This Sunday, the Associated Press reports that Navy Veteran Donald Vance was imprisoned for blowing the whistle on illegal arms sales by an Iraqi owned company. This company was selling guns, land mines and rockets for cash to Iraqi insurgents, U.S. soldiers, State Department workers and Iraq government employees. The irony is that he was imprisoned by the U.S. military. It was solitary confinement.

We have previously reported about Bunny Greenhouse on false-claims-act.com. Bunny was the highest ranking civilian contracting officer of the Army Corps of Engineers. In 2005 she testified concerning a widespread fraud in awarding government contracts to a subsidiary of Halliburton. As thanks for her vigilance, she was demoted to a position with no authority.

Really scary was a decision of our federal court that overturned a jury verdict in favor of a whistleblower that brought to public attention a millions of dollars scandal being perpetrated by Custer Battles, a contractor stealing from our government under the guise of doing reconstruction work in Iraq. Although the fraud was proven, the conduct was implicitly sanctioned by the federal district court ruling that the whistle blower could not win because the entity that was being defrauded was not the U.S. government, but rather the Coalition Provisional Authority.

It is real tough to foster change. There is incredible power that is protecting large corporations. We must continue the fight.

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