Morrison - Pricey War for Grunts' Families

[realFedUp]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-morrison25aug25,1,6182597.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Pricey War for Grunts' Families
Patt Morrison

August 25, 2004

The price of war — the White House budget office figures that for the Iraq conflict it's $175 billion and counting. But it's the little numbers right here in California that really get to Mike Ryan.
Ryan is a respiratory therapist who lives in West L.A., and he didn't even own a cellphone until his son Rick went to Iraq in March as an Army combat medic. Enter the phone bills: $120, $140 a month, a hundred or two more put on the plastic to "charge up" Rick's phone card. A single call just after Rick landed in Iraq ran $130.

Then there's the food and the cost of sending it. Rick's not keen on Army cooking (who is?). "We brought him up eating well," said his father. So twice a month, a package leaves the Ryan house for Iraq — Trader Joe's fruits and nuts, protein drinks, canned salmon. Sixty or 70 bucks' worth of food, times two, plus $25 for postage, times two again. Almost $200 a month more.

As the war warmed up, stories abounded about how much it was costing military families to keep reaching out to touch their loved ones. There were tales of disconnection notices because of unpaid bills. A Massachusetts soldier racked up a $7,600 phone bill; his entire savings account paid just half. Arizona Sen. John McCain sponsored a bill that gives those in combat access to a free monthly calling card worth $40. Which goes only so far, as Ryan can attest. Last October, in Colorado, a soldier's wife was applauded when she stood up at a town hall meeting and asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the ruinous cost of phone calls. "As enlisted soldiers," she said, "we can't afford this."

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Thirty-eight years ago this very month, a young congressman told his colleagues that something was seriously amiss about huge wartime contracts awarded to a company with a big friend in a high place.
"The potential for waste and profiteering under such a contract is substantial," he warned. It is "beyond me," he went on, why the contract "has not been and is not now being adequately audited."
The war was Vietnam. The company was Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton that is now known as KBR. The big friend in a high place was Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson. And the impassioned young congressman was Donald Rumsfeld.