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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (52017)	7/25/2004 2:55:38 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

MIA in Iraq: Accountability _____________________________ Of $18 billion OK'd for aid to Iraq, only $400 million spent By PAUL KRUGMAN Columnist New York Times Posted on Sat, Jul. 24, 2004 Accountability is important. The nation will be ill-served if officials who didn't do all they could to prevent a terrorist attack, or led the nation into an unnecessary war, manage to shift the blame to someone else. But those weren't the only big mistakes of the last few years. Will anyone be held accountable for the mishandling of postwar Iraq? Last month we learned that the United States, while it has spent vast sums on the war in Iraq, has so far provided almost no aid. Of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds approved by Congress, only $400 million has been disbursed. Almost all the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenue. This revelation helps explain one puzzle: the sluggish pace of reconstruction, which has yet to restore many essential services to prewar levels. But it creates another puzzle: Given that the authority was spending Iraq's money, why wasn't it more careful in its accounting? When a foreign power takes control of an oil-rich nation's resources, it inevitably faces suspicion about its motives. Fairly or not, the locals are all too ready to believe that the invaders came to steal their oil. The way to deal with such suspicion is to let in as much sunlight as possible: Appoint financial officials with strong reputations for independence, keep meticulous books and welcome and cooperate with international audits. What happened was just the opposite. Every important official with responsibility for Iraqi finances was a Bush administration loyalist. The occupying authority dragged its feet on an international audit, which didn't even begin until April 2004. When KPMG auditors, hired by an international advisory board, finally got to work they found that no effort had been made to keep an accurate record of oil sales and that accounting for the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq consisted of "spreadsheets and pivot tables maintained by a single accountant." The auditors also faced a lack of cooperation. They were denied access to Iraqi ministries, which were reputed to be the locus of epic corruption on the part of Iraqis with connections to the occupiers. They were also denied access to reports concerning what they delicately describe as "sole-source contracts." Translation: They were stonewalled when they tried to find out what Halliburton did with $1.4 billion. By obstructing international auditors, by the way, the United States wasn't just fueling suspicion about the misappropriation of Iraqi oil money. It was also breaking its word. After Saddam's fall, the United Nations gave the United States the right to disburse Iraqi oil-for-food revenues, but only on the condition that this be accompanied by international auditing and oversight. A digression: Yes, oil-for-food is the U.N.-administered program from which Saddam undoubtedly siphoned off billions. But we expect America to be held to a higher standard. There are also allegations that Saddam's revenue diversion was aided by corrupt U.N. officials. I think we should wait and see what Paul Volcker, the genuinely independent head of the U.N. inquiry -- the sort of person the U.S. occupation should have employed -- has to say. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that these accusations are entirely based on documents that are purported to be in the possession of none other than Ahmad Chalabi, who has himself been accused of corruption. There are a few curious side stories. On the day the United States raided Chalabi's offices, a British associate of Chalabi who had been promising to come out with a devastating report told London's Daily Telegraph that a remarkably effective hacker attack had destroyed all his computer files, including the backup copies. After the United States' falling-out with Chalabi, the oil-for-food investigation was taken out of the hands of Chalabi's allies. But the new head of the investigation was assassinated on July 1. Meanwhile, the war, fed by the failure of reconstruction, goes on. The transfer doesn't seem to have made any difference: More American soldiers were killed in the first three weeks of July than in all of June, even though Knight Ridder reports that the U.S. military has stopped patrolling in much of Anbar Province, the heart of the insurgency. And while the United States has yet to disburse any significant amount of aid, the Government Accountability Office says war costs for this fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections. Will anyone be held accountable? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Krugman is a columnist for The New York Times, 229 W. 43rd St., Room 943, New York, NY 10036. charlotte.com

To: longnshort who wrote (52017)	7/26/2004 1:18:02 AM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Quit lying. Reagan and GW Bush's administrations were much more corrupt than Clinton's. Iran-Contra alone was a huge indictment list. Then all sorts of other corruptions. Bush-Cheney have only managed to avoid subpoenas by abusing power after 9-11. Their energy gouging and CIA outing adventures are very impeachable, as has been their constant lying to the American people about national defense matters as well as costs of Medicare and the war they started on false pretexts. Get this through your thick head. Clinton was INNOCENT of Whitewater. Completely innocent. It was all just a far right dirty trick to dive into his sex life where they knew they'd find something. Why? Not for any legal reason, just pure partisan political fear, because they could never beat Clinton any other way. Therefore, they abused the special prosecutor's powers and went into his underwear drawer. Shame on the rightwing for that. Otherwise, Clinton ran about the cleanest administration ever, and gave us the best results. The #1 economic president in history per a new poll. and he RAISED taxes so to pay off the Reagan deficits. Think about that one.