It’s time to play everyone’s favorite game, “What’s pissing me off now?”  It’s the game in which I tell you what’s pissing me off now.  Hours of fun for the entire family!

I am years too late to this tragedy, but it’s worth bringing it to your attention since it was brought to mine.  The book that I’m reading, “Reamde” by Neal Stephenson, had a sentence in it mentioning the killing of American soldiers by electrocution when taking a shower.  I had never heard of such a thing and it stuck with me so to the Interwebs I went.

It turns out that faulty equipment has caused the deaths of eighteen soldiers.  Eighteen!  Who do we have to thank for this completely unnecessary tragedy?  Why, KBR of course!  Don’t remember KBR?  They are a Halliburton spin-off company that is the largest support contractor in Iraq.  You remember Halliburton, right?  That company that was run by vice president Dick Cheney?  It is really amazing that all roads of governmental evil seem to lead back to that man.

And as if KBR killing eighteen soldiers wasn’t enough, they’re also trying to weasel out of paying compensation to the families.  Even in horrible tragedies, you expect a certain amount of deniability from a company even if they are obviously to blame for the tragedy.  KBR, though, takes it to an entirely new level of evil, though.  They are trying to claim that Iraq law should be used to determine the outcome because the killing happened in an Iraqi government building.  Even though the building was under U.S. control at the time.  Why?  Because Iraq law doesn’t allow for punitive damages.  Yes, that’s right, they want to make sure that they pay the grieving families as little as possible for their mistake.

It gets better.  What does our government do to a company whose negligence resulted in the death of eighteen of our soldiers?  Why, give them an $83 million bonus, of course!

Let’s sum up, shall we?  Dick Cheney starts an unnecessary war.  Dick Cheney’s company gets more contractor work than any other company for said unnecessary war.  Dick Cheney’s company does really crappy work and this results in the electrocution deaths of eighteen of our soldiers.  Dick Cheney’s company denies responsibility but is found guilty of negligent homicide.  Dick Cheney’s company tries to have Iraqi law applied to verdict to keep payments to families to a minimum.  Dick Cheney’s company is awarded $83 million in bonuses for said shoddy work that killed people.

Yes, it might be a stretch to call KBR Dick Cheney’s company.  But it is certain that he is a shareholder and the people who run it are his friends and that he has profited massively from the war that he created.

And that’s “What’s pissing me off now?”  Thank you for playing.