Corruption up and down

Willie Safire, among others, has been complaining for a while now about what he calls 'Kofigate.' Allegations are developing that the former UN oil-for-food program run under sanctions was swamped with corruption and kickbacks at all levels, diverting legitimate money intended for Iraqis and also possibly channeling extra oil through 'oil vouchers.'

A high-ranking UN official has been implicated in the scheme, and as many are saying it couldn't come at a worse time because the UN is supposed to be helping Iraq transition to a new government now.

The UN has launched a major investigation.

This also goes along with more recent allegations of corruption in the CPA and Iraqi Governing Council that I mentioned before, in particular because the IGC was allowed to hand over ministerial positions to their cousins and such, causing the growth of patronage and factionalization.

Juan Cole has posted his testimony to Congress about the mess in Iraq. He was also on a panel next to the maddening Richard Perle (thank you to Cole for noting the settler connection!):

It is deeply shameful that Perle is still pushing Chalabi, and may well succeed in installing him. Chalabi is wanted for embezzling $300 million from a Jordanian bank. He cannot account for millions of US government money given him from 1992 to 1996. He was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon (Perle was on the Defense Advisory Board, a civilian oversight committee for the Pentagon) with a thousand of his militiamen. The US military handed over to Chalabi, a private citizen, the Baath intelligence files that showed who had been taking money from Saddam, giving Chalabi the ability to blackmail large numbers of Iraqi and regional actors. It was Chalabi who insisted that the Iraqi army be disbanded, and Perle almost certainly was an intermediary for that stupid decision. It was Chalabi who insisted on blacklisting virtually all Baath Party members, even if they had been guilty of no crimes, effectively marginalizing all the Sunni Iraqi technocrats who could compete with him for power. It was Chalabi who finagled his way onto the Interim Governing Council even though he has no grassroots support (only 0.2 percent of Iraqis say they trust him).

Now Chalabi's nephew Salem has been put in charge of the trial of Saddam Hussein. Salem is a partner in Zell and Feith, a Jerusalem-based law firm headed by a West Bank settler, in which Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Planning, is also a senior partner when not in the US government. You can be assured that the trial will be conducted on behalf of the Bush administration and the Neocons, and on behalf of the Chalabis. Since the Chalabis have been trying to overthrow Saddam for decades, it is hard to see how this can have even the appearance of an impartial tribunal.

Anyway, Perle was just a one-note Johnny, with his whole message being "We must give away Iraq to Ahmad Chalabi yesterday! That will solve all the problems."

If the Bush administration listens to Perle and puts Chalabi in as a soft dictator, it will be the final nail in the coffin of the Iraq enterprise. The whole thing is already going very badly wrong. Chalabi will play iceberg to the Iraq/Bush Titanic.

It would be really interesting to know the list of secret promises Chalabi has given Perle (and presumably the Israelis through Perle) that would explain this Neocon fervor for the man.

Does Iraq just corrupt everyone and everything it touches??!

In other news a woman was fired for taking a picture of flag-draped coffins coming back from Iraq, and she has also complained about sexist treatment of Halliburton employees in the past, it seems. (I had a feeling they would get her)

Speculations of a wider war unfolding, and "Apocalypse Phase," a cool piece from Monbiot about Christian fundamentalism propelling our policy in the Mideast.

The UN envoy Brahimi is criticizing how tilted towards Israel Bush is behaving, making it more difficult to form a new Iraqi government. Yes this is very important--a central tension in the hegemon.

According to Josh Marshall the CPA's website is actually a ripoff of the Brookings Institution's, a sublime irony that I verified by looking at the CPA site's code, which is full of tags with the same names as the Brookings' menu. Also the background pattern is the same. This shoddy website plagarism says more about our work in Iraq than anything else I could imagine....

Posted by HongPong at April 22, 2004 03:07 PM
Listed under Iraq .