Just got pointed at this by Atrios. Like him, I wouldn’t likely vote for Dennis Kucinich, but kudos to them for seeing this ad, buying it, and putting it up for people to see.
http://www.kucinich.us/dk.html
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pocketnaomi
Not that I don’t think we’ve gone to war for corporate money before, but this seems off base to me. I don’t approve of this war but I honestly don’t think it was launched, or is being continued, primarily in order to make money for the companies it happens to be making money for. They saw an opportunity and moved in. I think it was launched out of a desperate fear and need to do *something*, combined with a recognition that we couldn’t easily tackle the real problem. I think it’s continued in order to save face; pulling out would embarrass a lot of people. I do not think that either of these are decent reasons, but they are not the *same* bad reasons that the ad suggests.
Rob Wynne
I wish I could feel the same way.
kightp
And yet, the war profiteers continue to reap the proceeds.
pocketnaomi
Oh sure. But they do that every war, no matter what the reasons for going into it.
kightp
Do you find it at all disturbing that so many of these particular war profiteers have such close ties to the administration?
pocketnaomi
I find it very disturbing. As I find the fact that this administration got us into an asinine war very disturbing. I do not think that the first actually caused the second, that’s all.
catsittingstill
I seem to recall that the competition for many of these contracts was *closed*--the administration invited favored companies to submit bids and no one else was allowed to bid. Nobody else even got to see the bids--we don’t know that the jobs went to the lowest bidder or the best qualified company.
I’m sorry to say it, but that doesn’t sound to me like “they saw an opportunity and moved in.”
tigerbright
Wow. Definitely a good ad. And it shows that supporting Bush /= supporting the tro0ps.
Interestingly, I had an interview with Abt Associates back when I left Lucent. I didn’t know they had any profit from the Iraq thing — actually, I’m rather surprised.
lysana
It’s a potent ad. The near-subliminals disturb me, though. Too close to mind control.
And I am personally amused. I used to know the animator.
catsittingstill
Wouldn’t worry about the near-subliminals. As far as I know, subliminals don’t work--if you can’t perceive a message, you can’t receive it subconscously either.
I wish they’d stayed on the screen long enough for me to read what they said.
lothie
*shudder* But thanks.
bardling
The site doesn’t show anyting without ActiveX, which I don’t enable, so I can only guess from the comments of others roughly what it’s about.
the_magician
It’s a bit like a flash animation, it has the names of all the coalition solidiers that had died up to the time the animation was made, and a good strong martial music track (no spoken words) and the text that accompanies the names being displayed basically points out how many people from how many nations have died (including pointing out how many Iraqi civilians have died for each coalition death) and then lists the names of the companies that have profitted from this war. It ends with the question of how much longer people will allow Bush to stay in power and ends with the Kucicinch for President logo.
And it is very powerful and the animation work is excellent (the names appear on each drum beat and fade with the next name appearing in solid over the fading previous names, and the questions etc. grow gently in size to keep the eye watching them, as in many flash animations)
catsittingstill
Well done ad. Wish they’d put it on TV. Possibly Bush didn’t start this war to make these companies richer. But in politics--well, “follow the money” doesn’t strike me as a bad rule of thumb, and this is where the money is leading.
mrpsyklops
It is definitely worth seeing Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War. It is available from MoveOn.Org If you make a donation of $25 on the linked page, MoveOn will send you a copy of “Uncovered.”
The organization says, “MoveOn.org doesn’t usually sponsor documentary films, but this movie is a really important one. It’s built around interviews with over 20 intelligence and military experts, many of whom are speaking out for the first time. True to the MoveOn ethic, director Robert Greenwald lets the facts speak for themselves.”
I saw the film tonight in Americus, and I recommend it. It doesn’t present a lot of new material, but it presents the material in an effective and accessible way. These are facts that have been reported in various newspapers, but this movie brings them into a single place and intersperces them with video clips of Bush and his team.