Military Whistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties: “It Was a Wal-Mart for Guns”
August 25th, 2007I post a lot of stories on Cryptogon, but read this one a bit slower than usual and let this sink in.
Then check out the related stories below.
Via: Forbes:
One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers – all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.
“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”
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Related: Stolen U.S. Vehicles End Up as Bombs in Iraq
Related: Pentagon Arms its Enemy’s Enemies in Iraq
Related: Guards Steal $282 Million from a Bank in Baghdad
Related: U.S. Sent $4 Billion in Cash to Baghdad Before Handover
Related: Pentagon Can’t Account for $19 Billion Spent on Iraqi Forces
Related: SAS Soldiers Dressed as Arabs, Shoot at Iraqi Police
Related: The Salvador Option Identified by Cryptogon
I was once stupid enough to get into an email debate with a ‘9/11 debunker’, and one of his most beloved arguments (I kid you not) was that 9/11 could not have been an inside job, because someone would have spoken up and/or a memo (with God-like powers, evidently) would have been leaked that would have revealed the entire plot for all to see. Ignoring all the other huge leaps of illogic on his part, his childlike belief in storybook endings is soundly pulverized by this article, which describes lives ruined by something as trivial (relative to 9/11) as speaking out about corporate corruption. Imagine the consequences if revelations of treason and mass murder were at stake.
What’s that mantra of yours, “You are a zombie. You are undead. I will not follow you.” I hope God’s writing a happy ending for this screenplay, ’cause there’s a shitload of brain-eaters out there, and we can’t hole up in here forever.