the real victims are of course are the iraqi people.

Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department, which should be leading the battle against corruption, is missing in action. Its Office of Accountability and Transparency, which is supposed to support Iraqi anticorruption efforts, has been led by four different directors in the last 10 months. (Incredibly, the most recent acting director previously worked as a paralegal.) The only permanent director of the office, Judge Arthur Brennan, told the committee that there is no "coordinated U.S. strategy to fight corruption in Iraq."

The director of the State Department's Anticorruption Working Group provided a similar assessment, stating: "I would like to be able to say that we've done quite a bit in this area, but unfortunately, we have not. ... [T]o be completely, embarrassingly honest with you, there's not a lot of conversation going on."

Independent audits by Bowen and the Government Accountability Office also have reached disheartening conclusions, finding that the State Department's efforts suffer from poor coordination, lack of overall direction and duplication.

The secretary of State seemed completely unaware of the extent to which her own department's anticorruption efforts are in disarray when she testified before the oversight committee on Oct. 25. Rice acknowledged that there is "a very bad problem of corruption in Iraq. It is a problem in ministries, it is the problem in government, it is a problem with officials." Yet she endorsed Maliki's performance, asserting that "Prime Minister Maliki has made the fighting of corruption one of the most important elements of his program." She promised to cooperate with the committee's investigations, but then insisted that discussions of corruption take place in closed session, which would defeat the purpose of oversight.

i just don't buy the idea of 'missing in action'. i posit the government is failing by design.

Posted by: annie | Nov 5, 2007 11:31:41 AM | 1

the real victims are of course are the iraqi people.

The real victims are the citizens of America as well as the Iraqi people. Not to mention anyone else who is offended by our plunder.

I have said from the begining this war is not merely abroad, but also at home. The political class is at war physically in Iraq, and psychologically here in the "homeland". It is a WAR ON CONSCIOUSNESS.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 5, 2007 12:04:27 PM | 2

Zbigniew Brzezinski has clearly stated the fatal flaw of America's leaders; political and corporate, including Congressional Democrats: "A profound misunderstanding of our era. America is acting like a colonial power in Iraq. But the age of colonialism is over. Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating".

America is doomed to spill blood and treasure until all hope and resources are gone, the fatal flaw never recognized nor publicly acknowledged.

Posted by: VietnamVet | Nov 5, 2007 12:52:57 PM | 3

@annie & uncle above, I highly recommend the 2 books by Brit http://www.jonronson.com/>Jon Ronson, Them and The Men Who Stare at Goats. In the latter he posits "we're incompetent, don't look, nothing to see here" as standard operating procedure for big money ops. They're humorous, because that's what's allowed with ultra-serious subjects.Here are Amazon's listings to each, have some description, tables of contents, and searchability.

http://www.amazon.com/Them-Adventures-Extremists-Jon-Ronson/dp/0743233212/ref=sr_1_2/103-0179705-3104609?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194285755&sr=1-2>Them

http://www.amazon.com/Men-Who-Stare-Goats/dp/B000W408RY/ref=sr_1_1/103-0179705-3104609?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194285755&sr=1-1>Goats. Btw in latter there's a General Stubblebine, described as dead ringer for late Lee Marvin. I have from other, previous, source (a Stubblebine)that that was Marvin's prep school name.

Posted by: plushtown | Nov 5, 2007 1:14:57 PM | 4

The bleat that 'they' - as in the Iraqi people we kindly liberated from the evil Saddam Hussein - are at fault for stealing from us, while we can't get our shit together to rob them blind, is just more of the same bulldust designed to inhibit amerikan humans feeling anything for Iraqi humans while amerikan tax dollars rape, murder, loot, and pillage 'them'.

If anyone can be bothered going far enough back in history to the time when Saddam first got up as the area strong man they would realise that those in amerika who took him out were just being as ungrateful as always. Without Saddam's leadership pretty much from the late 60's certainly by 1973, which brought stability to a region consumed by factionalism and resistance to western industrialisation, the independent gulf states would never have been able to survive. Iran went off but Saddam contained it and buttressed Saudi which has always been a powder keg.

1973 is important because that is the date that amerikans realised that their oil was running out and became totally dependent on ME oil. There was a world wide recession a direct result of amerikan involvement in support of zionism which gotten the ME nations in OPEC to thinking whose side are these amerikans really on?

Hussein was one of the pragmatists who said 'let these assholes have the oil, but from now on they pay for it'.

Without his influence the final quarter of the 20th century would have been damned harsh for the average amerikan yet he is rewarded with a lynch mob?

Waxman is just another zionist racist prick insinuating all Arabs are shifty carpet salesmen, not to be trusted with cash, when in fact the ME has a history of business ethics unrivalled in the west or Waxman's real nation of allegiance Israel. In fact why doesn't the "Elliot Ness" of the democrat party get an audit of the billions and billions of taxpayers dollars going to Israel that gets blatantly ripped by the Likudnik crooks? he certainly knows all the faces and has 'access'.

Shit no that isn't what Henry does. Henry's job is to get people hating Arabs, mistrusting amerika's victims, not the co-conspirators in the heist.

For a thousand years ME merchants have traded on a handshake. Deals based on mutual trust are always likely to be more successful than the ridiculous legalese bullshit amerika tries to bully the world with. If that degree of enforcement is required it is an open admission that the deal favours one party ahead of the other. If not why would anyone break it?

amerika has shown it's crooked, duplicitious and greedy character when it forced the Iraqis to negate the Lukoil deal last week.

That longstanding deal with Russia was a blatant spit into Russia's face because Putin refuses to agree to the the Iran adventure.

Why would he? The amerikans were going to hold Russia to ransom at every turn with that oilfield if he had agreed to Iran. Russia had already agreed to not veto the recognition of the illegal Iraqi invasion and suspended demands for money owned by Iraq, yet as always the amerikans wanted more.

We know who the crooks are and Waxman, the real anti-semite, is just another one. A zionist-amerikan kleptomaniac trying to justify larceny enabled by his actions, explicitly against the wishes of his electorate, with attacks on the character of Arabs.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 5, 2007 3:25:59 PM | 5