Theater-wide food shortage. The salad bar is closed.

Juan Cole reveals the following leaked memo from the Green Zone, which reports that getting food out of Kuwait, up to our troops, is becoming a problem. Cole says that local food cannot be eaten because of the danger of guerrillas poisoning the food:

'Due to a theater-wide delay in food delivery, menu selections will be limited for the near future. While every effort will be made to provide balanced meals, it may not be possible to offer the dishes you are used to seeing at each meal. Fresh fruits and salad bar items will also be severely limited or unavailable.

The informant adds his own comment:

The bottom line is that our troops depend on a ground supply line that runs from Kuwait to the various bases in Iraq. When I was in Iraq last year at the U.S. base in Balad I had the chance to eat four meals a day--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight rations (midrats). If you like late nights the midrats were great--steak, eggs, pancakes. Pretty good food. Well, based on this memo, it looks like those were the good old days. We don't have enough convoys to give our troops three hot meals a day. '

The Walter Reed Scandal

This comment from Juan Cole targets the sleeper issue in the failures at Walter Reed Hospital and the abominable care of our wounded soldiers. (Cole, an expert on the Middle East, has some of the most cogent insights on the Iraq catastrophe you can find.)

"But everyone should pay attention especially to this para. in the WaPo report:

' The committee also released an internal Army memorandum reportedly written in September in which the Walter Reed garrison commander, Col. Peter Garibaldi, warned Weightman that "patient care services are at risk of mission failure" because of staff shortages brought on by privatization of the support work force at the hospital. '

The privatization of patient care services is responsible for a lot of the problem here. And so is the privatization of services for US troops in Iraq punishing them. Indeed, the privatization of guard duties through the hiring of firms like Blackwater caused all that trouble at Falluja in the first place. KRB never delivered services to US troops with the speed and efficiency they deserved. The Bush-Cheney regime rewarded civilian firms with billions while they paid US GIs a pittance to risk their lives for their country. And then when they were wounded they were sent someplace with black mold on the walls. A full investigation into the full meaning of 'privatization' at the Pentagon for our troops would uncover epochal scandals." (my emphasis added on the word "privatization")

This problem is a huge piece of the Bush agenda throughout every level of government, and especially in Iraq. Watch this story gain significant traction, soon.