Massive fraud and corruption in Iraq government-No kidding?

The post title is heavy on the sarcasm. We get little tidbits of news about the simply massive amount of fraud and corruption but then...it just fades away into the sunset.

I am tired of that bullshit. It's huge and its costing us, as in American's...Billions upon billions.

So, what does Maliki do? Why, according to a NYT writeup, he fires the folks charged with ferreting out the graft and corruption.

Reminds me of the Bush administration...how about you? From the NYT's link above:

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here.

The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.

The moves have not been publicly announced by Mr. Maliki’s government, but word of them has begun to circulate through the layers of Iraqi bureaucracy as Parliament prepares to vote on a long-awaited security agreement.

You know...if keeping our soldiers alive and in one piece isn't enough of a reason to bring them ALL home now...this fucking horseshit should be, even for the neocons and the extreme rightwing nutjobs for crying out loud.

And the secrecy..another ala BushCo bush league move. Also there is the fear of retaliation. To speak on the record about what happens in the Iraq government can cost one their life. Again from the NYT:

Senior Iraqi officials and four of the dismissed officials, many of whom asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals, said inspectors had already been removed in the Ministries of Water Resources, Culture, Trade, and Youth and Sport. In addition, inspectors have been removed from the cabinet-level Central Bank of Iraq, and from two religious offices, the Sunni Endowment and the Christian Endowment, whose leaders carry the rank of deputy minister.

One senior Iraqi official said that the list of ministries whose inspectors had been dismissed also included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but the ministry’s public affairs office denied that on Monday.

Sweet-friggin-Jesus, the inspector for the Central Bank has been shitcanned...what a fucking farce.

Just remember, this is YOUR money being squandered, or to be more specific...your children and grandchildren's money since we borrow it from fucking China and others. Oh and typical BushCo bullshit here too: The inspectors and investigators get no protection from the US who has demanded that they be put in place to begin with. Again the NYT piece:

But Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads an independent oversight office in Washington, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, and who is currently working in Iraq, said he knew of six of the dismissals. He said the inspectors general were vulnerable because once their offices were created, the United States provided little support and training..[]

This shit makes me crazy...or crazier..not sure which m'dear reader. The second page of the writeup is sure to jack your jaw...or you simply do not give a shit what is done with our billions. Check it out if you have the balls, or the medications to relieve the anxiety that will come with reading how Maliki is stacking the deck, allowing known graft and corruption and putting suceeding in putting all government actions in secret, without one friggin ounce of sunlight, oversight or accountability..Saddam Hussein-style.

I. Just. Love. The. Irony...don't you?

I hope Bush chokes on it like a pretzel...every remaining day of his miserable fucking life.

Crossposted, without all the vulgarity, at the UnCapitalist Journal. ;)