"Repeat after me: "The price of Duke Cunningham's Rolls-Royce would have bought a lot of body armor for the troops."" (link)that's not a bad frame - but it misses two main (separate) points:
a) bribes result in great returns for the bribers- often more than 1000-fold, so it's not the price of a single rollsroyce that is relevant, but rather the price of 1000 or Rollers. for example, in the Cerebus case, $130k in donations was parlayed into a $160M contract.
b) the effect of bribery is that contracts go to a 2nd-or-3rd-rate provider - ergo it's not that just a few amgrunts don't get the equipment they need, rather *every single* amgrunt gets substandard equipment.
No comments:
Post a Comment