A Bottle from Chalabi's private stock
One of a couple of things I was looking at going into last week-end were the investigation of the Iraqi Oil-for-Food Program that the UN has reluctantly commissioned Paul Volcker to carry out
Corruption Allegations at U.N. Put Annan on the Defensive
New York Times. Also covered in an AP story in the Boston Globe Annan says head of U.N. oil-for-food program indicates will cooperate with investigation
Rumors of this scandal having been kicking around for a year or so. Mostly emanating out of the more garrulous republican circles. Its hard to say how serious it will end up being, I don't imagine evean those touting it know, they just have their hopes. It is clear already it will be plenty embarrassing. Volcker made sure he received assurance from everyone on the security council that they would at least nominally cooperate. Timing is everything in this world so it bears looking at why this has turned up again. An article from UPI adds a few more pieces to this story Analysis: Iraqis claim graft probe slowed. The angle this story takes is on a probe the Iraqi governing council organized to look into the same situation. This article begins with a man named Claude Hankes-Drielsma protesting before a house committee, led by Congressman Shay R.-CT, that his investigation had been delayed by L. Paul Bremer, probably done to give Volcker's commission a chance to settle this. Driesma was hired by Ahmed Chalabi, and has access to Chalabi's saucer-full-of-secrets - some 27 tons of documents Chalabi's private militia rounded up from the previous regimes bureaucracy and currently has under his own lock and key. The UPI article notes that a leak in an Iraqi newspaper brought this into play. The UN got on the wrong side of Chalabi by being invited by the Bush administration out of pure political expediency to examine the question of who in Iraq sovreignity was going to be turned over to on 30 June 2004. Special Envoy Lahkdar Brahimi did not reccomend the current Iraqi Governing Council which is Chalabi's sole official seat, or technocrat exiles with close ties to the pentagon. This corruption scandal filled with vague accusations is Chalabi's return message to the UN.
Considering William Safire's column in the NY Times Op-Ed Columnist: Brahimi's Two Mistakes which would not have gottten written unless there were those in the administration who wanted it written there are still those who are trying to ease the old wagon of cake-walk transformation along.
The UPI articles quotes Congressman Shays saying: The lack of respect we are giving this council is troubling to me This article in the Village Voice: Fables of the Reconstruction by Jason Vest
and the internal CPA memo it was written around
AAN: Text of Redacted Memo by U.S. Official in Iraq Posted contain information which should help bridge the troubled waters of the congressman's mind. This memo written by an neo-conservative old-believer was probably leaked to aid Chalabi's efforts, but may have painted too clear a picture of the situation to really help. The Washington Post
Speak, Memoer (washingtonpost.com) identified the memo writer as a AEI fellow who over the last year had been an advisor to the CPA in Bagdad.
Tom Kimmel, Grandson of Admiral Kimmel, one of the few people reprimanded after Pearl Harbor wrote a letter to the New York Times last week Pearl Harbor Readiness. I sympathize with him a little, but Adm. Kimmel illustrates the problem well. He was a man waiting for someone else to tell him he needed to be alert and to take action.
I was surprised to see the chink in the Administration's ban on photo's of flag drapped coffins arriving at Dover AFB come (and go) as I was surprised aslo by the fairly minor amount of sturm and drang accompanying it. The Washington Post put one of the pictures from
the memoryhole.org on its front page Friday. At some point over the weekend I pulled out Dos Passos and re-read the Body of an American news reel
...the bugler played taps and mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brasshats and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn, and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God's Country it was to have the bugler play taps and the three loud volleys made their ears ring ...all the washingtonians brought flowers The Administration has stuck to a line about the sanctity and privacy of these returning dead. This may be true, but it is also true that they died in a very public war, being waged in the name of all Americans.
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