Government corruption, especially during times of war is nothing new. Dating all the way back to the American Civil War, there were documented reports of faulty carbines that misfired being delivered to Union troops, along with spoiled barrels of salt pork. During the Spanish American War, the one started by William Randolph Hearst –the great purveyor of “yellow journalism”– the scandal was the cheap armor plating on the Great White Fleet. And so it goes down to this very day, when America goes to war private industry screws the country with overpriced and often substandard material that in the heat of battle often fails the troops. The only example we ever had to counteract such egregious war profiteering was during WWII, when then- Senator Harry S. Truman headed up a committee credited with saving up to $10 billion—a truly staggering amount in those days.

In a little noticed wire report in the back pages of the daily newspaper this week, the Department of Defense Inspector General confessed that nearly half of the military’s $316 billion weapons budget went unchecked last year and, according to one critic, can’t even be audited! On Pacifica Radio, this same critic said that the Inspector General at the DoD spent months attempting to audit the books and finally gave up saying that over one trillion dollars of defense budget was “unauditable.” If this is the amount that’s admitted to or generally perceived you can bet that the real problem is three times as bad. And it doesn’t take a detective to see the war profiteering taking place—it’s happening right in front us.

Just look at the escalating price of gas over the last few weeks––the multinational oil companies are raking in ever bigger profits this year as the price of oil reaches $130 per barrel. The deal is that this war in Iraq, a country that has oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia, has not placed any sizable quantity on the market since we invaded. Our fearless President, in anticipation of invading Iran, has admitted to withholding some 70 million barrels per day in America’s Strategic Reserve, and then we have the Wall Street commodities brokers speculating on oil futures. The Saudi Crown Prince, who has been asked politely by Bush for a few more drops of the precious black goo, simply declined to pump one extra barrel to quench our addiction. And everyone is making a profit (except you), pointing at the “free market.” Only a few pay attention to who is gaming the market and making it more of a free for- all of greed.

True conservatives bluster at any idea of regulating the market place, oil or otherwise. But universal health care is their single worst fear. Can you imagine eliminating the profit motive from the health care industry? Well, just think about this, if we are willing to subsidize the military-industrial complex to the tune of a trillion dollars for a war that nobody but Dick Cheney and John McCain believe is winnable, then we can certainly afford a national health care system that would cost less overall than what we currently spend as a nation.

The problem, as always, is how do we separate all the pigs from the public trough. It’s obvious that our rancher-cum-President Bush just has too much sympathy for them hogs––one might even call them “pork barrel Christians.” The feeding frenzy is starving us.

The solutions, which seem to be so elusive to this administration, are really quite basic. Get out of Iraq first, negotiate with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela for more oil second, and then launch into a real technology drive for clean energy development and independence within the decade. The dream of a clean energy economy is no more of a lunatic idea today than putting a man on the moon was in the 1960s. Not only this but cleaning up the air pollution emissions from our industrial ports and commercial highways will save billions more per year in related health care costs already born by what’s left of our crippled health care system.

The clean air activists, who have been fighting this battle here in the Harbor Area, are way ahead of the curve on this one. They are in fact our local heroes. The ports of LA and Long Beach have finally come around to understanding the ultimate logic of their arguments––finally accepting the science that produces ever more evidence of health related risks due to diesel emissions. What is needed now though, are not incremental measures to reduce pollution, but a national mandate––a Presidential campaign to free us from both oil dependence and the exhaust of our own economic success. Call it a war on pollution if you must name every national call to action a war. But at least we won’t be sending our young soldiers to die in the desert defending somebody else’s oil or freedom or Halliburton’s second quarter profits.

It would be satisfying though to see the corrupt Bush administration and all of their war profiteering cronies spend a few years in Guantanamo being water tortured––at least until we change the law on what constitutes “torture.”

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