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Entries in Iraq (6)

Thursday
Jul292010

Iraq's Missing Billions: Scott Lucas on Al Jazeera's Inside Story

This week the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported that the Pentagon cannot account for almost 95% of $9.1 billion allocated by the United Nations, from revenues from the sale of Iraqi oil and gas, after the Iraq War in 2003. There are still no records for $2.6 billion.

I discussed the issue on Inside Story alongside Mundher Adhami, an analyst on Iraqi affairs, and Jeremy Carver, a board member of Tranparency International.


Iraq: The Billions of Disappearing US Reconstruction Dollars

Wednesday
Jul282010

Iraq: The Billions of Disappearing US Reconstruction Dollars

I'll be appearing on Al Jazeera English's Inside Story today at 1730 GMT to talk about the latest revelations in the far-from-new story of US reconstruction funds in post-war Iraq. Within weeks of the "liberation", stories were circulating of truckloads of US dollars being carried around the country, with no apparent control or accountability.

Tarek el-Tablawy writes today for Associated Press:

A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

"Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money," said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money "should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation."

The report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction accused the Defense Department of lax oversight and weak controls, though not fraud.

"The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," the audit said.

The Pentagon has repeatedly come under fire for apparent mismanagement of the reconstruction effort — as have Iraqi officials themselves.

Seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, electricity service is spotty, with generation capacity falling far short of demand. Fuel shortages are common and unemployment remains high, a testament to the country's inability to create new jobs or attract foreign investors.

Complaints surfaced from the start of the war in 2003, when soldiers failed to secure banks, armories and other facilities against looters. Since then the allegations have only multiplied, including investigations of fraud, awarding of contracts without the required government bidding process and allowing contractors to charge exorbitant fees with little oversight, or oversight that came too late.

But the latest report comes at a particularly critical time for Iraq. Four months after inconclusive elections, a new government has yet to be formed, raising fears that insurgents will tap into the political vacuum to stir sectarian unrest.

In a sign that insurgents are still intent on igniting sectarian violence, at least six people were killed and dozens more wounded when a female suicide bomber blew herself up near a checkpoint in the holy city of Karbala, local police said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Read rest of article....
Monday
Jul192010

UPDATED The Perils of US Intelligence: A "Top-Secret World" Beyond Control (Priest/Arkin)


UPDATED 1500 GMT: Acting Director of National Intelligence David Gompert has put out an innocuous statement (at least it's not "anonymous", like the one fed to ABC's George Stephanopoulos --- see 1430 GMT) on the Washington Post story: "The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know....The fact is, the men and women of the Intelligence Community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving untold successes every day."

With respect, Mr Gompert, perhaps the point of the story is the community "you know" but the one that you should know about, given its size and apparent consequences?

UPDATED 1430 GMT: Spencer Ackerman has a sharp take on the Washington Post "package", including not only the Priest/Arkin article but the linked source material:

US “National Security”: Revealing the Sprawl of “Top-Secret America”…in 2007 (Shorrock)
US “National Security”: More on the Sprawling “Top Secret America” (Priest/Arkin)



Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post have now published their much-anticipated exposéof the "top-secret world" of US intelligence services, which extends far beyond official bodies such as the Central Intelligence Agency.

It includes a searchable database cataloging what an estimated 854,000 employees and legions of contractors are apparently up to. Users can now to see just how much money these government agencies are spending and where those top secret contractors are located. Check out this nine-page list of agencies and contractors involved in air and satellite observations, for instance. No wonder it scares the crap out of Official Washington: it’s bound to provoke all sorts of questions — both from taxpayers wondering where their money goes, and from U.S. adversaries looking to penetrate America’s spy complex.

But this piece is about much more than dollars. It’s about what used to be called the Garrison State — the impact on society of a Praetorian class of war-focused elites. Priest and Arkin call it "Top Secret America" and it’s so big, and grown so fast, that it’s replicated the problem of disconnection within the intelligence agencies that facilitated America’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack. With too many analysts and too many capabilities documenting too much, with too few filters in place to sort out the useful stuff or discover hidden connections, the information overload is its own information blackout. “We consequently can’t effectively assess whether it is making us more safe,” a retired Army three-star general who recently assessed the system tells the reporters."

Glenn Greenwald has also posted a lengthy consideration of the implications of the "unchecked Surveillance State":  "The Real U.S. Government -- the network of secret public and private organizations which comprise the National Security and Surveillance State -- expands and surveills and pilfers and destroys without much attention and with virtually no real oversight or accountability."

On the insipid side of the ledger, ABC News celebrity anchorman George Stephanopoulos channels the inevitable anonymous "Administration source" trying to trash the story: "The database...is 'troubling'...[because] it could become a road map for adversaries."

Beyond the relative merits of these responses, notice the twist here in the 21st-century media world. The chatter is not about the newspaper article, as it would have been in olden days, but about an on-line database. That in itself is testament not only to the changed dynamics brought by the Internet but by the "traditional" media's hope for survival and relevance: the Post has put in extensive effort to frame this story as an ongoing resource for scrutiny of the US Government.

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POSTED 0730 GMT: Credit to Priest and Arkin for important journalism, based on research since 2008. However, much of this was known by close observers of US politics and foreign policy years before that, soon after --- and indeed before --- a US invasion of Iraq which was marked by faulty intelligence, wayward covert action, and a distortion of effective (and legal) policy at home and abroad. (Indeed, Arkin brought some of this to light, albeit in a blog tucked away on The Post's website.) Why did we not see such vital investigations on front pages then?

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation's security.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

Read rest of article....

Sunday
Jul182010

UPDATED Iraq: 46 Killed in Attacks on Sahwa Militia (Al Jazeera)

UPDATE 1950 GMT: In a separate incident, a suicide bomber stormed a local Sahwa militia headquarters in the far western town of Qaim, near the Syrian border, and opened fire on those inside.

The attacker was wounded by return fire but then blew himself up as the militiamen gathered around him, killing three and wounding six others.



---
The
latest on this morning's bomb targeting the Sahwa ("Awakening) militia:

A suicide bomber has killed at least 43 people and wounded another 40 in western Baghdad, Iraqi police told Al Jazeera.

The attack on Sunday occurred when members of the government-backed Sahwa militia lined up to be paid at an office in the Sunni district of Radwaniya.

The Sahwa militia, or "Awakening Movement", took up arms against al-Qaeda in late 2006 with US backing.

Its fighters, recruited from among tribesmen and former anti-government fighters, is credited with turning the tide in the war against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Control of the Sahwa passed to Iraq in October 2008, and their  wages - said to have been cut from $300 under US leadership  to $100 - have been paid, often late, by the Shia-led government.

Read rest of article....
Wednesday
Jul072010

Iraq and the "Collateral Murder" Video: Arresting the Whistle-Blower (McGreal)

UPDATE 1115 GMT: Another Iraq-related story out of the US....



EA correspondents alert us to a documentary, being aired tonight on Current TV, on the link amongst Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans between post-traumatic stress disorder and domestic violence. "War Crimes" is presented by former Navy SEAL turned journalist Kaj Larsen.

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This spring, EA carried the Wikileaks video of alleged "collateral murder" of civilians by US forces in a 2007 incident in Iraq. Last night The Guardian of London, in a story by Chris McGreal, brought news of the first arrest in the case:

A US army intelligence analyst [has been] charged with leaking a highly classified video of American forces killing unarmed civilians in Baghdad and secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

Private Bradley Manning, who had a top-secret security clearance, has been held in military custody in Kuwait since his arrest in Iraq in May over the video, which caused great embarrassment to the US military establishment. It showed an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency. The air crew is heard falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead. WikiLeaks gave the video the title Collateral Murder.

Manning, 22, was arrested after boasting in instant messages and emails to a high-profile former hacker, Adrian Lamo, that he passed the material to WikiLeaks along with thousands of pages of confidential American diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks has since said it plans to release a second US military video that shows one of the deadliest US air strikes in Afghanistan, in which scores of children were believed to have been killed. The site's founder, Julian Assange, said the organisation was still working to prepare the encrypted film of the bombing of the Afghan village of Garani in May 2009, in which the Afghan government said about 140 civilians died, including 92 children.

The Baghdad video shows one of two US Apache helicopter crews falsely claiming that there is shooting, opening fire and then laughing over the dead. The helicopters also attack a van attempting to rescue the wounded. One of them opens fire with armour-piercing shells. One of the crew laughs about the attack after the windscreen is blown out. Behind it were two children who were wounded.

Manning faces two charges under military law for allegedly illegally transferring the Iraq video and copies of documents to his computer and then for passing "national defence information to an unauthorised source". The charge sheet says Manning leaked the material to "bring discredit upon the armed forces".....

Read rest of story....