Well it seems the 24 building US Embassy in Iraq will not only be the biggest single waste of taxpayers dollars in history, it is increasingly becoming another shame for us the same way that Abu Gharaib and Gitmo are a shame.
A pair of whistleblowers alleged Thursday that the contractor selected to build the U.S. embassy in Iraq "kidnapped" foreign nationals to work on...luring low-wage laborers into a war zone under false promises that they would be working at hotels in Dubai.
John Owens and Rory Mayberry... told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that workers from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Sierra Leone were tricked into boarding planes to Baghdad and then forced to work and live in squalid -- and often dangerous -- conditions.
This is the news that’s reported around the world and buried in the US.
So now it isn’t just torture that the Bushies have stained our reputation with. It’s slavery. Downright, ugly kidnapping and slavery. And for what? The largest embassy in the world, being built in another country, paid for by people who overwhelmingly either don’t know about the embassy or don’t want their money to go there.
"Let me spell it out clearly. I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy," said Mayberry, who worked for the contractor for less than a week providing emergency medical services to construction workers. "They had no passports because they were confiscated at the Kuwait Airport. When the airplane touched down at Baghdad Airport, they were loaded into buses and taken away. Later, I found out they were smuggled into the Green Zone. They had no IDs, no passports, nothing."
Owens said he witnessed workers at the job site being physically and verbally abused by First Kuwaiti managers who threatened to dock their salary if they were five minutes late or found sitting down at work. And although they were contractually obligated to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, if workers wanted a new pair of shoes or gloves, they were told to "do with what you have," Owens claimed.
In between your dose of Lindsay Lohan’s failed attempts at sobriety, and Britney’s aggressive bodyguard, you might hear about contractors taking US taxpayer dollars and basically doing an 1880’s Barbary Coast Shanghai kidnapping and forced labor.
And what does the corporate press and the wingnuts n power do to remedy the situation?
Attack the messengers.
Republicans, however, turned the focus on the whistleblowers. Rep. Darrell Issa of California said Owens filed a lawsuit against First Kuwaiti and that Mayberry is a "professional whistleblower," alleging previous wrongdoing by another former employer, KBR of Houston. At the direction of his attorney, Owens declined to confirm the existence of any lawsuit against First Kuwaiti.
This is what the United States of America has wrought under the Bush Administration:
"Conditions were deplorable, beyond what even a working man should tolerate," said Owens, who served as a general foreman for eight months -- from November 2005 through June 2006. "Foreign workers were packed in trailers tight. There was insufficient equipment and basic needs -- stuff like shoes and gloves."
http://www.govexec.com/...
And there's more
They worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and made as little as $240 a month, he said. They were "verbally and physically abused" and had their salaries docked for petty infractions, he added.
Rory J. Mayberry, an emergency medical technician who worked briefly at the embassy site under a subcontract, testified that he was asked by First Kuwaiti managers to escort 51 Filipinos through the Kuwait airport and onto a flight to Baghdad. However, "all of our tickets said we were going to Dubai," he said, adding that a First Kuwaiti manager instructed him not to tell any of the Filipinos that they were going to Baghdad.
He said the men were basically "kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy." Their passports had been confiscated, and they were driven away on buses after landing in Baghdad, then were "smuggled into the Green Zone," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...