Having turned against the war in Iraq several years ago, I came to believe that its consequences would be unpredictable and beyond the pale. Yet I never could have imagined the perfect storm of scandal that is blowing through the White House these days, a storm so powerful that it makes those recent tornados in Alabama seem puny:
President Bush endlessly tells Americans that supporting the troops in Iraq is paramount, but when the maimed survivors of his ill-conceived war hobble home, the treatment of their physical and mental wounds is nonchalantly outsourced to politically connected corporations who provide inadequate and sometimes outrageously neglectful care.
The push to privatize government services began before the Bush administration took office, but has accerated in the last several years because of the president’s 2002 Competitive Outsourcing Initiative.
In principle, contracting services to private companies because they can do as good or better a job for less money is a worthy goal, but as the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal has shown, it doesn’t always work out that way because money talks, cronyism prevails, job performance plummets and accountability goes bye-bye.
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