Turning A Blind Eye

By Cernig

Ex State Dept. employees have alleged that the Bush administration deliberately turned a blind eye to massive Iraqi government corruption, stealing US taxpayers money meant for reconstruction.

The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former U.S. State Department employees.

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.

Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional staffer visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, the staffers were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.

A big chunk of that money is doubtless now safely ensconsed in U.S. banks alongside the billions in oil revenue unspent while America has been footing Iraq's bills.

But look, isn't it about time we started to wonder when ignorance and apathy translate into malfeasance and complicity in fraud? Almost the entire Iraqi defense budget was purloined while General Petraeus had oversight of the Iraqi defense procurement process and one of his top aides has been implicated in some of the corruption attendant on that. $800 million in US-provided weaponry also went missing on Saint Pet's watch and I for one don't believe that there were no Iraqi bigwigs making profit from that. Other Iraqi ministries have seen widespread corruption and fraud too, to say nothing of massive procurement fraud by US contractors and arms providers. Yet only minor U.S. officers and officials have ever been tried for involvements in these fraudulent heists. To me, there's just something wrong with that picture - junior US personnel and major Iraqi ministry officials being involved everyone higher up on the American side of the fence either didn't know or didn't care but wasn't personally involved? Pull the other one.