If Corporations Are People, KBR Should Be Jailed For Life

Per the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court, corporations in America are deemed to people in certain situations for their benefit only. If "personhood" was applied thoroughly, KBR and Halliburton would be sentenced to many years in jail for a brutal rape of an employee in Iraq. However, we do not live in a perfect world and the story of Jamie Leigh Jones is an incredibly sad one to hear.

From ABC News:

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Only because a sympathetic guard let her call her father did she get out of that container. Congressman Ted Poe made the necessary calls to get her out and is 100 percent behind her, yet more than two years later, there has been no justice for Jamie.

The government is helping KBR hide her rapists and the company as a whole from litigation. Convenient loopholes have let them escape prosecution. Now Jamie is trying to use the civil courts as a last hope at finding justice, but KBR is fighting her every step of the way. The Bush Administration is of no use to her. If Bush had to choose between a rape victim and a war profiteer corporation, he would always go with the latter.

Congressman Poe Calls On Us To Be More Like KKK Founder

Congressman Ted Poe of Texas spoke in favor of the war in Iraq yesterday, citing Klan founder Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a leader of the Confederate Army and then started the KKK to combat the threat as he saw it against the newly freed slave population. Thanks to him, the Ku Klux Klan started on its mission of torturing and killing African Americans simply because of their skin color.

“Git thar fustest with the mostest," was Forrest's cry when fighting against the Union Army. Ted Poe thought that the quote was an appropriate remark to justify the ongoing escalation of the war in Iraq. How any sane person would say such a thing on the floor of the House of Representatives amazes me.

From Roll Call via Crooks and Liars:

On Monday, Rep. Ted Poe took to the House floor to discuss foreign policy matters. To make a point, the Texas Republican invoked the words of Civil War Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest: “Git thar fustest with the mostest.”

The quotation got some floor watchers’ attention pretty quickly. Forrest is a controversial figure who was one of the Klan’s first grand wizards. Although the Civil War hero (if you were a Confederate, that is) ultimately abandoned the Klan for its violent tactics, he continues to kick up dust.

After you recover from the shock of Ted Poe's knowledge of the old Grand Wizard, it is actually an amusing comparison. The KKK is now considered a radical fringe hate group in the United States and by any foreign observer. Bedford Forrest is known as one of America's worst people to have had an impact on our history. The Civil War itself is a stain upon our past, though it signifies the end of slavery.

Now in 2007, the war in Iraq is becoming increasingly unpopular. Getting there fast and with the most is a losing proposition and the evidence that the surge is a complete failure is becoming clearer by the day as the casualties mount. Ted Poe may know how to quote Bedford Forrest, but that would be like a German politician citing Hitler to advocate for a position in Germany. Congressman Poe, you are my World's Worst Person in the World for yesterday.