Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1060077 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-29
• Released on: 2008-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780230604087
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review

From the Back Cover
"President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex. But he could not foresee how much more rapacious, wasteful, and dangerous this complex becomes when parts of the military are, in a headlong way, being privatized. We already know the Iraq war is a political and human disaster; these expert muckrakers show us how brazen an act of corporate theft it is as well. An Enron-size rip-off is underway, and few other writers are paying attention to it." --Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost

"Betraying Our Troops is a powerful, searing exposé about how America has substantially outsourced its war in Iraq, and the dire consequences of privatization to our troops, not to mention government efficiency and accountability. This is a sad tale of greed, arrogance, and cronyism run amok, from two very savvy Pentagon watchdogs who have devoted their respective careers to tracking defense contracting fraud. It will outrage and offend your sense of morality." --Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.

"This book is a must-read for everyone concerned about the impact of private contractors on this nation's ability to win wars and secure the peace." --Lawrence Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense

"Dina Rasor and Robert Bauman combine damning evidence with gripping stories from soldiers to show how crooks working for private contractors undercut our military and the war effort. This is an essential document of one of the more shameful episodes in American military history." --John Pike, Director, Globalsecurity.org

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Yes, we are begin betrayed. Please read this to find out how we DON'T support the troops

Read this book. It's that simple. Then read Fiasco. Then go to the VA hospital and talk to the soldiers sitting in the waiting areas. The truth is there for those who care to seek it out. One way or another, you'll pay for this book. You'll either read it and have your eyes opened, or not read it and have the wasted tax dollars efficiently extracted from your weekly paycheck. It's your choice. You can ignore it, not read it and say it's just `left wing lies' but I'm writing this review to tell you that if you do that, you're only lying to yourself. I know. I was there with the contributors to this book. I served under them. I went hungry when the contractors failed to supply meals and I drank contaminated water with the rest of the US military while they horded bottled water in their supply depots and their 5 star hotels in Kuwait.

Lies come from our elected officials both to get elected and to keep their positions of power. Lies come faster from them and make it to TV to decry books like this as `just lies'. But like all lies, eventually the truth comes out. This book sheds light on the real truth that is our military funding system gone amok. Lies now come (sadly) from far too many of our military leaders seeking to protect their careers and their command mistakes and to cover up ever-increasing mission failures because contractors don't have to follow orders, they have to be paid or they leave. Mostly, they leave anyway. I know. I was one of them. I not only quit when the going got tough, I got a bonus for my service! Lies come from criminals seeking to `beat the system'. We all know that. Lies also come from well-connected corporations seeking `any & every means' to increase their business revenue streams for the all-mighty profit. That's what this book is about. It's about the lies that our military lives with now, accepts now, is served by now and is harnessed to by more than 126,000 civilians who live comfortably in combat, not in fox holes with lice crawling on them like the soldiers do, but in air conditioned trailers with TV and internet while they argue with our commanders that they need more (& Bigger!) contracts. They're arguments would get a soldier thrown in the brig. In wartime, it could get a summary execution. In this war, threatening a contractor leads them to quit when the mission gets too dangerous or causes them to `slow down' to make us learn a lesson. We, the soldiers now know the golden rule: Don't bite the hand that feeds you or they'll stop bringing your food. They did it. We went hungry and convoys stopped coming. Not once, but year after year. They stopped in 2003 while I was in Baghdad and again in 2004 when I was in Tikrit.

Lies don't come from the testimonies of the brave souls willing to put their careers on the line for this book. That's not an opinion, that's a fact. I've spoken to one contributor whose career is effectively ended for what he reported. Our first duty is no longer to serve our nation and protect freedom; it's to not make the military look bad by reporting the missions aren't getting through because the civilians won't take the missions.

When I entered Baghdad in April 2003 and initially occupied Saddam's bombed out Ramadan palace to setup the new government, I was their as a civilian contractor. I was thrilled! I made more pay in 4 months as a contractor than in 4 years as a soldier. Months later, when I was called to service by my unit, I didn't respond to serve my country as a soldier because I was already in Baghdad. The army can't admit that's a problem, so they transferred me into the inactive reserves so I could stay in the war and make oodles of money. Again, I was thrilled! I stayed in Iraq and made so much money doing a job ½ as good as a soldier with incompatible equipment impossible to interact with the army needs for 40x the military pay, that I bought a new house in Florida every other month. We didn't accomplish a damn thing as contractors. In fact, we broke more stuff than we brought and lost the rest but who cares? I wasn't responsible for it? The corporation was. Hell, I still have a bullet proof vest my corporation bought for me while soldiers were going into battle w/o body armor. I had the best!

Nevertheless, there's a flipside to living in the emerald city and rubbing elbows with the most powerful people on the planet: During the initial invasion, I saw and read the accounts and could care less because I was getting rich. But when I returned six months later (for another year as a soldier) I was on the receiving end of KBR (and other) contractors. I managed KBR day-to-day operations requests from my soldiers at FOB Speicher and had them routinely denied or agreed to for more money, more contracts. This book documents that well, but not even close to how incredibly dependent we are now on civilians, many now who don't even speak English...

Sure, just for writing this review I'll probably lose my DoD job, my security clearances and my military career as a military police officer. Nevertheless, I'll be in the company of heroes. The fact is that America is about courageous common folk who only seek freedom, truth and justice. Ask any hero and his first response is "I'm not, I just did my duty". Sadly, our leaders, both military and civilian, have no longer any right to remain in the presence of America's true heroes. Their decisions are our nightmares leading to our dead brothers and sisters, our ruined lives, our broken military and our nation's dishonor. They've led us down a path such that we're no better than drug addicts, addicted to civilian contractors. Once we were the fiercest fighting force the world has ever known. Now, we are beggars for goods no less so than those we pass in the streets of Baghdad. Please, Mr. civilian contractor, may we have some more water? What more can I pay you to bring food to my troops in the field? What (drug) deal can I strike with you so that you gain more business and I get fuel for my attack copters?

This book is about how our national security used to be served by civilian contractors and how our leaders now have chosen to sell us out not only to the lowest bidder, but to the highest profiteer knowing they'll be rewarded with yet another six-figure salary as a lobbyist after they're not re-elected. No loss (for them) there! A retired congressman gets $65,000/yr be he a convicted felon or not. I'll get $800 and (maybe) a claim from the VA. The corporations have won. The traitors to America have won. The soldier, the sailor, and you have lost.

Reading this book, and others by true investigators, true American heroes; willing to tell the truth no matter what their own personal consequences, should be mandatory for everyone to become a US citizen or even to receive a driver's license or a movie ticket to the next big blockbuster summer hit. Sadly, most of us vote our politicians into their arrogant, powerful positions by being artfully deceived by their catchy sound bites, their Cheshire cat smiles and their well funded corporate campaigns. We get what we got sold: Tragic civilian leadership.

But after reading this book, life for you will be different. You'll be informed, and you'll have to make a choice. You'll still sit down to your dinner tables, and speak of how well we all support our troops. But now you'll know you're lying with the leaders or fighting for the truth. Sadly, if you choose the former, the more you speak, the more you'll believe you're telling the truth and that's not something you should teach your children. Sure, you'll make yourself feel better by putting a yellow ribbon on your bumper, as we all do who are either unaffected by the war or actually are affected because our son, daughter, husband or wife is `over there' putting their lives on the line for our freedom and shaking their heads in wonderment of their supply contractor's wage comparisons and lack of accountability.

In the end, one fact remains. It's inescapable. We are all individually responsible for this woefully wrong new path our nation has set forth upon. We're responsible because we are free. -Free to either not vote and stand idly by as the ideal that is "America" fades into history or free to vote uninformed buying into the self-interests and deceits of the people we've voted into power who talk much, promise more, but haven't supported our troops a damn bit w/o the first wave of rage coming from us, the people.

This book is about accountability. Yours. Mine. Everyone's. It starts when you read it. It accelerates when we actually begin to hold both our civilian leadership & our military leadership fully accountable for what they've done to our men and women in uniform. It shows progress when we re-learn and remember to return to the pursuit of our nation's ideals rather than fall victim to its leaders political spin and profit. Our greatest nation world status will follow again, if we choose wisely. Maybe, even peace will follow. But if it's world peace you truly seek, tell the civilian leadership to tell the civilian contractors to get the hell out of our war zones. Ask the soldier, the airmen, the sailors to sacrifice their lives for your freedom and we will. Not because we have some motive of profit, but because our true agenda, proven over the test of time, is defending America's freedom for everyone here now, who has come before us, and who shall surely follow in the generations to come.

Becoming a true patriot means remembering America's past with honor, and honoring that past by sending our military needs to our defense contractors who have so aptly supplied us in uniform for two hundred years with what we need to go to war with. Tell our leaders to have them do that again. Then, when the contractors have produced what our military needs, tell them to stand on the tarmac at our nation's airfields and wave American flags as we soldiers & sailors go off to fight for their freedom and win again their right to make oodles of money safely back here in the good old USA.

BTW, while you're thanking the contractors who truly are helping build the war materials we desperately need, you could mention they should support the USO. That USO sends some damn fine musicians, actors and models to us in battle that boost our morale and make our missions a little easier to fight for. Fighting for contractors to make six figure incomes for the same work we're trained to do, will never equal the morale boost a good USO tour delivers. If you've read this whole review, God Bless you! -As God has blessed America and how, even in death, he blesses our troops.

Betraying Us All
This book will make you mad, and you need to read it anyway.

In Rasor and Bauman's investigation into the tangled world of private defense contracting, I read about KBR's practice of removing all the spare tires from convoy trucks so that when some of them got flats, the contractor would burn them and bill the government (that's you and me, by the way) $85,000, plus costs, and I thought that was bad.

Then I read about the soldiers stuck out in remote bases in the Iraqi desert, running out of food and water, duct-taping their boots; and the contractors who would refuse to resupply them because the roads were dangerous, and I thought that was really bad.

Then I read about the disastrous journey through Fallujah, apparently intentionally bungled by a Blackwater contractor attempting to harass an employee who knew too much. The consequence of that bit of "office politics" was the deaths of thousands of people, including the four Blackwater employees, and a grave worsening of the military situation in Iraq. That's when I began to feel mad.

But I was really grossed out to read about camp Ar Ramadi in northern Iraq where KBR was discovered to be providing untreated wastewater for soldiers to shower with, exposing everyone in the camp to typhoid, cholera and every kind of water-borne parasite and disease. And I began to wonder what kind of people these were to do this to their own soldiers.

How did the military come to be at the mercy of contractors? Why don't contractors provide the services they contract to provide? How did privatizing the Iraq war undermine any chance of its success? Using the stories of real soldiers and contractors, Rasor and Bauman have written a thoroughly documented book about defense contracting in a war zone that is readable and compelling; and it will make you mad.

This is a book that anyone who cares about our soldiers or the future of our military services should read. It is a book that should be read by anyone who cares about the future of the United States.

Outsourced everything, including our honor
This is an excellent book for those that do not follow the broader press (I ignore the "mainstream" press, the NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times are largely worthless--the Boston Globe continues to please from time to time). The author has ably catalogued the disgrace to our nation, and the betrayal of our loyal troops, from the outsourcing of virtually every function including some combat operations.

I will honor the author by quoting Ralph Peters, one of the top US military strategists alive, who has said that we have outsourced so much that we have ultimately outsourced our honor (this includes our outsourcing to 42 dictators--there are only 2 we do not love) and to several despotic or illegal narco-regimes, including Colombia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.

The author is careful to identify some real heros that excel at supporting our troops, but on balance he provides a very bleak narrative that could be used to set the stage for Congressional hearings. In my view, Title 10 needs a complete overhaul, to create four joint forces after next: Big War built around Air Force; Small War built around Army and Marines; Peace War built around Navy and Coast Guard, and Homeland Defense, built around a National Guard that shifts toward law enforcement and does NOT go overseas for anything less than World War IV.

Below are a couple of related recommendations:
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Squandered Victory: The American Occupation And the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq