Corruption in Baghdad

By Michael J.W. Stickings

David Corn at The Nation:

As Congress prepares to receive reports on Iraq from General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and readies for a debate on George W. Bush's latest funding request of $50 billion for the Iraq war, the performance of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become a central and contentious issue. But according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

Hardly surprising, and yet more evidence that the war/occupation has been a disaster, and largely a failure. Remember all that happy talk from the warmongers about democratic self-governance, about all the great and wonderful things that were going to happen once Saddam's regime was toppled and the Iraqi people were put in charge of their national destiny?

Yeah, well...