Corruption in Iraq? No way!

The Iraqi Defense Ministry has squandered more than $300 million buying faulty and outdated military equipment in what appears to be a massive web of corruption that flourished under American-appointed supervisors for a year or longer, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said this week.

Vendors are suspected of vastly overcharging for substandard equipment, including helicopters, machine guns and armored vehicles, and kicking back money to Iraqi Defense Ministry buyers. [...]

Investigators are looking at purchases dating back to the June 28, 2004, transfer of sovereignty from American administrator L. Paul Bremer III to the caretaker government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Many Iraqi administrators hired under Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority kept their jobs after the handover of the ministry, but after that the U.S. military no longer had the final say in awarding contracts.

However, Americans still ran the show behind the scenes, said several Iraqi bureaucrats involved with the ministry at the time. It’s implausible to them that U.S. officials, who held daily briefings with Iraqi defense chiefs, didn’t catch wind of the alleged wrongdoing.

“It seems hard to understand to an outsider that this stuff could go on under our noses and Americans wouldn’t know anything about it. But, clearly, we didn’t know everything,” said a U.S. military official familiar with the events. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss an open investigation. (source)

Just keep in mind that aside from all the coverage we hear in the news from day to day on how well (or bad) the situation is in Iraq, the fact remains, war is big business. Entities behind the scenes, whether they be people or companies, stand to make huge profits from selling equipment and services to “restore” Iraq.

Of course, this may take time to reap the rewards of war, regardless of the cost of human life to bring Iraq back to stability.

I also don’t buy for one minute the argument that the U.S. knew nothing about this corruption. We have crooks in our government left and right folks going all the way up to very very high levels Vice President in our government. Of course, since they control the flow of “intelligence”, you will never be able to prove it.

War is good business. You didn’t really think all this time that we were there to “liberate Iraq” did you? Iraq is only a means to and end. There will always be an Iraq out there for us. We will make sure of that. Terrorism will be used as the excuse of whatever we want to do to further our agenda, no matter what the cost to other people in this world.

I think it’s important to be honest about these things. I’m all for patriotism and the “American way of life”. But if we achieve that by raping other countries of their dignity just for a damn profit to bureaucrats and secret companies, the price is too damn high.