US Still Shares Its Wealth With Corrupt Iraqi Politicians
Premier of Iraq Is Quietly Firing Fraud Monitors
BAGHDAD — The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.
The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.
The moves have not been publicly announced by Mr. Maliki’s government, but word of them has begun to circulate through the layers of Iraqi bureaucracy as Parliament prepares to vote on a long-awaited security agreement.
That pact sets the terms for continued American presence here after the United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31, but also amounts to a framework for a steady reduction in that presence. Such a change will undoubtedly lessen American oversight of Iraqi institutions.
… It was Mr. Rathi’s former chief investigator, Salam Adhoob, who testified before Congress in September that a previously undisclosed report by the Board of Supreme Audit had concluded that $13 billion in American reconstruction funds had been squandered through corruption.
What a bailout! This has been going on regularly since the Iraq War was declared “Mission Accomplished”. The cost of the Iraq War could have bailed out several Americas, and left our 401K retirements alone. Gosh, we are so smart, we bought the snake oil, now we have too swallow it.
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