Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
by Derrick Z. Jackson
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0830-26.htm
Published on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 by the Boston Globe
More than 2,600 US soldiers have died in Iraq. July's toll for Iraqi civilians
was 3,500, the deadliest month of the US occupation. Iraq's civil war is on pace
to kill 25,000 to 30,000 civilians by year's end. If you add in the tens of
thousands of deaths from the 2003 invasion (we do not know the exact number
because the Pentagon won't comment), researchers will inevitably say that the
body count has crossed 100,000.
All of this madness to stop a madman, Saddam Hussein.
The litany of US mistakes and excessive force has the Pentagon commissioning at
least two secret strategy studies in Afghanistan and Iraq. ``This is a struggle
for the soul of the Army," said Colonel Peter Mansoor, the head of the Army and
Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.
Just as odorous, a mountain of corporate cash grows next to the piles of bodies.
In this bizarre war where Iraqi civilians fear both suicide bombers and the
United States, the biggest sacrifice that President Bush asked of American
civilians was to get on a plane and show those terrorists a thing or two by
going to Disney World.
Defense contractors took that request to a logical extreme. They built their own
fantasy land.
There is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual Executive
Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank,
and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report found that 34 defense
CEOs have been paid nearly $1 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.
As soldiers have died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between
soldiers and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of
publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190 to 1.
Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a year. The
average defense CEO makes $7.7 million.
``Did this surprise us? No, because we've been watching since Sept. 11," said
Betsy Leondar-Wright, communications director for United for a Fair Economy.
``While the rest of us were worrying about terrorism and mourning the people who
died, the CEOs were maneuvering their companies to take advantage of fear and
changing oil supply, not just for competition but for personal enrichment."
The top profiteers after 9/11 were the CEOs of United Technologies ($200
million), General Dynamics ($65 million), Lockheed Martin ($50 million), and
Halliburton ($49 million). Other firms where CEO pay the last four years added
up to $25 million to $45 million were Textron, Engineered Support Systems,
Computer Sciences, Alliant Techsystems, Armor Holding, Boeing, Health Net, ITT
Industries, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh Truck, URS, and Raytheon.
While Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the
disgraced former CEO of body-armor maker DHB, made $192 million in stock sales
in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. The 2005
pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar, head of the firm that most
symbolizes the occupation's waste, overcharges, and ghost charges on no-bid
contracts, was $26 million, according to the report's analysis of federal
Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
``Those examples take the cake, especially because it's all related to their
government contracts, which is money straight out of the taxpayer's pocket,"
Leondar-Wright said.
The Executive Excess report, with the help of the Wall Street Journal's 2006
survey of executive compensation, made similar observations of oil executives as
their firms enjoy record profits during war. The pay gap between the average oil
and gas CEO and the average oil worker is 518 to 1. The general national CEO to
worker gap is 411 to 1. The report said that the typical oil construction
laborer would have to work 4,279 years to match the $95 million pay last year
for Valero Energy CEO William Greehey.
This is so out of line that the authors of the Executive Excess report recommend
wartime pay restraints for defense CEOs and a permanent congressional watchdog
panel for contract fraud and waste. Companies that cannot adhere to restraints
should be ineligible for contracts, they said.
The report said ``democracies decay when one segment of society flourishes at
another's expense." Leondar-Wright said, ``It is now at the point where we have
lost any sense of proportion. There is no sense of shared sacrifice, no sense
that we're all in this together." Spreading democracy to Iraq is far-fetched
when defense and oil CEOs speed its decay at home. They are all in it for
themselves, at our expense.