Since December 2003, the Democratic Policy Committee (DPC), which I chair, has held seventeen oversight hearings to examine waste, fraud, and corruption in Iraq. Last Friday, I held a hearing to investigate contractor KBR’s tragic failure to correct faulty electrical work at U.S. military installations in Iraq, even after the United States Army issued a bulletin stating that improper wiring by contractors had resulted in the electrocution deaths of several soldiers.

Sen. Byron Dorgan will join us here at FDL today at 11 am ET/8 am PT, for a discussion about one of the more infuriating issues of the last few years: contractor fraud and war profiteering. These are issues that Sen. Dorgan has worked long and hard to expose — and for that, he deserves a lot of thanks. We hope you will join us later this morning for this discussion…

Froomkin = One. Of. Us. quoting Robert Brodsky, on Webb’s reaction to Bush trying to drag his feet on the Webb-McCaskill Truman Commission on war profiteering — Webb immediately pushed back, criticizing the statement as an ‘impingement on the rights’ of Congress. Any questions?

The final discussion in the This Brave Nation series is up — between Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein — and like all the others, it is fascinating. And inspiring. But, in this case, there is also an enlightening moment where Tom and Naomi are talking about how much activity and organization there is online…and how little there is in the streets….

If you saw the movie Erin Brockovich, you know what exposure to a toxic chromium substance can do to the human body. And what lengths a company might go to to cover up exposure to a toxic chemical if, indeed, they knew about it.

Because knowingly exposing your employees to a highly carcinogenic chemical is not only unconscionable, it’s also illegal in most jurisdictions.

Enter KBR in Iraq. And a hearing last Friday with the Democratic Policy Committee. Sen. Dorgan and Sen. Whitehouse were visibly disgusted at the facts ascertained during this hearing…

Well, just when you think you may have just ONE day in life where your snark can outdo reality, you find out how absurd the world has been made. And not in a good way. Blackwater’s sense of tastelessness knows no bounds.

Today we sit down with War, Inc. director Josh Seftel and co-screenwriter Jeremy Pikser, whose film shows how a more accurate representation of corporate profiteering and malicious intervention in global conflict can lead to horrifyingly hilarious results.

Tim Shorrock’s book, Spies for Hire, provides a necessary primer on the Intelligence-Industrial Complex. Shorrock’s book shows that the push for telecom immunity is not just about shielding Bush and Cheney’s legal wrong-doing, it’s also about ensuring the growing, and increasingly seamless, relationship between our intelligence services and its contractors remains opaque to citizens.

Oil prices spiked yet again, this time to $126 a barrel, upon the publication of an article from the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal that “unnamed senior US officials” say that Scary Evil Guy Hugo Chavez may be out there scarily arming the scary FARC rebels in Colombia, a country whose rulers are just about the only ones left in Latin America that are Bush-aligned fascist thugs. Funny thing: Similarly-scary stories were told back in March, and were summarily debunked by Greg Palast. Ooops.

Ike, you tried to tell us…we just will not listen.