Michelle renders the verdict

BULLY BOY PRESS &    CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

SATURDAY, FADED CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O SHOWED HIS FACE AT A BOOKSTORE AND BOUGHT 17 TITLES -- INCLUDING A HEALTHY SELECTION OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS.

REACHED FOR COMMENT TODAY, FIRST LADY MICHELLE TOLD THESE REPORTERS, "HOW WONDERFUL.  WE ARE ALL SO THRILLED THAT BARRY HAS LEARNED TO READ."




FROM THE TCI WIRE:




In a letter to the editors of the Houston Chronicle, Carl Schiro asks a question no one seems able to answer:

Regarding "Corruption hobbles Iraq's military efforts" (Page A1, Monday), why is our government still sending our troops and money to such a corrupt country?


Can anyone answer that question?  The article Schiro's referring to is David D. Kirkpatrick (New York Times via Hamilton Spectator) report on Iraqi forces:

                             

The Iraqi military and police forces had been so thoroughly pillaged by their own corrupt leadership that they all but collapsed this spring in the face of the advancing militants of the Islamic State — despite roughly $25 billion worth of U.S. training and equipment over the past 10 years and far more from the Iraqi treasury.                         

Now maybe if there had been work on the political solution -- the one US President Barack Obama has spent months giving lip service to -- corruption could have been dealt with.

Instead, Barack's planning a work-around.  Francesca Chambers (Daily Mail) notes:

The U.S. military has decided against rebuilding the entire Iraqi army and will instead focus on training a handful of brigades to take on Islamic radicals, initiating a shift in the Pentagon's decade-long approach to the handling the country.

'The idea is, at least in the first instance, to try and build a kind of leaner, meaner Iraqi army,' a senior U.S. official told the Washington Post.

Officials who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity said the military plans to create nine new Iraqi army brigades of up to 45,000 light-infantry soldiers over the course of the next two months and team them with other Kurdish and Shiite fighters. 

So the problem is being labeled as "corruption" and the US government thinks the way to handle/address that is to just make smaller units?

That 'solution' -- laughable as it is -- certainly makes more sense than the Iraqi government's response.


Michael Gregory (Reuters) reports that Minister of Finance Hoshyar Zebari has stated that the military will take up about 23% of the proposed budget for 2015 and he's also calling "for deep-rooted reforms to stamp out corruption in a military that collapsed in the face of an Islamic State advance."

Yes, by all means, put nearly a quarter of your annual budget into a military machine known for its corruption.

Don't root out the corruption, just toss more money at it.

A quarter of your budget, for example.

Since the US isn't planning on any major actions until at least February, there's nore than enough time to address graft in the Iraqi military.

In fact, doing so would expose a mountain of corruption because as members of this political party or slate go down, you can rest assured they will take others down with them.  Meaning?  A State of Law military official goes down for corruption, they'll rat out someone in the Ministry of Transportation and so on and so on.

Corruption is rampant in Iraq.


That's why Transparency International ranks Iraq the 171st least transparent country or territory on a list of 177 for 2013.  This is not a new development.  In 2009, Barack was sworn in as president.  Transparency International's finds for 2009?  Iraq was ranked the 176th least transparent. (For those who want to trumpet the 'success' in Iraq moving from 176 to 171, please note that the 2009 list included 180 listings.They dropped three.  So Iraq really just moved one spot.)

In 2009, Patrick Cockburn (at CounterPunch) pointed out, "Iraq is the world’s premier kleptomaniac state. According to Transparency International the only countries deemed more crooked than Iraq are Somalia and Myanmar, while Haiti and Afghanistan rank just behind. In contrast to Iraq, which enjoys significant oil revenues, none of these countries have much money to steal."  Bill Van Auken (World Socialist Web Site) also noted the Transparency International 2009 report:

In relation to Iraq, the report found rampant corruption as well, with corrupt government officials operating with impunity. It cited a recent study by the Bertelsmann Foundation stating that in Iraq “non-security institutions remain weak and debilitated. The Iraqi leadership faces many structural constraints on governance, such as a massive brain drain, a high level of political division, and extreme poverty.”

Across the political spectrum, the corruption has been noted repeatedly and consistently.  For example, early this year the right-wing Heritage Foundation noted of Iraq:

Corruption is pervasive at all levels of government. There are widespread reports of demands by officials for bribes, mismanagement of public funds, payments to “ghost” employees, salary skimming, and nepotism. Although judicial independence is guaranteed in the constitution, judges are subject to immense political and sectarian pressure and are viewed by the public as corrupt or ineffective. Property rights are not well protected.


And if you need a government source, here's the US Embassy in Baghdad:

Corruption remains a salient feature of the political and economic landscape of Iraq and poses and threatens its full economic and social development.  Mitigating corruption’s corrosive effects on Iraq’s reconstruction requires continued USG engagement – both in terms of programs and in terms of bringing political and diplomatic pressure to bear on Iraqi leaders. 


With all the above in mind, let's return to the question that opens Carl Schiro's letter to the editors of the Houston Chronicle:

Regarding "Corruption hobbles Iraq's military efforts" (Page A1, Monday), why is our government still sending our troops and money to such a corrupt country?


It's not a hidden factor.  In June, Richard Engel (NBC News -- link is text and video) interviewed Iraqi forces and they repeatedly cited corruption as the country's "biggest enemy."

And as Patrick Cockburn (at the Independent) pointed out last year, the corruption was predicted at the start of the Iraq War:

A few months before the invasion, an Iraqi civil servant secretly interviewed in Baghdad made a gloomy forecast. “The exiled Iraqis are the exact replica of those who currently govern us… with the sole difference that the latter are already satiated since they have been robbing us for the past 30 years,” he said. “Those who accompany the US troops will be ravenous.”
Many of the Iraqis who came back to Iraq after the US-led invasion were people of high principle who had sacrificed much as opponents of Saddam Hussein. But fast forward 10 years and the prediction of the unnamed civil servant about the rapacity of Iraq’s new governors turns out to have been all too true. As one former minister puts it, “the Iraqi government is an institutionalised kleptocracy”.

Cockburn spent the last years worshipping the Shi'ites and spitting on the Sunnis so it's really hard for him to name names when covering the continued disintegration of Iraq.

But there are names to be named.

Chief among them Nouri al-Maliki.

In 2006, the White House demanded Nouri al-Maliki be named prime minister (the Iraqi Parliament wanted Ibraham al-Jafaari).  In 2010, the White House demanded Nouri get a second term and, having lost the election, the White House offered a legal contract (The Erbil Agreement) to give Nouri a second term.

Which means from spring 2006 to summer 2014, Nouri al-Maliki ruled Iraq.

And corruption thrived.

This despite Nouri insisting he would take on corruption -- repeatedly insisting.  But it's kind of hard to do that when you're part of the corruption.  Pennies found in sofa cushions don't buy all the sports cars Nouri's son zips around London in nor did they buy the swank home.




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