(By the end of this post, you'll want to contribute heavily to Congressman Tom Allen's Senate campaign.  Keep the link handy.)

Susan Collins is approaching the conclusion of her second term as Maine's junior Senator, the seat she first won in 1996.  Her employment history prior to serving as a U.S. Senator includes twelve years on the staff of U.S. Senator William Cohen (R-ME), so she is no stranger to the machinations of representing the state of Maine in the U.S. Senate.

While Collins has presented herself as a moderate or centrist in order to maximize the breadth of her appeal to Maine voters, when one looks at the entirety of her record, what is evidenced is overwhelming double-talk and an undue allegiance to the far-right wing of the Republican Party and the current Bush administration.  It has become clear that Susan Collins is out of step with mainstream Maine voters and is far too comfortable being patently dishonest when it suits her political ends.

(Much, much, much more below the fold.)

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As Dwight Eisenhower warned back in 1960, our American government -- actually our entire American society -- is dominated by the permanent, extra-Constitutional, Military-Industrial-Complex that was thrust upon us following the end of WWII (by the International Banking Cartel, Wall Street, and Defense Industries).

This is why the United States, after the close of WWII, has been fighting an absurdly long, endless list of undeclared proxy Wars in Foreign Nations all around the globe (quite unnecessarily), both overtly and covertly (and, done so in the service of the financial self-interests of U.S. transnational Corporations). This is why we have 750 U.S. Military Bases located in 130 Countries all around the World. The War-Establishment trumps-up poor, impoverished nations as these "great threats to our security" distracting both Washington politicians and the American people from thinking about all the waste, all the lies, all the unnecessary bloodshed, and all the Orwellian-control of our society, as our own Nation is plunged into debt and bankruptcy, while the War-Profiteers get rich, and the real "National security problem" for our Country is that China and Saudi Arabia are now required to keep the entire U.S. monetary system afloat.

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The excerpt below is posted with the full knowledge and permission, even encouragement, of the author, who wants his essays to be read by as many people as possible.

According to the Washington Post, Tenet's "60 Minutes" interview about his new book will air on April 29, next Sunday.  You can register your concern over profiteering from being wrong about a war at 60m@cbsnews.com.  Also, post a comment about this essay at The Hill's Pundits Blog (click the title, below), and it may be read by your senators and congressman!  From The Hill's Pundits Blog:

George Tenet Cashes in on the Iraq War

Brent Budowsky

Get ready for the great George Tenet book tour, following the highly paid George Tenet talk-for-pay tour. Presumably, when he milks his failures on the Iraq war for whatever it's worth, he just might wear his Presidential Medal of Freedom, given by George Bush for a job well done.

I hope George Tenet discloses, or some media reporter will report, exactly how much dough he has pocketed in the aftermath of his shameful conduct surrounding Iraq.

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Last night, I went to the Philadelphia premiere of Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. I am not going to critique the movie too much, because as I sat in the theater, one thought kept running through my mind: this is the most the clear-cut, winning political issue for Democrats in a generation. If we take even one house of Congress, we need to immediately set up a second Truman commission to investigate and prosecute war profiteering. If this issue stays in the headlines for an extended period of time, it will negatively brand Republicans for decades. It has everything:

• Cronyism. Private companies getting huge contracts in Iraq because of their connections to high-level Republicans.
• Political weakness Corruption: Republicans refusing to investigate widespread allegations and evidence of illegal activities on the part of these contractors because the heads of these companies are huge Republican donors.
• Screwing the troops: Big business being put ahead about our men and women in uniform.
• Screwing America: Big business ripping off tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers.
• Screwing workers: Companies not protecting workers in life and death situations because it costs too much.
• Incompetence and misuse of the military: The government used these contractors because they had done such a poor job of planning the Iraq that they needed a stop-gap measure to fill all of their schemes in Iraq.
• Human rights abuses: Most of the abuses in Abu Gharib were committed by contractors, not members of the military. In this way, contractors are also destroying the image of America around the world.
• Inefficiency in government: These contractors are actually a waste of our money because they aren't doing their jobs well.

When you add it all up, it is not only disgusting, but actually a perfect symbol for Republican "governance" under Bush. You have these characteristics of governance arise again and again under Bush, in a wide variety of issues. Basically, everyone is getting screwed except for Republican campaign contributors, because, well, those are the only people they care about under the Republican trifecta in Washington, D.C. IF Republicans in Washington had any decency, any guts, or any sense of common good, they would have been investigating the allegations against these contractors for a long time. Howver, they haven't done squat. As Senator Reid's office noted today:Bush Republicans only seem interested in oversight when Democrats are in office.

Subpoenas issued to the White House between 1995 and 2000 1,050[1]
Subpoenas issued to the White House between 2000 and 2005Every single Republican Senator voted against holding bi-partisan hearings into contractor abuse and fraud in Iraq back in 2004. They refuse to look into these allegations, much less to actually prosecute people.

Since this has not been a major news story at all, it might be difficult for Democratic campaigns to pick this fight in the 2006 elections. However, this would be a wildly popular set of investigations, it would be the right thing to do, and it would make a lot of Republicans look very, very bad. The needs to be the first thing we investigate if we take back either branch of Congress. This is the fight we need to pick, and the news story we need the media to cover. Of all the outrageous things that have taken place under the Bush administration, this one is perhaps the most symbolic. We need that symbolism out in the open as much as possible.

Anyway, go see the film, and I think you will understand what I mean.

Bumped from the diaries -- Jonathan

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake and The Great Society]

March 1st marked the sixty-fifth anniversary of the appointment of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, otherwise known as the "Truman Committee." Heralded as one of the most productive committees in United States history, then-Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman chaired the effort to cut out government monetary waste on defense contracts amounting to $15 billion. Truman went as far as to proclaim that war profiteering was "treason."

Ironically, we intersect with another statement from the former president. Truman dubbed the 1948 Congress as the "Do-Nothing Congress" because they were in session for only 108 days. But I think the current collection of suits has them beat with only 97 days in session. It's the "Do-Less-Than-Nothing" Congress and while they chase 12 million undocumented workers all over the country in the House and go off on gay-bashing tirades on the Senate floor, they are ignoring a major issue - war profiteering.

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