I smell a rat-- and it's coming from Cheney's direction

Thanks to the mysterious Cipher (and I guess Flip Wilson) for this bit of muckraking. I've been writing since this blog launched about all the billions that have gone missing in Iraq. And just recently, I pointed out that the Iraqi government-- such as it is-- is going after war profiteers. Unlike our own country.

This really is a national disgrace. Aside from the obvious-- money swiped from the reconstruction till means less reconstruction and more pissed-off Iraqis-- it's all happening at a time when the GOP is still pushing for high-income tax cuts and eviscerating social programs.

This is a must-read piece, especially for being link-saturated (the best kind).

Another attempt by the Bush regime to throw investigators off the scent is collapsing. This oil-for-slush part of the ever-widening scandal hits U.S. CEO Dick Cheney right where he lives: inside Halliburton's bulging vault.

The press isn't fully onto the scope of this overall, monumental scandal yet, reporting bits and pieces but not tying them together. Like last year's tsunami and this year's Indo-Pak quake, it's so big that putting a name to it is difficult. Maybe we ought to just call it Profligate, in honor of the wastrels of lives and money who are running our constitutional democracy into the ground.

To be fully informed on the oil-for-slush segment of the scandal — I've used that phrase to describe a narrower part of the Iraq "reconstruction" skullduggery — you have to rely on such watchdogs as Halliburton Watch, which thoroughly charts our country's progress (or Halliburton's — same difference) through the dismal swamp of this vast field of muck, not only in the Persian Gulf but in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now that's angry writing. Me like. Seeing a little outrage from another source always helps me shed a tiny bit of my own impotent rage.