Corrruption in Iraq

NYT:

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing 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, come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption soar. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States has been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.

Foreign Affairs

Image Source: NYT

NYT reports that Obama's election is already making a difference in Iraq.

Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month. “Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”

Reports indicate that Russia did not start the war in Georgia.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

Obama calls world leaders to thank them for their calls congratulating him on his victory.

News Briefs, 10/23/08

Iraqi province of Babil is handed over to Iraqi security forces by the US military. Babil is the 12th of 18 provinces to be handed over to the Iraqis.

Greenspan concedes error in regulatory views.

Barack Obama's campaign has poured people and money into Florida in building the largest field organization ever assembled in the Sunshine State.

Florida adds voting booths to cope with long lines.

Minnesota's former Republican Governor endorses Obama.

Bill Clinton will campaign for Jim Martin in Georgia's Senate race.

Rep. Murtha (D-PA) is in a tight race after calling his own district racist.

NRCC pulls out of Colorado's CD-4, leaving virulently anti-gay Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) on her own. (H/T: Drew)

NRCC also pulls support for three other endangered GOP incumbents -- Michele Bachmann (MN-06), Tom Feeney (FL-24), and Joe Knollenberg (MI-09).

Victory

McClatchy News reports on the new National Intelligence Estimate.

The new NIE, which reflects the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, has significant implications for Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, whose differences over the Iraq war are a major issue in the presidential campaign.

The findings seem to cast doubts on McCain's frequent assertions that the United States is "on a path to victory" in Iraq by underscoring the deep uncertainties of the situation despite the 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge for which he was the leading congressional advocate.

But McCain could also use the findings to try to strengthen his argument for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until conditions stabilize.

For Obama, the report raises questions about whether he could fulfill his pledge to withdraw most of the remaining 152,000 U.S. troops _ he would leave some there to deal with al Qaida and to protect U.S. diplomats and civilians _ within 16 months of taking office so that more U.S. forces could be sent to battle the growing Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

Iran and Iraq

Via Think Progress:

Former House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-TX), “who was wavering on giving President Bush the authority to wage war in late 2002, said Vice President Cheney misled him by saying that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had direct personal ties to al-Qaeda terrorists and was making rapid progress toward a suitcase nuclear weapon.” There was “no intelligence to support” Cheney’s assertions.

Five former secretaries of state — including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Henry Kissinger — urged talks with Iran yesterday. “I agree with Madeleine, and I suspect my other colleagues, that we should try to talk to them,” Powell said during a forum hosted by The George Washington University.

Questions for Palin

Anchorage Daily News comes up with a list of questions that Charlie Gibson should as Palin. (H/T: Marathon Blog)

Here are a few of the questions.

You present yourself as a Republican maverick who took on your own party's corrupt political establishment. In November's election, your party is running an indicted U.S. Senator, Ted Stevens, who is awaiting trial on charges he accepted more than $250,000 of unreported gifts from the state's most powerful lobbyist. Will you vote for his opponent? Will you urge Alaskans to help you change Washington and vote him out of office? If not, why not?

In spring of 2004, the Daily News reported that you cited family considerations in deciding not to try for the U.S. Senate: "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. senator?" What was different this time as you decided to run for vice president?

As governor of Alaska, you have not pushed for laws or regulations that put your personal views on abortion, same-sex marriage and creationism into public policy. As vice president, will you push to outlaw abortion, restrict same-sex marriage and require the teaching of creationism?

McCain spokesman Rick Davis told Fox News the media didn't show you enough "deference." How much deference do you expect to get from Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez?

And this nugget from the last question, I think, says a lot about Palin's foreign policy (in)experience.

You have said victory is in sight in Iraq. In July 2007, when you visited Kuwait, you said, "I'm not going to judge the surge." In the March 2007 issue of Alaska Business Monthly, you were asked about the surge and quoted saying:

"I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. . . . While I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place."

On McCain and Iraq

H/T: Think Progress

McCain vs. McCain, Part Two

See previous videos on McCain here, here, and here.

McCain vs. McCain

The Shotgun Marriage

Frank Rich's new column on McCain and Palin is a fantastic read. Here are some extracts from the column but I highly recommend reading the column in its entirety.

As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur. In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)

***

That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.

***

We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.

In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.

McCain on Iraq

H/T: Blue Mass Group