Corporate profiteering against Iraq vets?

Corporate profiteering against Iraq vets?

Bush's nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs is the second to come from a private company that rakes in millions from VA contracts.

By Mark Benjamin


Nov. 20, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- President Bush late last month nominated retired Lt. Gen. James Peake to be the next secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is not an inconsequential wartime post: The department is the second-largest government agency after the Defense Department. And the VA faces the awesome responsibility of caring for several generations of veterans, including the crush of American service members back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

On paper, Peake seems qualified. Wounded twice in Vietnam, he retired in 2004 from his post as Army surgeon general, the Army's top medical officer, with 40 years of experience in the field of military medicine.

But Bush plucked Peake directly from a private company that has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from contracts with the VA -- and Peake himself helped develop proposals for the company to contract with the VA. That has raised questions about conflict of interest, potentially pitting veterans' care against corporate profits. Moreover, if he is confirmed, Peake will be the second head of the VA under the Bush administration to come from that same private contractor, QTC Management Inc.

Observers say QTC Management has performed high-quality work, and its former president, who also headed the VA under Bush, withstood past scrutiny by congressional investigators. But ever since Dick Cheney left Halliburton to become vice president, Bush administration critics have sounded the alarm about war profiteering seeping into the heart of the U.S. government. The changing leadership at the VA represents a little-known turn of the revolving door between contractors and the Bush administration. Veterans' advocates also worry that Peake's nomination suggests the White House may be interested in privatizing veterans' healthcare to an unhealthy degree.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/20/va_contracts/

we will have to do it other time. Our problem seems to be that we think greed goes away and it is more like a thing that is as old as man. I am sure as long as these people can rake it into their own pockets some how they will and call it capitalism and not just real greed which it really is. One wonders when the 90 percent that get took do not get up in arms about it sooner. I am sure Bush will keep putting these same types in any place he can. He has been pretty steady about it. He seems to be in that group that never really thinks up new things but are feeders off money they can get in a less up right way so to speak. These people will always be with us.

we will have to do it other time. Our problem seems to be that we think greed goes away and it is more like a thing that is as old as man. I am sure as long as these people can rake it into their own pockets some how they will and call it capitalism and not just real greed which it really is. One wonders when the 90 percent that get took do not get up in arms about it sooner. I am sure Bush will keep putting these same types in any place he can. He has been pretty steady about it. He seems to be in that group that never really thinks up new things but are feeders off money they can get in a less up right way so to speak. These people will always be with us.

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we cling to the "organized looting" system, laughably called "capitalism' there will be more of the same.

his name came up again. This admin isn't even trying to hide their corruption any more. x(