelligence is public for the first time: just over $80 billion for 2010.

Figures released by the government Thursday show $27 billion goes to military intelligence and $53.1 billion covers the CIA and some of the other 16 intelligence agencies.

Steven Aftergood, a secrecy specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, says it's "the most complete disclosure we have ever had."

The $80 billion exceeds the $51 billion spent on the State Department and foreign aid programs in 2010. But it's only a tenth of the $814 billion economic stimulus program passed by Congress last year. More...

Former President George W. Bush signaled on Thursday that he sees not privatizing Social Security as his greatest failure from the eight years he served in the White House, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The unpopular Republican leader made the suggestion while speaking at a trade conference in the Windy City, where he discussed his legacy and also offered a glimpse into what readers can expect from his forthcoming memoir, Decision Points.

"I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities," explained Bush. "In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger."

Bush poked fun at himself in addressing how his thoughts will be delivered in his memoir.

"I have written a book," he said. "This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write."

With the 2010 midterm election just weeks away, it's possible that the comments from the former president may leave some members of the GOP community a bit uneasy. Over the summer, it was reported that the release date for Bush's memoir -- November 9 -- had Republicans concerned that the timing could hurt the party's chances at the polls.

Matt Latimer, a former Bush appointee, wrote about the matter at the Daily Beast at the time:

[Some] Republicans, particularly those most closely tied to the Bush regime, actually argue the book could help the party by reminding some voters of what they liked about Bush. Still, that has not stopped some Republicans, traumatized over the last two election cycles, from fearing the worst. "Monumentally bad timing" was the reaction of one former Bush aide who learned of the book release date. Another prominent conservative compared the Bushies' public-relations savvy to LeBron James. "Selfish and stupid" was another noted right-wing columnist's reaction

As the criticism relates to Bush's regret that he couldn't achieve privatizing social security, it seems that his remarks couldn't have come at a worse time.

Time magazine reported earlier this week on Democratic efforts to score points with voters ahead of the midterms on the social security issue. In some cases, Democrats are even tying the matter to the former president.

"Instead of helping seniors," explained House Speaker Pelosi's office to the publication, "Republicans, backed by their allies on Wall Street, are threatening to privatize and cut Social Security, just as they tried to do under President Bush."

It shouldn't come as a surprise that following the former White House leader's remarks on Thursday, Democrats were quick to once again pounce on the issue.

"Republicans' agenda is what it always was -- turn the Social Security seniors worked hard to earn over to Wall Street," said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Press Secretary Ryan Rudominer. "If Republicans has their way, seniors could have lost 40 percent of their retirement investments when the market crashed. America's seniors deserve better."

A US citizen linked to Al Qaeda who is being targeted for extra-judicial killing by the CIA lunched at the Pentagon several months after the 9/11 attacks, news sources confirmed Wednesday.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico who is now believed to be in Yemen, was invited to have lunch at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 as part of the military's outreach effort to Muslims, officials confirmed to NBC News.

NBC reports:

According to the officials, al-Awlaki was invited as part of a Pentagon outreach program to convince influential Muslims that the war in Afghanistan was aimed at al-Qaida, not Muslims.

The FBI obtained the information during its investigation into the Fort Hood shooting rampage last November and alleged gunman Nidal Hasan's contact with Awlaki.

According to officials, the information came during an FBI interview with a female lawyer who worked in the Defense Department's general counsel's office.

"It's clear at the time (when the Pentagon was reaching out to Muslims) that no one here knew of any terrorist ties Awlaki may have had," an unnamed "senior Pentagon official" told NBC.

But the FBI evidently did know. NBC News reports that al-Awlaki was actually interviewed three times by the FBI shortly after the 9/11 attacks, as he had been in contact with three of the alleged hijackers. Fox News reports that three were Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Hani Hanjour, all of whom were aboard Flight 77.

But at the time the Pentagon saw al-Awlaki as "an 'up and coming' member of the [moderate] Islamic community. After ... vetting, [Awlaki] was invited to and attended a luncheon at the Pentagon in the secretary of the Army's Office of [General] Counsel," according to documents obtained by Fox.

Al-Awlaki has been linked to no less than three recent terrorist plots or attacks on US soil. His name first rose to prominence in the US last year, when it was alleged that accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan emailed the cleric.

According to Fox News, which first reported on al-Awlaki's Pentagon lunch, al-Awlaki "met with the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Yemen and was the middle-man between the young Nigerian and the bombmaker. Awlaki was also said to inspire would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad."

"The Pentagon has offered no explanation of how a man, now on the CIA kills or capture list, ended up at a special lunch for Muslim outreach," Fox News noted.

Awlaki is at the center of a lawsuit challenging the US's "targeted assassinations" program. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have said the program is blatantly unconstitutional, particularly when it is applied to a US citizen as is the case with al-Awlaki.

"A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement.

In defending against that lawsuit, the Obama administration argued last month that revealing any information about the targeted killings program would reveal "state secrets" -- an argument that many critics took to mean that the Obama administration is asserting the right to kill US citizens without any sort of court oversight.

The administration's argument means that "not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are 'state secrets,' and thus no court may adjudicate their legality," Salon writer Glenn Greenwald wrote.