Police Brutality American Style =Oakland

A march to take over a vacant building by members of the Occupy movement in Oakland, Calif., turned into a violent confrontation with the police on Saturday, leaving three officers injured and about 200 people arrested. 

The clashes began just before 3 p.m. when protesters marched toward the vacant Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, the police said, and began to tear down construction barricades. Officers ordered the crowd to disperse,” the Oakland police said in a press release. 

Officers responded with smoke, tear gas and beanbag projectiles. 

Most of the arrests occurred in the evening, when large groups of people were corralled in front of the Downtown Oakland Y.M.C.A. on Broadway. At one point, one group of protesters broke into the City Hall building. 

On a livestream broadcast on the Web site oakfosho.com, dozens of protesters could be seen sitting cross-legged in darkness on the street in front of the Y.M.C.A. Their hands appeared to be bound behind them, while police officers stood watch. Occasionally the protesters sang or cheered. 

The events were part of a demonstration dubbed “Move-in Day,” a plan by protesters to move into the vacant convention center and use it as a commune-like command center, according to the Web site occupyoaklandmoveinday.org. 

“We were going to set up a community center,” said Benjamin Phillips, 32, a member of the Occupy Oakland media team. “It would be a place where we could house people, feed people, do all the things that we have been doing.” 

After a series of violent episodes, including a clash in which a Marine veteran of Iraq suffered a fractured skull when struck by a projectile in a confrontation with the police, Ms. Quan relented and permitted the protesters to return to the plaza. But two weeks later, in response to fears of renewed violence, she ordered the plaza cleared again. 

Mr. Phillips, who said he is a veteran of the United States Air Force, spoke Saturday night from his home on Grand Avenue where he had stopped to rinse tear-gas residue from his contact lenses. He described the scene in front of the Y.M.C.A. as “terrifying.” 

“This is disgusting, because this is not the way that America is supposed to work,” he said. “You’re supposed to be able to have something like freedom to assemble and air your grievances,” he said. 

“It’s bizarre,” he said of the police reaction. “It’s not something you expect to see in the United States, and we’ve seen it over and over in Oakland.”

Under Mitt Romney unemployment with no benefits is your future 99%

In October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.


Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

Boeing stiffs Wichita!!!

Boeing Co.’s decision to shut down its Wichita, Kansas, plant after more than 80 years betrayed public officials who helped the planemaker win a U.S. Air Force contract for midair refueling tankers, the city’s mayor said.


Boeing didn’t consult with city officials or ask for financial incentives to stay put before announcing its decision yesterday to close the Wichita (10557MF) plant with 2,160 workers before 2014, Mayor Carl Brewer said in a telephone interview. The company had indicated that winning the Air Force tanker work last year would support 7,500 local jobs, Brewer said.

“They weren’t totally honest with us,” said Brewer of Boeing, which has benefited from about $4 billion of municipal bonds and tax relief. “We thought the relationship was a lot stronger.”

Most Americans can rightfully complain, “I pay more federal income taxes than General Electric, Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon., all put together.”

That’s an unacceptable situation.

The following companies paid little or no taxes from 2008-2010 and fired 93,000 Americans!!! But could afford to spend $500 million on Lobbying...

The biggest companies in the United States have been firing workers and in some cases lobbying for rules that depress wages at the very time that jobs are needed, pay is low, and the federal budget suffers from a lack of revenue.

The top ten are:  GE, PG&E, Verizon, Boeing, FEDEX, AEP, Honywell, Duke Energy, DuPont, Wells Fargo.

Last month Citizens for Tax Justice and an affiliate issued “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10″. It showed that 30 brand-name companies paid a federal income tax rate of minus 6.7 percent on $160 billion of profit from 2008 through 2010 compared to a going corporate tax rate of 35 percent. All but one of those 30 companies reported lobbying expenses in Washington.


Another report, by Public Campaign, shows that 29 of those companies spent nearly half a billion dollars over those three years lobbying in Washington for laws and rules that favor their interests.

Boehner sticks it to the 99% yet again....

President Barack Obama said a two- month extension of the payroll tax cut passed by the Senate is the “only viable way” to prevent take-home pay from decreasing on Jan. 1 and a “faction” of House Republicans is holding up progress.



House Republicans rejected the Senate’s bipartisan compromise to win concessions on “extraneous issues,” Obama said in an unscheduled appearance at the White House briefing room.

Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the House Republican leadership should “put aside issues where there are fundamental disagreements and come together on something we agree on,” Obama said. “Let’s not play brinksmanship. The American people are weary of it. They’re tired of it. They expect better.”

If the 99% only lived under the Roman Empire or in Russia they would benefit from a better distribution of wealth than in the USA!!!

Over the last 30 years, wealth in the United States has been steadily concentrating in the upper economic echelons. Whereas the top 1 percent used to control a little over 30 percent of the wealth, they now control 40 percent. It’s a trend that was for decades brushed under the rug but is now on the tops of minds and at the tips of tongues.



Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.

Sorry to inconvenience your apathy!!!

A festive and celebratory mood quickly turned tense and angry Saturday as New York police arrested about 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters at a church-owned lot demonstrators had hoped to use as a camp site.

A dozen or so protesters climbed a wooden ladder into the fenced lot at Duarte Square, according to J.A. Myerson, a writer with Truthout.


He said George E. Packard, an Occupy Wall Street supporter and retired Episcopal bishop to the Armed Forces and Chaplaincies, was among those who had used the ladder to enter the site.


About a thousand people gathered across the street, where dozens of police tried to clear sidewalks as people shouted and screamed at them. Protesters chanted obscenities and screamed: "Make them catch you!"


After the arrests, about 300 protesters made a blocks-long, late-afternoon march to the church rectory.


Earlier in the day, demonstrators played drums, cymbals and trombones, held group meetings and waved signs with a variety of messages -- "Disobedience is civil" and "Sorry to inconvenience your apathy" -- as they marked the completion of three months with a major direct action that could give them a new home as authorities continue to shutter camps nationwide.


Protesters -- flanked by police officers -- coalesced on a nearly half-acre plot about one mile northwest of their former camp at Zuccotti Park. But their potential new landlord at Duarte Square, Trinity Church, has voiced strong opposition, and the move by Occupy is seen by some as applying strong pressure to them to cave in and let the protesters install themselves.

Republicans kill Keystone Pipeline by handing knife to the Democrats.....

To try to break a stalemate in the payroll tax cut negotiations, Obama's fellow Democrats first dropped their proposal to pay for it with a surtax on millionaires. Then on Friday they abandoned what had appeared to be a non-negotiable demand -- for the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas to be kept separate from the payroll tax cut issue.


The measure would require Obama to make a decision on allowing construction of Keystone within 60 days or declare that "oil trade with Canada is not in the national interest of the United States," according to an aide to Republican Senator Richard Lugar.


Obama recently put off a decision on the pipeline until 2013 while the government studies alternative routes. Many interpreted that move as a way to appease his environmental base in his bid to win re-election in November 2012.


The deal immediately drew fire from environmentalists, who said it was an example of House Republicans holding the federal government hostage on behalf of the oil industry.


"We're disappointed that the president seemingly signed off on this deal, but we expect that he's going to live up to his promise ... that he will turn down the permit for the pipeline," said Daniel Kessler, spokesman for Tar Sands Action, a group that opposes the project.


Kessler said he expected members from his group would reprise their protests about the project at Obama's campaign offices across the country.


In a defense of what appeared to be a major concession to Republicans, an Obama administration official said the deal would effectively mean the Keystone project would not go ahead.


The official noted that the State Department has said it could not make a decision on the project within 60 days and any attempt to force its hand would likely result in a decision to deny a permit for the project.

Republicans kill Keystone Pipeline by handing the knife to the Democrats....

To try to break a stalemate in the payroll tax cut negotiations, Obama's fellow Democrats first dropped their proposal to pay for it with a surtax on millionaires. Then on Friday they abandoned what had appeared to be a non-negotiable demand -- for the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas to be kept separate from the payroll tax cut issue.



The measure would require Obama to make a decision on allowing construction of Keystone within 60 days or declare that "oil trade with Canada is not in the national interest of the United States," according to an aide to Republican Senator Richard Lugar.


Obama recently put off a decision on the pipeline until 2013 while the government studies alternative routes. Many interpreted that move as a way to appease his environmental base in his bid to win re-election in November 2012.


The deal immediately drew fire from environmentalists, who said it was an example of House Republicans holding the federal government hostage on behalf of the oil industry.


"We're disappointed that the president seemingly signed off on this deal, but we expect that he's going to live up to his promise ... that he will turn down the permit for the pipeline," said Daniel Kessler, spokesman for Tar Sands Action, a group that opposes the project.


Kessler said he expected members from his group would reprise their protests about the project at Obama's campaign offices across the country.


In a defense of what appeared to be a major concession to Republicans, an Obama administration official said the deal would effectively mean the Keystone project would not go ahead.


The official noted that the State Department has said it could not make a decision on the project within 60 days and any attempt to force its hand would likely result in a decision to deny a permit for the project.

Iraq War Closed but Let's not forget...the 4,500 Americans who did not need to die!! The 30,000 Americans who did not need to be wounded and the 100,000 dead Iraqis...WOW

This month, nearly all U.S. troops in Iraq will come home — except, of course, for the 4,500 who died there.



George W. Bush and Dick Cheney launched the Iraq war in March 2003 based on lies and misinformation. Soon it turned into a brutal occupation. Besides the 4,500 troops killed, more than 30,000 Americans were wounded, and at least 100,000 Iraqis were killed, most of them civilians.

The war cost us more than $1 trillion, while the cost to our international relations and our own democracy is immeasurable. Think of the words that Bush and Cheney have added to our lexicon: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, Blackwater, WMD, Halliburton, waterboarding and more.


Bush and Cheney now boast about their misdeeds in this misbegotten war.

When did size not matter??? (and what about that payroll tax cut extension; and American Jobs Act....)

The Federal Reserve may lend $1 trillion to central banks as Europe’s crisis roils markets and erodes confidence in the region’s lenders, Anthony Sanders, a George Mason University finance professor, told Congress.



Such a level would exceed the program’s peak of $586 billion reached in December 2008, when the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. spurred foreign banks to obtain emergency dollar funding. Under the so-called swap lines, the Fed lends dollars to foreign central banks so they can pass on the money to their local lenders.


The swaps program may “get to the $1 trillion level, or perhaps even higher,” said Sanders, a former director of mortgage-bond research at Deutsche Bank AG. (DBK) He spoke today before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s subcommittee on financial-services bailouts, led by Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican.


Loans on the swaps program jumped to $54.3 billion as of Dec. 14 from $2.3 billion a week earlier, Federal Reserve data show. Draws by the European Central Bank surged after the Fed on Nov. 30 announced it would cut rates on the program. The Federal Reserve’s overall balance sheet stands at $2.9 trillion.


Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday told a closed-door gathering of Republican senators that the Fed won’t provide more aid to European banks beyond the swap lines and the discount window -- another Fed program that provides emergency funds to U.S. banks, including U.S. branches of foreign banks.

Size Estimates

European financial companies led by Royal Bank of Scotland Plc were borrowing about $538 billion directly from the Fed when the central bank’s emergency loans to all banks peaked at $1.2 trillion on December 2008, according to a Bloomberg News examination of data released by the Fed under last year’s Dodd- Frank Act and earlier this year under court-upheld Freedom of Information Act requests.


The Fed hasn’t provided any estimates of how large the swap lines might get, said David Skidmore, a Fed spokesman. He declined to elaborate.

House Republicans cannot be elected by the People...can they? Becasue they certainly aren't working for the People or by the People or with the People...

The House Republican proposal — part of their larger proposal to extend the payroll tax cut and UI benefits — would slash, by 40, the number of weeks potentially available to unemployed workers who are struggling to find a job in some states that were hit the hardest by the jobs slump. That greatly raises the risk that unemployed workers will run out of UI benefits before they find another job, imposing even greater hardship on them and their families. It also reduces the amount of support that UI — one of our highest-bang-for-the-buck stimulus programs — can provide for the struggling recovery. And, to add insult to injury, the Republican proposal contains onerous requirements on qualified UI applicants, such as drug tests and requirements to hold or be working toward a GED, that would make it harder for them to receive benefits at all.

Romney "Right to Work" = 1% right to pay you less; with no benefits

The average worker in a right-to-work state is paid $30,167 a year, or about $5,333 a year less than workers in other states without right-to-work legislation that favors the employer at the expense of the employee, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.



Labor leaders failed to win legislation making it easier to organize a union after Democratic allies triumphed in the 2008 elections. Next year’s voting may spawn instead a law letting workers opt out of unions.



Republicans in Congress are pursuing so-called right-to- work legislation barring agreements between unions and employers that make union membership and payment of dues a job requirement, Bloomberg Government reports. 


“There is a very strong likelihood that a Republican Congress and a Republican White House would pass a national right-to-work law,” Gary Chaison, a labor-law professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, said in an interview. “It should be expected from a Republican Congress that, in terms of national jobs growth, sees unions as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”

Jobs for Americans; Social Justice Now!!!

Mike McCarry, a 59-year-old veteran who juggles two jobs to make ends meet.



Mike talks about the veterans portion of President Obama's jobs plan -- the piece that Congress passed earlier this month thanks in part to your work, and that the President signed into law today.

But the fight for American jobs continues, and many in Congress -- including almost every single Republican -- still refuse to do the right thing for teachers, cops, firefighters, and middle-class families like they did for our vets.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/share/vets-jobs-video?source=20111121_jk_full&utm_medium=email&utm_source=obama&utm_campaign=20111121_jk_full


It can be easy to get discouraged when members of Congress put party before people and block legislation that would help American families.


But you didn't let up in the fight for our veterans' future. The bill that went to the President's desk for his signature today -- which provides tax credits for small businesses that hire unemployed veterans -- is proof that Congress can still come together and act when Americans demand it.


Here's what's next: After Thanksgiving, the Senate will vote on extending President Obama's payroll tax cut, which puts $1,500 in the pockets of the typical middle-class family.

It's the provision that Mitt Romney called a "little band-aid." But $1,500 wouldn't be a band-aid for me or Mike McCarry -- and probably not for you either.


Our job right now is to make sure Congress does the right thing again.

1% you are missing the point; fabricating research, buying politicians with lobbyists = is the heart of the problem

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a big enough problem for U.S. banks that they should pay for opposition research into the political motives of protesters, said a firm that lobbies for the industry.




Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, a Washington-based firm, proposed the idea in a memo to the American Banking Association, an industry group which said on Saturday that it did not act on the idea.


The four-page memo outlined how the firm could analyze the source of protesters' money, as well as their rhetoric and the backgrounds of protest leaders.


"If we can show they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent, it will undermine their credibility in a profound way," said the memo, according to a copy of it on the website of TV news channel MSNBC, which first reported on it.

Clark Lytle Geduldig counts the banking association among its regular lobbying clients, U.S. Senate records showed.

Other clients include MasterCard Worldwide and a banking coalition concerned about interchange fees.

The firm did not respond to requests for comment.


Its memo said it could deliver research, survey data and plans to use the information in 60 days at a cost of $850,000.


Banking association spokesman Jeff Sigmund told Reuters the memo is authentic, but his group was not interested.


The memo is dated November 24, five days after it became public. Sigmund did not respond to a follow-up question about the date. November 24 is also the Thanksgiving holiday.


The memo said U.S. financial firms should be concerned about comments that Democratic campaign consultants have made in the news media about trying to harness the energy of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

"This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street firms," it said.


"If vilifying the leading companies of this sector is allowed to become an unchallenged centerpiece of a coordinated Democratic campaign, it has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bull's-eye."


The memo is from Clark Lytle Geduldig's four name partners. Two of them, Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, are former aides to House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a Republican.

Using shorthand for Occupy Wall Street, the memo said:
"It may be easy to dismiss OWS as a ragtag group of protesters but they have demonstrated that they should be treated more like an organized competitor who is very nimble and capable of working the media, coordinating third party support and engaging office holders to do their bidding. To counter that, we have to do the same."

Cheers for Wall Street Protesters

Not all reaction to the Occupy Wall Street movement has been predictable. Jim Chanos, a hedge-fund chief, and Bill Gross, the highest profile bond-fund manager in America, expressed sympathy for the protesters. And the chief executive of Citigroup Inc. said he'd be "happy to talk with them." Here's a look at what notable financiers, politicians, and media stars have said about the protests.

Colin Powell, Former U.S. Secretary of State, Army General

"Demonstrating like this is as American as apple pie. We've been marching up and down and demonstrating throughout our history. ... There's an increasing gap between those who are doing very, very well, and I'm doing well, and those who are not doing as well, and those who are not doing as well are not seeing their lives improve. So there's frustration, there's angriness there." (Source: Politico)

Michael Moore, filmmaker

"We started rewarding people not for making things or inventing things. We reward people for making money off money and moving money around and dividing up mortgages a thousand times over, selling it to China. We're against greed and the fact that 1% could get nine slices of the pie and the other 99% are supposed to fight over the last slice." (Source: Piers Morgan)

Russell Simmons, hip-hop entrepreneur

"Simple idea, power to the people. It's not a difficult idea, that we get the special interests and the money out of Washington." (Source: Keith Olbermann)

Bill Gross, founder of Pacific Investment Management Co.

"Class warfare by the 99%? Of course, they're fighting back after 30 years of being shot at." (Source: Twitter)

Laurence Fink, CEO of BlackRock

"The protesting is a statement (that) the future is very clouded for a lot of people. These are not lazy people sitting around looking for something to do. We have people losing hope and they're going into the street…” (Source: Bloomberg)

Joseph Dear, chief investment officer, CalPERS

"The financial system gets bailed out, executives' salaries stay high and the incomes of people who work for a living, paycheck to paycheck, continue to decline." (Source: CNBC)

Occupy Wall Street: CEO of Goldman Sachs makes $16,000/hour while Unemployment for Young Vets hit 30% and is Rising!!!! God Bless America…

On Veterans Day in America, it’s sobering to realize just how badly the job market has turned against the men and women who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data: while the job market is slowly improving for most Americans, it’s moving in the opposite direction for Gulf War II vets (defined by the BLS as those on active duty since 2001). The youngest of veterans, aged 18 to 24, had a 30.4 percent jobless rate in October, way up from 18.4 percent a year earlier. Non-veterans of the same age improved, to 15.3 percent from 16.9 percent. For some groups, the numbers can look a good deal worse: for black veterans aged 18-24, the unemployment rate is a striking 48 percent.

That 18-24 category only covers 320,000 veterans.

“The numbers don’t lie,” says Ryan Gallucci, deputy legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington. “The new veterans are going into the unemployment pile.”

The skills issue is particularly troubling. Hiring is strongest in jobs that require specialized education, and weakest for blue collar jobs, says Stephen Fuller, a professor of employment and economics at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. Even military jobs that are in the right ballpark for growth industries — say, software or electronics technician — may involve specialization that doesn’t readily apply to Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 or software-services jobs.

So ponder this America. A young Marine goes over 2011, to having missed his kids birthdays, his wife probably having cheated on him, no work, and bills to pay.  the recruiters hipe about skills easily transferrable to the civilian sector are just BS.  But we have 1,400 billionaires/millionaires who paid zero ($0) taxes in 2010.

Wake up!!! Civilization is based on the premise of community = communal responsibilities; communities take care of those who sacrifice for them = this was even true in the stone age....

Fed likely to stimulate Q4

The Federal Reserve is likely to increase monetary stimulus, including an expansion of its balance sheet, according to Pacific Investment Management Co., which oversees the world’s largest bond fund.



Growth in the U.S. will be constrained next year amid an “unprecedented amount” of fiscal contraction, Scott Mather, Pimco’s head of global portfolio management, said at a briefing today in Sydney. The Fed will start by changing its language before taking steps to bolster the economy including efforts to stabilize the housing market, he said.


“You’ll see the language change first and then probably some of these other things,” Mather said. “They’re not done. They’ve told us that there’s more that they’re thinking about, that they can and will do.”


Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said Oct. 21 that a third round of large-scale securities purchases might become warranted to boost an economy challenged by an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent and financial turmoil.

While US Refineries Close; Costing Americans good paying jobs; The Pentagon pays Dictators for Fuel that could be sourced from Pennsylvania (home of the Liberty Bell)!!! Now that's Patriotism (just whose??)

Officially, the U.S. does not pay other governments for rights to military bases. The logic is straightforward: funneling money to the treasuries of foreign dictators cannot form the foundation of genuine strategic alliances. Yet, to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while staring down the mullahs in Iran, over the last decade the Pentagon has come to rely in an unprecedented way on a web of bases across the Middle East. And a NEWSWEEK investigation of Pentagon contracting practices in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Bahrain has uncovered more than $14 billion paid mostly in sole-source contracts to companies controlled by ruling families across the Persian Gulf. The revelation raises a fundamental question: are U.S. taxpayer dollars enriching the ruling potentates of friendly regimes just as the youthful protesters and the Arab Spring have brought a new push for democracy across the region?


Take a look at Abu Dhabi. The wealthiest of the United Arab Emirates, it hosts a U.S. Air Force base at Al Dhafra, which is a vital refueling hub in the region. As is the case in most Gulf states, Abu Dhabi is ruled by a single family that dominates both government and business. Here it is the Nahyan family, and the emir is 63-year-old Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is known for his interest in camel racing, is worth $15 billion, and controls the country’s national oil company, ADNOC. As it turns out, every drop of fuel America buys for its planes at Al Dhafra—more than 200 million gallons a year, costing $5.2 billion since 2005—is purchased from the Al Nahyan–-controlled ADNOC.  Estimates are that the US Military paid $2 billion more than it would have cost to source the fuel from American Refineries!!!

Yet, according to contract documents, that money has bypassed the competitive bidding process that is supposed to accompany any -purchase—of firearms, flak jackets, or fuel—by the Pentagon.

In Abu Dhabi, “we may be essentially buying our presence,” says Alexander Cooley, a professor at Barnard College who studies U.S. basing strategy. The U.S. regularly pays rents to foreign landowners, but those payments are separate from base rights, which are government-to-government agreements.
Nearly three decades ago, after a spree of spending scandals—there was a $436 hammer and a toilet seat that cost $640—Congress passed the 1984 Competition in Contracting Act requiring competitive bidding. The principle is simple: competition drives down prices and increases quality. According to Charles Tiefer, a member of the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting, “The law mandates competition with very limited exceptions.”

Abu Dhabi has exploited one of those exemptions brilliantly. Five years ago, at the height of the Iraq War, an American fuel contractor based in Florida called IOTC challenged a $500 million sole-source contract teed up for ADNOC. The award “must be open to full competition,” a contract lawyer, Ronald Uscher, wrote in a protest letter to the federal Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon fought back, citing what it said was U.A.E. law, but IOTC’s lawyer says the military “was unable to produce any such law or decree.”

Internal Pentagon emails obtained by NEWSWEEK under the Freedom of Information Act show confusion even inside the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which handles procurement for the military. After a colonel questioned the sole-source process with ADNOC in 2008, the acting division chief of the agency responded, “Basically, it’s the only company we are allowed to source fuel from as per the local gov’t.” Later, a U.S. contracting officer asked, “Is there any documentation or history” about the Abu Dhabi law? Even the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi said that it could not actually find a copy of the law. Only a few months later, the Pentagon issued another $918 million sole-source contract to ADNOC. In Tiefer’s estimation, “you are turning the keys to the treasury over to the sheikdom.”