In no particular order, the little stories of 2008 that said a lot.

I posted elsewhere about this about a year ago: Indiana National Guardsmen got chronically exposed to carcinogenic hexavalent chromium dust while providing security for KBR contractors in Iraq.

KBR works in other facilities like the one in Iraq, and I find it hard to believe they never at least wondered about the bright orange dust that was blowing everywhere. This is the same chromium metal that was responsible for all the misery in ‘Erin Brockovich.’

Yep, turns out they were having internal dialogues about the carcinogen and dragged their feet to say the very least. As hideous as the stuff is, they should have pulled everybody off the site the very second they ‘knew.’

If I’m to believe any of the many, many interviews and bios I’ve seen and read about the guys who enlisted in the armed forces and who served in war zones over the last five years, it was that many of them grew up in small towns and decided to serve to achieve something bigger for their lives. They wanted more than they could do by staying at home–they wanted to give their lives a deep meaning by serving their country. What they got was toiling through blistering temperatures for pittances in an OSHA-free industrial zone. Pretty much the thing they’d chosen to avoid. 

They wanted to serve the nation of their forefathers, they got re-routed into serving the nation of the President’s business cronies. There just isn’t enough shame in the world.