Maine Republican US Senator in tough re-election bid escorts Iraq reconstruction inspector on PR tour last week, including Bangor appearance; but her inaction on US corruption during 2003 to 2005 (with deadly consequences) while at the same time hammering at the old UN Oil-for-Food program reveals deep hypocrisy
I did see the notice in the newspaper for a talk featuring Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen that took place Thursday morning at Husson College in Bangor. Darn, wish I'd gone as I'd loved to have stirred up that show.
The fine Maine progressive/Democratic websites Collins Watch and Turn Maine Blue have noted the Collins/Bowen tour and this event. Gerald at Turn Maine Blue correctly terms Collin's PR effort with Bowen--successfully placing fluff in the Portland Press Herald--as "hypocrisy":
The Hypocrisy: Susan Collins and SIG Stuart Bowen in Maine
...not only did Collins not look into the mismanagement and malfeasance that has characterized the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, she refused to do so even after her colleagues requested her to...
Collins Watch and Turn Maine Blue have done a fine job of noting the disinterest Senator Collins has displayed regarding the deep corruption of the Bush Administration with respect to its looting of Iraq, before which any troubles with the Oil-for-Food program during Saddam Hussein's time pale by comparison.
For example, a September 2003 letter from Senator Frank Lautenberg to Senator Collins requesting that she fulfill her oversight duties, then as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, regarding "Iraqi reconstruction contracts that were awarded through a closed or limited bidding process" fell on blind eyes. It's about time that someone points out this history and tries to get the mainstream media to respond with something other than fluff.
My opinion is that the history of this hypocrisy right up to the present day is much, much worse than even the pretty serious foregoing example suggests. Blame is not limited to Susan Collins and there is plenty of capitulation by Democrats, though some Democrats like Lautenberg, Sen. Byron Dorgan, and Rep. Henry Waxman are much, much better than any Republican with respect to Iraq corruption.
But Collins and her senate colleague, Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota, are especially culpable because they established a striking double standard for Iraq corruption when they became lead inquisitors in a high-profile media show involving supposed improprieties at the UN regarding the Iraq Oil-for-Food program. As Collins herself suggests in the statement reproduced below, Oil-for-Food saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who suffered under the brutal sanctions enforced by stringent Clinton Administration policy during the 1990s.
So what I want to do is take all this another step and remind readers about the hysterical media episodes of "investigation" into Oil-for-Food, beginning early in 2004. This started a year after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and months after indications of corruption by the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority and its contractors were buried by Senator Collins. By mid-2004 Claudia Rosett on the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Jonathan Hunt of Fox News were weaving the Oil-for-Food story. Suddenly Collins's eyes opened wide.
She was able to express great interest in Iraq corruption--but only behind the lead of Rosett and Fox, focusing like a laser beam at the UN and on the past. She assigned an attack dog in the person of Coleman who from his post as Chair of the Special Investigations Subcommittee of Collins's committee, lead the inquisition of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and British member of Parliament George Galloway .
Late in 2004, Senator Collins was extra proud of her status as a corruption fighter, as revealed in her statement on the occasion of a hearing convened by Senator Coleman's subcommittee on November 15, 2004:
COLLINS: Let me begin by commending you for conducting this much-needed investigation into Saddam Hussein’s abuse of the United Nations Oil for Food program I know that you have worked extraordinarily hard for months at unraveling the strands of this corrupt scheme.
The Oil for Food program was created out of a genuine desire by the members of the United Nations Security Council to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people while UN sanctions worked to force compliance with Security Council resolutions. But this effort quickly mutated into what the Wall Street Journal has called ‘the largest bribery scheme in the history of the world.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this scandal is its sheer size. While the world may never know exactly how much money was plundered by Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Government Accountability Office estimated in July that Saddam amassed more than 10 billion dollars in illegal revenues between 1997 and 2002. That’s 10 billion dollars in a 67 billion dollar program. The Subcommittee’s estimate over a longer period is a staggering 21 billion dollars. I am deeply troubled that UN sanctions could be circumvented by the former Iraqi regime on such a massive scale. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the Oil for Food Program was manipulated by Saddam to erode the international community’s resolve to enforce the sanctions against his regime.
Just one example of how this money was stolen can be found in Saddam spending two billion dollars during the 1990s to construct nine lavish presidential palaces. As General Tommy Franks said during a visit to one such palace, perhaps the Oil for Food program should have been dubbed the "Oil for Palaces" program instead.
But far worse, much of Saddam Hussein’s illicit revenue was used for the more sinister purpose of undermining sanctions and rebuilding the Iraqi war machine. ... [emphasis added]
Susan Collins double standard is fully revealed right here. The United States occupation is free to loot at will without her interest--even though by the fall of 2003 she had been shown the red flags. However, the vanquished Iraqi regime is investigated ad infinitum a year later and used as a cudgel to beat the UN and US opponents over their heads and shoulders. Evidently this was seen as good politics because no one in America wants to look in the mirror and hold the criminals among us responsible. But of course international organization and our demon enemies are fair game.
Let's just take a couple of the particulars, as noted by emphasis in the statement above:
I. Collins believes "$10 billion in a $67 billion program" is a serious level of corruption.
Indeed. Now, the figures she threw around (especially the $21 billion number) were highly inflated. In the exhaustive final report issued by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker concluded that there was "extensive manipulation of the Oil-for-Food Programme by Saddam Hussein, whose regime diverted $1.8 billion in illicit surcharges and kickbacks from the humanitarian purposes of the Programme."
Yes, this was a bad situation. The Volcker report makes for some very interesting reading. In fact, Volcker revealed that many actors abused Iraqi oil profits, including some international business operations run by US nationals. But no one disputes that the overall condition of the Iraqi population improved somewhat due to the program. Nearly $40 billion in humanitarian aid reached Iraqis as a result of it. Like a laser beam, though, Collins and Coleman focused on the UN and George Galloway as the only figures worthy of scrutiny.
Double Standard: The United States in May 2003 was handed the keys to Iraq's treasury by UN Security Council Resolution 1483. The resolution converted the old Oil-for-Food account (left pregnant with $10 billion after the Saddam Hussein era) into something called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which then also acquired a few billion in Iraqi assets seized during the run-up to the first Gulf War. Then, during the CPA period lasting about 14 months, the DFI accumulated an additional $8 billion or so in oil revenue. Trouble is, a huge chunk of this money, at least $8.8 billion according to the reports issued by Stuart Bowen himself cannot be accounted for. It literally vanished. Collins and Coleman at the time during the winter three years ago expressed no discernible interest in this situation, even though Bowen's initial report appeared right in the thick of the Coleman subcommittee investigation.
At the time, only Democrats cared a hoot. Henry Waxman and Byron Dorgan tried to hold hearings during February 2005, but were banished from Capitol Hill by the Republican leadership. They did manage to convene under the banner of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee in a closet somewhere. The transcript of this hearing makes for incredible reading--I believe the first time operations of shady contractors like Custer-Battles came to light. A rich image from the transcript is that of bales of cash being delivered by flights into Baghdad, handled by forklift, then tossed around like footballs in the CPA offices.
Years later, the story has appeared in a few corners of media (rarely electronic in the US), drawing the attention more recently of Donald Barlett and James Steele in Vanity Fair magazine:
Billions over Baghdad
by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele - October 2007
Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled....
"Fraud" was simply another word for "business as usual." Of 8,206 "guards" drawing paychecks courtesy of the C.P.A., only 602 warm bodies could in fact be found; the other 7,604 were ghost employees. Halliburton, the government contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, charged the C.P.A. for 42,000 daily meals for soldiers while in fact serving only 14,000 of them. Cash was handed out from the backs of pickup trucks. On one occasion a C.P.A. official received $6.75 million in cash with the expectation he would shell it out in one week. Another time, the C.P.A. decided to spend $500 million on "security." No specifics, just a half-billion dollars for security, with this cryptic explanation: "Composition TBD"—that is, "to be determined."
Barlett and Steele go on to tell the outrageous story of what the Pentagon thought were accounting "controls" in Iraq. It's an incredible joke of an outfit that makes Saddam's accountants look like straight-shooting propeller heads with sharp pencils.
They conclude that the US "cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur." Susan Collins certainly fit this profile when it counted, during 2003 to 2005. Bowen? Why would he go around Maine as a PR backdrop for a senator from the party least interested in the truth? Perhaps it is because--in Collins's favor--she did help Bowen keep his job, saving the Special Inspector General's office from elimination by a mysterious Republican provision tucked into the 2007 military authorization under the cover of dark late in 2006. According to a New York Times report a year ago November, Senator Collins "says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill." Well, now that she is going to be evaluated by voters, she probably figures she has an awful lot of disinterest to make up for in accounting for US theft of Iraqi money.
II. Collins thinks it was bad for Saddam to spend "two billion dollars during the 1990s to construct nine lavish presidential palaces"
Double Standard: I'll try to keep this much shorter than the story of theft of the DFI, it's really just a related piece of the puzzle. But it is quite illustrative of major hypocrisy. In These Times has just run a huge article on the topic. Needless to say, the Americans have outdone Saddam Hussein in the palace-building department:
Empire’s Architecture
Should it ever be finished, the U.S. embassy in Iraq will stand as a colossal monument to the Bush administration’s failures - By Allen McDuffee
...The planned 104-acre, 21-building compound on the Tigris River will include two office buildings, six apartment buildings, a pool, a gym, a movie theater and a food court. The embassy will be supported by its own power and water treatment plants—probably wise in a country that has, on average, one hour to four hours of electricity daily, and where 70 percent of the population lacks clean drinking water.
The White House originally requested $1.3 billion to build the compound, but Congress allocated $592 million for the project in 2005. It was a hefty sum given that the United States didn’t pay a cent to Iraq for the four-square-mile stretch of land in Baghdad’s Green Zone, roughly the size of Vatican City. By comparison, the United States paid $22 million for land that was less than one-tenth that size for a planned new embassy in Beirut, which will now no longer be built because of security concerns over its proximity to a Hezbollah stronghold.
Nevertheless, the nearly $600 million wasn’t enough for the embassy in Iraq. According to documentation provided to Congress by the State Department, an additional $144 million is needed for completion and the embassy may cost as much as $1 billion each year to operate....
Stories abound about how workers in virtual indentured servitude have been forced to work under horrendous conditions in order to build this imperial palace. How this doesn't look like a huge insult and provocation to every decent Iraqi, I don't know. Certainly there is no peep of concern registered from Collins that I can find.
The whole issue of double standards--one for what the US is allowed to do and one for everyone else is too clear elsewhere in the world. The results can be devastating. "Iraq's missing billions" has consequences. People die for lack of resources that the US and its lackeys have stolen. There is a 48-minute documentary (2006) by just that name produced for BBC-4's Dispatches program. It can be viewed HERE. I won't tell you what happens, it's too gut wrenching. But suffice it to say it is Iraqi children who pay the price for the malfeasance of the US occupation.
Susan Collins and a lot of other politicians have let far too much of this go. Our willingness to allow these double standards have deeply damaged the souls' of every American. I hope this piece gives us a little insight, and helps us begin to hold all of the politicians accountable.