Middle East News
Corruption in Iraq as bad as ever, US official says
Oct 4, 2007, 17:29 GMT
Washington - Corruption within the Iraqi government is as bad as ever and has become a 'second insurgency' threatening to undermine US and Iraqi efforts to build a stable democracy, a US official said Thursday.
'The tide of corruption continues to rise and the problem is as bad today as it's ever been,' said Stuart Bowen, the US State Department's special inspector for reconstruction in Iraq.
The Iraqi Commission for Public Integrity, which was created in 2004, has carried out some prosecutions, but during the past year the number of corruption cases has increased by 70 per cent, he said. Iraqi ministries have also reported dramatic rises in corruption, Bowen added.
Bowen noted that corruption was common under Saddam Hussein's regime before it was toppled by US-led forces in April 2003.
'We did not bring corruption to Iraq, and it will not be gone whenever we leave,' he said. 'But it's an issue that fundamentally can undermine our efforts to build a democracy.'
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has acknowledged that corruption with his government is a major problem and has characterized it as a threat equal to the violence plaguing the country.
Bowen was testifying before the House of Representatives government oversight committee along with David Walker, who heads Congress' investigative agency known as the Government Accountability Office.
In addition to corruption, Walker said building an effective Iraqi government has been hampered by multiple US agencies leading the effort without a coordinated strategy and a shortage of employees in Iraqi ministries.
Walker also cited sectarian influences because of the infiltration of some ministries by militants and poor security that puts employees in danger and prompts some of the more skilled ones to leave the country.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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The surge is actually effective in temporarily suppressing al Qaeda activity, but al Qaeda is having success in Afghanistan, and is present in many other countries. The surge can do nothing about the Iraqi leadership, the failure of benchmarks such as an oil law for the sharing of revenues, and the other nuts-and-bolts items it takes to make a country function. Petraeus is fighting the only fight he can join into, and doing a fine job dealing with that MERE FRACTION of the total problem. Al Qaeda is a noisy tiny percentage of the total insurgency, and our creating of walled enclaves in Baghdad is a de-facto partitioning, leaving Shia militia in charge of Shia areas (some of which were formerly Sunni areas), causing a reduction in non-bomb-related violence and executions.
www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-09-09-iraqcorruption_N.htm
WASHINGTON — The departure of Iraq's top corruption investigator is 'a real blow to anti-corruption efforts in Iraq,' the U.S. government's Iraq reconstruction watchdog said. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told USA TODAY that Judge Radhi al-Radhi, the former head of Iraq's Public Integrity Commission, had complained about receiving death threats before resigning last week. Iraqi officials announced he would be replaced by his former deputy, Moussa Faraj.
Al-Radhi's departure is the latest sign that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is not doing enough to fight corruption, Bowen said. He called the problem the 'second insurgency' for its destabilizing effects in Iraq.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/04/AR200710040130 5.html
A former top Iraqi corruption investigator told a House committee today that corruption is 'rampant' in the Iraqi government -- costing the country's treasury as much as $18 billion over the last three years -- and is growing steadily worse amid violence and intimidation directed at officials charged with combating it.
Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, an Iraqi judge who headed the Commission on Public Integrity set up by U.S. authorities in 2004, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that 31 commission employees and at least 12 of their family members have been assassinated in an effort to stop corruption investigations.
'In a number of cases, my staff and their relatives have been kidnapped or detained and tortured prior to being killed,' Radhi said. Among those slain, he said, have been a staff member who was gunned down with his wife, who was seven months pregnant, and his security chief's father, whose body was found hanging from a meat hook.
Radhi charged that corruption reaches high into the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who he said has shut down investigations into the diversion of billions of dollars. He said he could not say whether Maliki is personally involved in the malfeasance, but he charged that the prime minister 'has protected some of his relatives who were involved in corruption,' including a former minister of transportation.
Radhi said escalating threats against him and his family have forced him to seek asylum in the United States. He arrived in August at the head of a delegation for forensics and evidence training with the U.S. Department of Justice.
(Calling the surge a 'solution' is like curing an infection in a patient with long-term degenerative disease - Petraeus is treating the visible symptom, but the real problems persist)
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299310,00.html
BAGHDAD — Roadside bombs killed the Shiite mayor of a town in a volatile area south of Baghdad and an anti-Al Qaeda Sunni sheik north of the capital, police officials said.
Car bombs, meanwhile, struck Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and the northern city of Tal Afar as at least 21 other people were killed or found dead nationwide.
The mayor of Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, was killed along with four of his bodyguards as he headed to work, a police officer said. Another guard was wounded when the bomb struck the convoy of Mayor Abbas Hassan Hamza, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party, the official said.
Sheik Muawiya Naji Jbara, the head of the Salahuddin Tribal Awakening Council, died from head injuries he suffered after a roadside bomb exploded as his convoy traveled near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, his brother said, adding two guards also were wounded.
The blast occurred as the prominent Sunni sheik was traveling to an area southwest of Samarra to support the anti-Al Qaeda fighters there, a day after 16 members of the council were wounded during clashes with gunmen, said his brother, Marwan Jbara.
(This link vividly describes how the Sunni insurgents who've been responsible for many U.S. deaths are now being paid off to go after al Qaeda - we did the same thing in Afghanistan, and look how THAT ended up)
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2414588.ece
FOUR months ago the scene would have been unthinkable. Captain Henry Moltz of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment led a small group of men up the deserted street to a single-storey municipal building of mellow ochre brick that had been cracked by mortar blasts during months of ruinous fighting with Sunni insurgents.
At the entrance he was greeted with a kiss by Sheikh Sabah al-Janabi, a leading member of the tribe that had spearheaded many of the pitiless Sunni attacks on American forces in and around the little town of Jurf as Sakhr, 25 miles south of Baghdad.
As Moltz, 28, ducked out of the sun into the sparsely furnished interior last Thursday, a second sheikh was waiting for him with another kiss and a look of eager expectation. Moltz swiftly put him at his ease. “Sheikh, we have the first payment,” he declared. An aide pulled from his knapsack a thick, heavy wad of used notes tied with rubber bands, and placed it on a table. Then came another, and another, until the table was piled high with 19 bundles of 2.5m dinars each – worth $38,000 (£19,000) in all.
Moltz looked the second sheikh, Taleb al-Janabi, in the eye. “If you keep to your contract and keep fighting the enemy, we owe you the balance,” he said. The balance is $189,000 (£93,000), to be paid over three months if the sheikh sticks to his side of the bargain and drives out the largely foreign fighters of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who have set up camp in date palm groves along the banks of the Euphrates in Ruwiya, to the west.
Is IRAQ as 'corrupt' as the U.S. GOVERNMENT??? DEMBHOLE HENRY WAXMAN THINKS SO - HENRY'nose-hairs-down-to-my-armpits'WAXMAN is at his DEMBHOLE 'feckless/fruitless' investigations again!!! Time to 'investigate' some of your CORRUPT/DEMBHOLE crumbholes ain't it 'NOSEHAIIR'WAXMAN??? HOW ABOUT STRATING WITH JACK'jerk-off'MURTHA and then JIM'i-only-snoop-by-short-wave-Bagdhad'McDERMOTT then onto NANCY'new-stunker-of-the-House-of-fools-wants-her-bigger-plane'PELOSI instead of making/being a complete 'NOSEHAIR' FOOL of yourself and all the other DEMBHOLES??? ARE DEMBHOLES[operant/relevant portions of ^SSHOLES+DUMB-DEMOCRATS=DEMBHOLES] ALWAYS SUCH MORONS OR JUST THE ONES WITH NOSEHAIRS DOWN TO THEIR ARMPITS LIKE YOUSE BALDY BOY YOU THINK YOUR NOSEHAIRS MAKE UP FOR YOUR CHROME-DOME???
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Now Iraq is buying weapons from ChinaOct 4th, 2007 - 17:51:36
First a whole bunch of U.S. weapons went missing; and now Iraq is cutting a deal to equip their police with Chinese weapons ...
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22532537-15084,00.html
BAGHDAD: Iraq has ordered million ($113 million) worth of military equipment from China for its police force, claiming the US is unable to provide the material and is too slow to deliver arms shipments.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the China deal had alarmed military analysts, who had said Iraq's security forces were already unable to account for more than 190,000 weapons supplied by the US. Many of these weapons are believed to be in the hands of Shia and Sunni militias and insurgents.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, meeting with Post editors and reporters yesterday, said only one in five Iraqi police officers was armed and called for faster weapons delivery from the US to beef up Iraq's fledgling army.
The capabilities of Iraqi security forces are pivotal to the US exit strategy in Iraq, with the creation of a viable police force critical to reconciliation.
The report said the Chinese arms deal shed light on the larger dispute between the US and Iraq over rebuilding the war-torn nation's armed forces and police. Iraqi officials have long complained about the supply of weapons and equipment for their personnel.
Mr Talabani yesterday expressed frustration with delays in equipping the Iraqi forces.
The report said Iraq had become one of the largest buyers of US-made weapons. It noted that US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus had told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that Baghdad had signed deals to buy arms worth .6billion, with a further 1.8 billion in possible purchases.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told the paper the US was 'working closely' to help Iraq obtain 'appropriate and necessary' military equipment. But US officials conceded there were delivery problems.
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