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Corruption in Iraq as bad as ever, US official says (Roundup)
Oct 4, 2007, 20:45 GMT
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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.
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.
And the royal mess just keeps getting worse - thanks Bushie!
(THIS is why our troops are dying??? THIS is the government that the surge was supposed to buy time for???)
==============================================================
www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/world/middleeast/05contractor.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (Reuters) — Widespread corruption in Iraq stretches into the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, an Iraqi investigating judge told United States lawmakers on Thursday, and an American official said that efforts by the United States to combat the problem were inadequate.
Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, who was named by the United States in 2004 to lead the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, said his agency estimated that corruption had cost the Iraqi government up to $18 billion.
Mr. Maliki has shielded relatives from investigation and allowed government ministers to protect implicated employees, said the judge, who left Iraq in August after threats against him. Speaking at a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Judge Radhi said that 31 employees of his agency had been killed.
He said that he did not have evidence against Mr. Maliki personally, but that the prime minister had “protected some of his relatives that were involved in corruption.”
One of these was a former minister of transportation, Judge Radhi said. The American official who testified, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said he also saw a “rising tide of corruption in Iraq.” He said American efforts to combat it were “disappointing,” lacking funding and focus.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who heads the panel, questioned whether the Maliki government was “too corrupt to succeed,” and contended that American efforts to address the problem were in “complete disarray.”
He criticized what he said was State Department resistance to the panel’s investigation. Larry Butler, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, declined to answer questions publicly about whether Mr. Maliki had obstructed corruption investigations, saying he could respond only in a closed session.
Mr. Waxman called that condition “absurd,” but the State Department defended Mr. Butler’s position. Sean McCormack, the department’s spokesman, said that in corruption investigations it was best to handle matters privately at first to protect the rights of those under suspicion.
Judge Radhi said he did not return to Iraq because of threats to his security, but he also suggested that Mr. Maliki was behind efforts to prosecute him if he went back.
In his statement, he said that 31 of his co-workers and 12 of their relatives had been killed because of their work. “This includes my staff member, Mohammed Abd Salif, who was gunned down with his seven-month-pregnant wife,” he said.
The body of the father of another worker was found on a meat hook, he said.
Even after Sadam and crew were removed completely from the equation, they still blame him for the present coruption. I believe they are planning to blame him for the billions of barrels of oil that will ultimately disapear later also. We are not all stupid.
As stated before, we just traded one disaster for another in getting rid of Sadam - he had a tight control over the insurgents. People are still getting killed, only from a different faction!
'Iraq is cutting a deal to equip their police with Chinese weapons ...'
The subject was corruption in Iraq.... So what if the Iraqis are buying Kalashnikov's instead of m-16's? Are you trying to 'flood the venue' with irrelivent spam and make it 'unreadable'?
'THIS is why our troops are dying???'
They are dying because ialamist terrorists keep on killing them, they are there to fight islamist terrorists because we are at war with them. We have been since they attacked the USA on 9/11.
There was ample to comment on as to the corruption; but perhaps that's your model society. Check the other posts on the thread, schmuck.
Some of those in charge have resigned Oct 5th, 2007 - 02:56:42
al-Maliki said to be personally involved Oct 5th, 2007 - 06:27:26
Here's another news flash - Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That was Afghanistan.
(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.
(This is really nifty - Iraq has always been corrupt, so the GOP is not surprised that it's still corrupt. Perhaps the voters should bear that in mind when they look for candidates who expect something BETTER than what was there before. Never mind that we've been there for over 4 years, and it's OUR money going down the drain. Amazing that everyone's wrong but the GOP).
news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20071005/cm_thenation/3240234
Minutes later, Republicans members of the committee were suggesting there was nothing unusual or shocking about corruption in Iraq. 'Corruption is not a new phenomenon,' remarked Representative Tom Davis, the senior GOPer on the panel. Another committee Republican, Representative Darrell Issa, huffed, 'We're not surprised a country that was run by a corrupt dictator...would have a pattern of corruption.' And Republican Representative John Mica noted that corruption plagues many democratic countries, including the United States. Mica cited Watergate and the prosecution of Reagan administration officials, and he claimed that the Clinton administration had 'the most number of witnesses to die suddenly.'
Their spin: corruption in Iraq is no big deal.
But Radhi in his testimony reiterated what he said in an interview with me several weeks ago: corruption is 'rampant' within Iraq (perverting virtually every ministry and costing tens of billions of dollars); it's undermining the entire government and has 'stopped the process of reconstruction'; Maliki has consistently blocked corruption investigations (especially probes involving his associates and family); in some instances corruption is 'financing terrorism' by funding sectarian militias; and the situation is getting worse. Radhi noted that of the 3000 corruption cases his commission investigated and forwarded to Iraqi courts for prosecution, only 241 have been adjudicated. Also appearing as a witness at the hearing, Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, echoed Radhi, testifying that corruption within the Iraqi government is the 'second insurgency.' Bowen reported that corruption is on the rise in Iraq--partly due to Maliki's protection of crooked officials. He quoted one Iraqi official who said that 'corruption is threatening the state.'
Radhi agreed with the Republicans that corruption was present during the days of Saddam Hussein, but he pointed out that the current corruption 'is undermining my country.' And he was not fazed when the GOPers tried to discredit his testimony. Republican Representative Dan Burton excitedly pointed out that Radhi had once served as a prosecutor during the Saddam years. (Burton did not mention that Radhi was twice imprisoned and tortured during the Saddam years and still bears the scars.) And Issa suggested that Radhi was appearing at the hearing (and offering testimony inconvenient for the Bush administration) in return for receiving backing from congressional Democrats for an asylum request Radhi recently submitted to the U.S. government for himself and family members.
www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1007/100407cdpm2.htm
The State Department lacks a functional plan to fight corruption in Iraq, despite increasing crime in the government that harms U.S. reconstruction efforts, according to a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memorandum released Thursday.
Current and former State Department officials told the committee that many embassy officials are not 'serious about going forward on' anti-corruption efforts, the memo says. State employees report that 'almost no one shows up' at meetings of the U.S. Embassy's anti-corruption working group. Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the department's attempts to stem corruption 'are dysfunctional, underfunded and a low priority.'
Government Accountability Office Comptroller General David Walker and Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen offered similar assessments, calling lack of coordination the key problem. Walker said U.S. efforts to build up the Iraqi government's capacity are characterized by 'multiple U.S. agencies leading individual efforts without an overarching direction from a lead entity or a strategic approach.'
'Congress, we believe, should consider conditioning future appropriations on the existence of such a strategy,' Walker said, in a statement highlighted by Waxman. Bowen said corruption in the Iraqi government is rising due to the 'politicization of the rule of law' under the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
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