GROOVALUJAH, O SISTERS MY SISTERS!
Listen! You can hear the emergency blinkers clicking like the much-discussed ticking time bomb as Lisa Smith calls in her HERoic testimony (with her right hand over her ovaries, I suppose)! Just background noise? Just electromechanical devices, irrelevant to the Story?
Or Signs of the Times for those who Hear them?
And then it gets louder and louder!
OMG! Now JLJ has said, "No man should be above the law," reminiscent of two myths: Odysseus and Cyclops; and Princess Eowyn and the Witch King (her triumph wins the day for Aragorn in the Battle of Minas Tirith in Return of the King). "NoMan can kill me!" the witch king boasts; hello! "I am NoMan," says Eowyn, shoving her sword into the Void of his face.
And notice how they use a machine (a laptop) to deny her her rights, her access to counsel, in a system of legalistic machinations that would make Machiavelli blush. She's been mythjacked!
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Lisa, a quick question, a quick question. Your computer was confiscated?
LISA SMITH: Yes, my computer was confiscated right after that. I had notified Dan again that global investigations was refusing to give me a copy of the statement. He then issued a letter to KBR, and shortly after I received that letter and responded to a date correction on it, within ten to twenty minutes KBR security came and pulled my computer. At that point, it was confiscated.
AMY GOODMAN: Was this your personal computer or given to you by them?
LISA SMITH: This is a company computer used to do all my daily reports.
AMY GOODMAN: And how did they justify taking your computer?
LISA SMITH: They said they needed it for evidence.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I want to say KBR declined our request to join us on the broadcast today, but the corporate communications director, Heather Browne, did release this statement. It said, “The safety of all employees remains KBR’s top priority. The company in no way condones or tolerates any form of sexual harassment. Any allegation of sexual harassment or sexual assault is taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. In no way are the allegations publicized recently, an indication of KBR’s treatment of women. The Company’s zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment is unwavering.” Lisa, your response to KBR’s statement?
LISA SMITH: My response to KBR’s statement is that’s funny. The employee assistance program told me—they gave me an 800 number back in the States to contact for counseling and for advice, because they’re not trained in handling sexual assault. There is no medical protocol on a treatment or proper steps to be taken for sexual assault. There is a medical protocol for treatment of STDs.
AMY GOODMAN: Is it true your twenty-two-year-old son in the US military in the Middle East was the one who encouraged you to make a formal complaint?
LISA SMITH: Yes, he did. He served seventeen months in Afghanistan, and I wanted to discuss with him before I went to CID to find out his opinion. And I really was leery that he would be angry with me because I was naming people that were in his same military. And he was very definite, very much disgusted that somebody who wore his uniform would do that to anyone, let alone his mom, and he encouraged the report to CID.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamie Leigh Jones, does this sound familiar, what Lisa is describing? You worked for Halliburton; she, for KBR.
JAMIE LEIGH JONES: Lisa. If I can do anything at all to help you, please just let me know. You know, a lot of things are similar. My laptop was taken. You know, I was drugged. I just can’t imagine why they just can’t change the situation over there. They’ve known it was a problem. They know it’s a problem, because it happened to me. Yeah, it does. It all sounds familiar. Just now, you know, I’m getting tears to my eyes, because part of the reason why I came forward was to prevent this type of thing from happening. I didn’t think I would get emotional like this, but it makes me very, very sick that it’s not stopping. I mean, what will it take? I don’t know how many women it’s going to take. I—my heart really goes out to you,So I’m just really sick about it.
(Emphasis added.)AMY GOODMAN: And second, how many women have come to you, and what are you doing? How do you deal with the women who come to you?
JAMIE LEIGH JONES: OK. Well, so far, forty women have come through my foundation. We have become a watchdog foundation, so we are pushing for more stringent laws to make sure that these perpetrators have some type of law that they umbrella under, because no man should be above the law.
What are the chances that, in a context of extraordinary renditions accomplished with druggings, date rape, and rape as a weapon of war, that these outrages are absolutely self-contained and isolated incidents when such a surprisingly widespread "rape rash" is spreading at taxpayer expense? What if these aren't accidents, but a policy of internal terrorization such as Goerring defined?
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