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Bush continues: (he has been thanking everyone in Colorado, individually and personally, for at least 20 minutes, without any substantive policy statements), “I’m a little mad at Ben Nighthorse Campbell (an American Indian senator) for retiring, but I feel a lot better knowing that Pete Coors is gonna be in the U.S. Senate.” Well. That makes one of us. Pete Coors is running ads all over Colorado television making fun of IOWA. Pete Coors, talking about frivolous governmental spending, says, “They allocated (fill in your own figure here) for a rainforest in Iowa. IN IOWA!” He says this last part very sneeringly, as though Iowa is a synonym for excrement. I have a lot of classmates and close friends who left Iowa to teach in Colorado; not a one of them was amused by this demeaning ad, viewing it as a colossal put-down of our state, (which it is and was.) Keep that in mind if you are a transplanted Colorado resident, out of Iowa.

I might add, if Coors is so upset over waste in governmental spending, maybe he should read the article “Waste Not, Profit Not” (“Mother Jones”, page 23), in which colossal waste is reported by those actually IN Iraq,  caused by the sweetheart Halliburton deal. James Warren, a former KBR Convoy Truck Driver says, “The theft was rampant. Most of the stealing was done between 9 p.m. and midnight, when the trucks were at Camp Anaconda. I reported this to my convoy commander, Don Martin, who told me, “Don’t worry about it. It’s the Army stealing from the Army.” (See Joaquin Phoenix 2003 movie “Buffalo Soldiers” for more on this topic, in general). 

Warren went on to say, “In March, I called KBR President Randy Harl personally and told him about the theft going on at night at Camp Anaconda. He promised he would get to the bottom of it, and thanked me. I never saw any evidence that KBR tried to stop the theft after my call to Mr. Harl.” Or we might quote Michael West, former labor foreman for Camp Anaconda who said, “Of the 35 or so Halliburton employees at Camp Anaconda, only a handful had anything to do….The human resources supervisor said, ‘Don’t worry. Just write down 12 hours. Walk around, look around, look busy.” Henry S. Bunting, former Procurement Officer, reports that he was requested to break purchase orders down under $2,500 in value, so that “we wouldn’t be required to solicit more than one quote. Large requisitions were split into smaller requisitions below the $2,500 level. I questioned this practice early on, but was told by my supervisor to get back to my purchase orders.”

So, if Pete Coors wants to worry about “waste,” a rain forest in Iowa sounds like a pretty good idea right about now, compared to continuing to support this misguided war. But I digress.

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