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An important documentary reveals the waste, war profiteering and lives wrecked by corporations and this administration in our name. Iraq for Sale, directed by Robert Greenwald reveals the impact of this criminal and moral corruption on the lives of soldiers, whistleblowers, survivors and ordinary Americans back home.

Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, “Iraq For Sale,” documents the egregious war profiteering of private contractors in Iraq, like Halliburton/KBR, CACI, Blackwater, and Titan/L3. He builds a solid, damning case full of evidence that the use of these contractors is putting American soldiers in harm’s way, hurting US military effectiveness in Iraq, bilking the US taxpayer out of billions, and endangering the lives of the ex-military personnel who sign on with contractors on the promise of higher wages than those paid by the US military. In the film they talk with military personnel, past employees of military contractors, and the families of contractors who were killed in Iraq.

They scrimp on safety and training. They hire inept translators who give bad intelligence to the military. They send their front-line workers — such as truckers recruited from the US — into battle-zones without military escorts or armor. Meanwhile, the “savings” realized by putting untrained people in charge of interrogation at Abu Ghraib (Greenwald shows a single-page “interrogation manual” that consists of little cartoons with a short sentence under each) are not used to provide better equipment for US soldiers — they sleep in infectious tents, drink untreated toxic water, and eat improperly prepared food, thanks to the likes of Halliburton, whose stock doubles and redoubles every year the Iraq war goes on.

The frustration of the soldiers is palpable and heartbreaking. From those who bemoan that their comrades get sucked into working for the profiteers by the high salaries, only to be killed in action to the soldiers who are required to train contractors to do their jobs, then are relegated to scut-work while all the skilled labor is taken over by the contractors they trained.

The film exposes travesties such as civilian truck drivers – told they would be kept out of harm’s way – forced to drive into battle zones unprotected; mercenaries used for combat operations and interrogations and soldiers training civilians to, ultimately, outsource their own jobs at much higher salaries. This film exposes the long-time personal connections between this administration and the profiteers, so that friends of the administration can rake in obscene profits. From charging the US military $100 to ineptly wash a bag of laundry (and getting officers to reprimand soldiers who do their own laundry in the sink) to overseeing interrogation at Abu Ghraib, these military contractors are wasteful, under trained, and grotesquely expensive.

The film features footage of bonfires built to destroy improperly ordered vehicles, computers and other equipment that the contractors purchased at taxpayer expense — since these contractors are compensated on a “cost-plus” basis, they get paid more for wasting money than saving it.

We need a public platform where whistleblowers, military families, and veterans who are both victims and witnesses can expose these acts of betrayal. Otherwise, this administration and its cronies will get away with inflated no-bid contracts. Hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges. Billions of dollars gone missing. Backlash and whitewashing of whistleblowers. Alleged bribes to win reconstruction deals. And a lack of accountability for poor or even criminal performance.

Iraq for Sale demonstrates, once again, the urgent need for an independent war profiteering commission modeled after the fearless work of the Truman Commission during World War II.

Greenwald is encouraging people to host screenings of Iraq For Sale in their homes, inviting over friends and neighbors to see the movie and discuss the film’s content, and to demand an independent war profiteering commission look into the abuses contractors are committing in Iraq.