NY Times Reports On What Bloggers Have Been Active On All Along

Written by: Kate Drazner on Jul 18, 2008 1:07 PM EDT

Last week, I posted an interview I did with former KBR worker, Ben Carter, and the reaction I got was huge. Many, many people congratulated Ben on having the courage to face public scrutiny in order to bring the abuses of KBR to the public, and hundreds of you sent an email to DoD Chief Financial Officer, Tina Jonas (or signed the petition to her after she blocked her email address), asking her to cut off funding to KBR until a full public investigation is made into each of their alleged abuses.

I had ended my post with a heads up that the following week (meaning, today) I would be posting a breaking new story from Ben about a lawsuit against the contracting company that has been kept hidden by the Department of Justice. Well, bad news: Ben's story is so hot, it hasn't gotten the legal clearance to go public yet. I have been told to hold out for a few more days on that, so keep your fingers crossed!

One of the reasons I felt so buoyed by all the support shown for Ben is that I had long felt disturbed by both the magnitude of corruption among war contractors and the lack of coverage on the issue in the press.

Yes, the NY Times did post a big front page story about contractor abuse today. That's a step in the right direction. But anyone who has read the blogs knows that the dirt on KBR has been out there for a long time. Instead of "Electrical Risks at Bases in Iraq Worse Than Previously Said" the headline could just as easily have read "KBR's Incompetence And Abuse Of Our Troops Is Just As Bad As Bloggers Previously Said."

After last week's blog, when people rallied around Ben's cause, and expressed their horror and outrage for KBR's behavior, I started to feel that, had this issue been present more in the press, this ridiculousness wouldn't have gone on as long as it has. We would not be here now if the mainstream media had kept the spotlight on the Bush administration's decision to blindy follow its "all government is bad" conservative philospophy, which caused it to outsource the management of the war to private contractors.

Which is why I was pretty jazzed to hear that Netroots is hosting a panel tomorrow entitled “War Pundits,” trying to figure out just how the media managed to sedate a whole country of citizens while lies and deceit were used, unquestioned, to lead us into a war most of our country deeply regrets. The panel has two aims: pinpoint media failures in refereeing foreign policy debates; and brainstorm organizing campaigns to improve democratic discourse.

While it may be tempting to slam the media for their complacency in the events leading up to the war, I hope we also keep in mind that Bush and his anti-government conservative cronies are also responsible for the contractor mess. First they started a war against Iraq. Then they made the decision to outsourced the management of the war to private contractors. They need to be held accountable for both those decisions.

Maybe Blackwater has faded from the headlines, but they're still out there, and they're still getting their contracts renewed, as is KBR. Maybe the media is unwilling and unable to express the outrage that comes from witnessing absurdity after absurdity from the contractor front, but the blogger world has the ability to tell stories that the media is silencing.

I've never been to Iraq. I couldn't possibly imagine what it is like. But by having a few conversations with a brave man who came back from there with a story to tell, I hope I was able to be a drop in the bucket of the kind of uprising against the conservative forces running our government that grassroots activism has the power to create. Let's all look around us and find the stories that are getting silenced, and through exposing them to the public, let's create a movement to never let the trainwreck of lies that Bush has unleashed happen again.

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