Another day, another and another and another and another scandal that highlights the incompetence, hypocrisy, corruption, or greed of the current Administration.
We can has impeechment naow? Mebbe not. We can has outrage? Yesh.
First of all, let’s have a moment of silence for Lt. Colonel Ted Westhusing. I’ll remember him and his family in my prayers. He’s a victim of the corruption scandals (subset: Iraq) too.
TPM Muckracker: Officer’s 2005 Suicide a Painful Reminder of Corruption in Iraq
With the Pentagon’s inspector general set to arrive in Iraq in a few weeks to personally investigate allegations of corruption in, among other places, the training of Iraqi security forces, it’s worth remembering that suspicions of wrongdoing in the command led one officer to take his own life out of apparent shame. In a suicide note left on his bed in Baghdad, Lt. Colonel Ted Westhusing wrote, “I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves.” Westhusing, 44, killed himself on June 5, 2005.
NYT via BoingBoing – Iraq: weapons focus of criminal inquiry
Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.
More on this from Marketplace: Iraqi Task Force targets contract fraud
John Dimsdale: The military’s contracting with private companies for services in Iraq and Afghanistan has been plagued by reports of no-bid sweetheart deals, inflated prices, lost or stolen equipment and weapons and kickbacks.
The task force’s target, the contracting office in Kuwait, disbursed $3 billion for military support services over the past four years.
David Mulholland looked into the Kuwait-based contracts when he was business editor for Jane’s Defense Weekly. He alleges the Pentagon was using the contracts to reward powerful Kuwaiti allies.
David Mulholland: Some of it, I have pretty good reason to believe, that it was directed corruption from the Bush Administration to essentially grease the palms of high-ranking Kuwaiti officials. Some of it just pure corporate greed and corruption. Some of it just pure incompetence. My guess would be it’s a combination of all three.
Via The Economist’s View: A rigged report on U.S. Voting?
Yet, after sitting on the draft for six months, the EAC publicly released a report — citing it as based on work by me and my co-author — that completely stood our own work on its head.
Consider the title. Whereas the commission is mandated by law to study voter fraud and intimidation, this new report was titled simply “Election Crimes” and excluded a wide range of serious offenses that harm the system and suppress voting but are not currently crimes under the U.S. criminal code.
We said that our preliminary research found widespread agreement among … experts from all points on the political spectrum that allegations of fraud through voter impersonation at polling places were greatly exaggerated. … The commission chose instead to state that the issue was a matter of considerable debate. And while we found that problems of voter intimidation were still prevalent in a variety of forms, the commission excluded much of the discussion of voter intimidation.
We also raised questions about the way the Justice Department was handling complaints of fraud and intimidation. The commission excised all references to the department that might be construed as critical — or that Justice officials later took issue with. And all of the suggestions we received from political scientists and other scholars regarding methodologies for a more scientifically rigorous look at these problems were omitted. …
What was behind the strange handling of our report? It’s still unclear, but it is worth noting that during the time the commission was holding our draft, claims about voter fraud and efforts to advance the cause of strict voter identification laws were at a fever pitch in Congress and the states. And it has been reported that some U.S. attorneys were being fired because they failed to pursue weakly supported voter fraud cases with sufficient zeal.
Lions, tigers, and bears. Oh, my.
For a somewhat more local angle on the Larry Craig bass-ackwards sex scandal, see Mullentown. Most people plead innocent first, Senator.
Is anybody keeping a list, with all the different categories all nice and neat (Iraq, DOJ, TXANG, Abramoff, Foley, Election 2004, Election 2000, etc. etc. etc.? )
Salon: The scandal sheet from two years ago needs to be updated. O hai, they has a pifanee. Wait, nother pifanee.
Slate’s got an illustrated guide to Republican scandals from May. The text version is like a greatest hits compilation.
At least we don’t have former Olympus High (boo!) pocket-protectored nerd Karl Rove running things.
No Toto! Get away from that curtain! Bad mans behind thar!
