A trail of broken careers

Nick Turse at Tom Dispatch has written a piece that reminds us that not everyone in the Bush Administration was gutless. Although they found themselves with little alternative but to resign in protest, quit, or simply be pushed aside they did the right thing. There are 42 names in his piece, names of people who may see some vindication in the coming days and weeks. One other little known fact, it is often quoted that in the vote for war that the Democrats also voted for the resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. In the House of Representatives 60 percent of the Democrats voted against the resolution. Although the majority of Democrats in the Senate voted for the resolution 40 percent voted against. There have always been voices against the war, they just have not been heard. The Fallen Legion Casualties of the Bush Administration By Nick Turse In late August 2005, after twenty years of service in the field of military procurement, Bunnatine ("Bunny") Greenhouse, the top official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of awarding government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, was demoted. For years, Greenhouse received stellar evaluations from superiors -- until she raised objections about secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) -- a subsidiary of Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice President Dick Cheney once presided over. After telling congress that one Halliburton deal was "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career," she was reassigned from "the elite Senior Executive Service... to a lesser job in the civil works division of the corps." When Greenhouse was busted down, she became just another of the casualties of the Bush administration -- not the countless (or rather uncounted) Iraqis, or the ever-growing list of American troops, killed, maimed, or mutilated in the administration's war of convenience-- but the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. Often, this has been due to revulsion at the President's policies -- from the invasion of Iraq and negotiations with North Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing of environmental standards -- which these women and men found to be beyond the pale. Since almost the day he assumed power, George W. Bush has left a trail of broken careers in his wake. Below is a listing of but a handful of the most familiar names on the rolls of the fallen: Read More: The Fallen Legion