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AIG’s War Business Draws Criticism

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Posted on Apr 16, 2009
abcnews.com

A nearly blind amputee who suffered injuries in Iraq says he had to fight AIG tooth and nail with the aid of a congressman just to get a slightly improved artificial limb.

At least 30,000 private contractors have been injured in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the vast majority are insured by AIG. According to an investigation by ABC News, ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times, the insurance giant does about as good a job helping wounded contractors as gaming the derivatives market.

ABC News:

Woodson’s lawyer, Toby Cole, says he sees a pattern of AIG “delaying and denying” claims from contractors injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s difficult for me to think it’s anything but a concentrated effort just to ignore these guys,” said Cole.

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By Marcie Hascall Clark, April 19, 2009 at 7:41 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

PSmith
Your ranting about mercenaries, not this issue.
And your ranting to an anti war activist who is trying to make our government provide the medical and disability to all the lives and families it lied to and broke.
I feel very strongly about all the innocent lives that were taken in Iraq and other places.
It’s another issue is all.

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PSmith's avatar

By PSmith, April 18, 2009 at 4:18 am #

MERCENARIES IN IRAQ

@ Marcie Hascall Clark, April 17 at 6:57 pm #
> Only a fraction of the contractors working overseas on US Government contracts are in the line of work that some might consider to be bozo mercenaries.

Frankly, I doubt that. The ORB report was that 1.4 million Iraqis had been slaughtered.

Most of the contractors were mercenaries, killing brown people. imo.

Why? Because the South African murderer of Steve Biko from South Africa was one of them. We know this because, happily enough, he was killed in Iraq.

Because Peter Dale Scott reported that the main recruiter from Chile had been part of Pinochet’s regime and their 30,000 murders and 110,000 tortures. Others were from Central America where it was _much_ worse, with torture, mutilations and worse.

“These are not the kind of men who go back to their mothers, start crying and tell all,” commented one tough-guy merc about the advantages of using mercenaries instead of the Abu Ghraib army reservists, whose photographs and videos that documented their prisoner torture and abuse.

Two other South Africans were involved in the old-Etonians’s coup attempt against Guinea that was ended when they were arrested on a plane in Zimbabwe as they attempted to pick up arms. They were, said the commentator, two _very_ tough individuals, who had been contractors in Iraq.

Others were Gurkhas—the British Army’s mercenaries from Nepal who are feared because they have a tradition of taking heads with their kukri knives.

Six contractors may have been working on Iraq’s electricity supply. A heck of a lot more _were_ just blowing away brown people. Or perhaps there is another explanation for Negroponte’s ‘El Salvador Solution’ and the deaths of 1.4 million Iraqis. Plus 1 million by sanctions and 400k by GW1.

If so, no one has yet heard it.

Peter Dale Scott with Tariq Ali - long, dry - mentions mercenaries (Part 6?) -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC021XGo5pg

JOHN STOCKWELL

John Stockwell on Central America - torture, mutilations and worse -

“I don’t mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what your government and its agents are doing. They go into villages, they haul out families. With the children forced to watch they castrate the father, they peel the skin off his face, they put a grenade in his mouth and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.”

- http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/John_Stockwell.html

And don’t think for a minute that Iraq was any less evil. The US used the same perpetrators.

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By PSmith, April 18, 2009 at 3:45 am #

KILLING FOR SPORT

Blackwater - your tax dollars at work - at rates that you wouldn’t believe -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt7GMqozp7I

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By PSmith, April 18, 2009 at 3:32 am #

NEOCONNED

@ Marcie Hascall Clark, April 17 at 6:57 pm #

> Only a fraction of the contractors working overseas on US Government contracts are in the line of work that some might consider to be bozo mercenaries.  Even so your still paying for their workmans comp.  Would you rather AIG and CNA pocketed it?

> My husband was over there doing humanitarian demining work so they could get the power back up in “Post War Iraq”, for the same salary he always made doing the same work.

That’s what he says. But who knows? And how can we verify it? We can’t.

> He was lied to and used to make it look like things were better in Iraq than they really were back in May-July of 2003.  We were all lied to.

And a lot of people pointed out that they were lies, it was wrong, it was evil etc. etc.
But if you recall Cheney had implemented Nazi-style media control and mind control. And some went for the money. And some went for the mindless patriotism. And some ‘were played’ - which authors of books about Iraq have said was the injured veterans worst fear—that they had been lied to, used, destroyed and abandoned. Just like every other war. It was a Darwin Award test.

> Does he deserve to be treated like a criminal because he was blown up and is disabled?

Of course not, but one case does not a get-out-of-jail-free-card make.

> We’ve been fighting the insurance company for almost six years with no help from the DoL, and no end in site.

You probably won’t be in any state to appreciate the subtleties of good and evil, but if by chance you, or he, can, you may find some help in the work of Joseph Campbell - on dvd - the Power of Myth and Mythos.

HELP

Of particular note is the story of the woman who was very badly disabled. Joseph Campbell told her that if she could find that point within herself where she could say that she chose her path, then with that she could evoke the participation of her will. And it worked. And led her to be able to accept her condition and to live with wonderful grace.

How, he asked, can we say that we chose to be injured, to have a horrific accident? Come to that, which of us can say that we have chosen our lives—aren’t most of our lives random acts of chance? If we hadn’t been at X we wouldn’t have met our future husband or wife etc, etc. Certainly. But if we can find that point within ourselves where we can feel that it is true, then it _does_ work.

It probably makes no sense, but I can assure you that when Joseph Campell tells the story, it makes sense. And when one thinks of it, on and on, it _can_ have a powerful effect.

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By Marcie Hascall Clark, April 17, 2009 at 6:57 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Only a fraction of the contractors working overseas on US Government contracts are in the line of work that some might consider to be bozo mercenaries.  Even so your still paying for their workmans comp.  Would you rather AIG and CNA pocketed it?

My husband was over there doing humanitarian demining work so they could get the power back up in “Post War Iraq”, for the same salary he always made doing the same work.

He was lied to and used to make it look like things were better in Iraq than they really were back in May-July of 2003.  We were all lied to.

Does he deserve to be treated like a criminal because he was blown up and is disabled?

We’ve been fighting the insurance company for almost six years with no help from the DoL, and no end in site.

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PSmith's avatar

By PSmith, April 17, 2009 at 6:31 pm #

OH THE HUMANITY

Maybe now those tempted to become bozo mercenaries, willing to slaughter brown people for money, will get a clue. Never mind that it is plain evil.

MERCENARY PSYCHOPATH DEATH-SQUAD KILLERS

The worst of the worst from the US’s genocides—Chile with Pinochet (30,000 murdered, 110,000 tortured) and Central America (El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras - hundreds of thousands murdered)—were recruited to do the same ‘El Salvador’ policy to the Iraqi people. And did.

The ‘El Salvador policy’ that saw death squads murder 50,000 plus Salvadoreans. Treasury police - surprisingly few - carried it out. Eg. 50 death squad psychopaths by 5 killings a day by 200 days. Or similar.

Is every one of the 180,000 mercenaries a psychopathic killer? Probably not. 1000 would be quite enough. Are 5,000? 10,000? 90,000? It would not be unlikely. They are certainly likely to be so afterwards, if not before.

‘False flag’ death squads - 1000 x 2 killings per day x 200 days = 400,000. Plus the same again from ‘men wearing police uniforms’ and again from militias.  Ie men that _were_ police Robert Fisk explains. Total 1.2 million.

Death Squads - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15615.htm

John Pilger - War on Democracy - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18236.htm

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By GB, April 17, 2009 at 1:27 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Everything about cheney’s and the neocon’s (PNAC) war in Iraq and Afghanistan was a scam. Billions of dollars went missing without any legitimate attempt to figure out what happened. bush and cheney bankrupted our country, our world reputation, and disrepected everyone of those who served in this theatre thinking they were fighting the good cause. It’s too bad the “Support the troops” mantra that was the Republican fighting song only meant “step aside while we steal everything”.

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By Marcie Hascall Clark, April 16, 2009 at 9:37 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

It’s not just AIG though they carry 90% of the Defense Base Act policies.
CNA and their lawyers are just as ruthless.
The taxpayer pays for the premiums, the claims, the legal fees, and even administrative fees.
The Department of Labor has allowed all of this to go on and there is no end in site.

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By msgmi, April 16, 2009 at 9:23 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

AIG, the center of gravity of Capitol Hill’s hubris.

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