How's this workin for ya, Shrub?

Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects . An agency in the State Department running a shell game! Hiding costs and overruns, withholding information, lying (gasp.) The findings appeared in an audit of a children’s hospital in Basra, but they referred to the wider reconstruction activities of the development agency in Iraq. Guess who the contractor is? Bechtel. Yes, THAT Bechtel, the one with a slew of contacts within the Government. After leaving the Nixon administration, former Treasury Secretary George Shultz joined Bechtel in 1974 as its executive vice president. Shultz suspended his association with Bechtel when appointed secretary of state by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. In 1983, Shultz dispatched diplomatic envoy Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to advocate for construction of a pipeline running from Iraqi oilfields to Jordan's port of Aqaba. According to documents recently obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies, Hussein was afraid Israel would bomb the pipeline, so an investor in the project—whom Bechtel claimed was not on its payroll—reportedly tried to arrange a deal through the U.S. Attorney General's office by which Israel would receive some $70 million per year not to bomb the pipeline. Critics accused Shultz of intervening on behalf of Bechtel, which he denied. Shultz rejoined Bechtel in 1989 as a member of its board of directors after retiring from the State Department. Upon returning, he learned that the company had assumed a $2 billion contract for project management of an Iraqi petrochemicals complex that manufactured ethylene oxide, a chemical used in the production of plastics. U.S. chemical experts pointed out, however, that the chemical was also a precursor to mustard gas. On Shultz's recommendation, Bechtel pulled out of the project. Shultz currently serves as a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

In 1998, Bechtel hired former Marine four-star general Jack Sheehan as senior vice president in charge of project operations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Sheehan served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic and Commander in Chief U.S. Atlantic Command before his retirement in 1997. After leaving active duty, Sheehan served as Special Adviser for Central Asia for two U.S. defense secretaries. He also sits on the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon-appointed board that advises it on defense issues.

But back to the Basra Children's hospital. The project was budgeted to cost $50 Million. Bechtel told the Agency in April that it would actually cost $98 Million. But the Agency wrote in its report the project cost was $50 Million - The rest was reclassified as overhead, or “indirect costs.” "We find the entire agreement unclear,” the inspector general wrote of the A.I.D. request approved by the embassy. No kidding, ya think?

Meanwhile, Partisan Divide on Iraq Exceeds Split on Vietnam. While people were sharply divided over Viet Nam, it was not a division along party lines, as this appears to be. As a nation, we still feel the scars from the Viet Nam War. The Vietnam War caused a wrenching debate that echoes to this day and shaped both parties, but at the time, public opinion did not divide so starkly on party lines, experts say. The partisan divide on Iraq has fluctuated but endured across two intensely fought campaigns in which war and peace — and the overarching campaign against terrorism — have figured heavily. Each party has its internal differences, especially on future strategy for Iraq. But the overall divide is a defining feature of the fall campaign.

How we vote this fall is essential. We have an opportunity to take back our country. John Dean, in Conservatives Without Conscience, has some quotes before the table of contents:

"If you think [the United States] could never elect an Adolf Hitler to power, note that David Duke would have become governor of Louisiana if it had just been up to the white voters of that state." - Professor Bob Altemeyer

"The administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form." - Jonathan Schell

And if we sit back, and let the neo-conservatives have their way, the bloodbath will continue.