The Endless Nightmare Begins

Ted Stevens, as is his right, pleads "not guilty."

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has pleaded not guilty to charges he lied about accepting more than a quarter of a million dollars worth of gifts from a powerful oilfield contractor.

In the midst of his re-election bid, lawyers for the Senate's longest-serving Republican maintained Stevens' innocence at his afternoon arraignment in federal court in Washington.

Stevens, wearing a cream colored suit, did not speak when U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asked for his plea. Stevens' attorney, Brendan Sullivan, answered for him.

It is before Labor Day, so he's not guilty of committing a serious fashion faux pas.

This is like handing out presents to people who really don't deserve them. They don't raid your house and then indict you a year later if they haven't gone back and done everything possible to ensure they can fry your ass. There's nothing hasty about this--they have been methodical and exacting in this investigation, and that's what should realing all of us a massive gift--Republican culture of corruption, greed, and hubris anyone? Despite pleas that he resign, that he go away, that he take his money and go hide somewhere in Alaska, he's going to stay right here and fight like a maniac and go down screaming in flames. They dly concern Stevens. There was nothing knee-jerk about it. They just lined up the jerks and took them down in order.

--WS

Ted Stevens Indicted!

The end is nigh for Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (R-Crooked Old Bastard).

U.S. officials say the Justice Department has indicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens on charges related to a long-running investigation of business dealings in Alaska.

Stevens, who has served in the U.S. Senate for 40 years, is up for re-election this year, and Democrats view his seat as one of their top pick-up opportunities.

And:

Per Republican Senate caucus rules, if a member is indicted, he or she can no longer serve as chairman or ranking member of a committee.

Stevens is a ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

--WS

Money, not Ideology or Nationalism, Drives the Iraq Insurgency

This post grew out of research for the previous post about contractor fraud in Iraq committed by Parsons, a Halliburton-type construction company that left unfinished projects all over Iraq. The money that was pumped into companies like Parsons was paid out to people who didn't do the work--and I suspect that they took that money and used it to pay for attacks on Americans and Iraqi security forces in order to create the kind of chaos that would keep people from noticing they weren't doing what they were hired to do.

If ten thousand dollars was paid to someone to show up and pour concrete at a construction site, what would stop them from taking a hundred dollars to pay someone to place an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near the site to create the impression that security was lacking? That could then be the reason why the work wasn't done on time, or even if at all. Has this been repeated all across Iraq? It's certainly possible, perhaps on a larger scale.

This leads me to believe that the terrorists who oppose us in Iraq are not necessarily driven by nationalism or Islamic fundamentalism. Not enough attention has been paid to the idea that money is largely what created, funded and sustained the Iraqi insurgency as it began to form. The smuggling of oil has played a key part in funneling money to the insurgency:

Oil smuggling is believed to be occurring in three different ways in Iraq:

1. Iraqi crude. At ABOT, officials at Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company (SOC) that extracts the crude, and at the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) that pipes the crude to the terminals, would have to know about smuggling, even if they were not benefiting from the scheme.

Buyers from Brazil to India, from Thailand to the United States, purchase crude from Iraq at ABOT. The tanker operators would also have to be part of smuggling schemes. They would sign receipts for a lower quantity than they actually receive, and pay the extra directly to the smugglers. The most likely collaborators are either Iraqi or U.S. officials who supervise the production and delivery. Or both.

2. Imported fuel. Iraq spends a small fortune to buy fuel from neighboring countries including Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Much of this fuel goes to local drivers at a subsidized rate, and constitutes possibly the single most expensive item in the national budget after government salaries. In 2005 Iraq spent $4.2 billion of its $24.2 billion gross domestic product (GDP) on imported oil; the bill for 2006 is expected to exceed $5 billion. Smugglers siphon off a significant amount of the government subsidized fuel to sell back overseas at full price: The Ministry of Oil estimates the value at $800 million.

3. Theft of locally-produced gasoline. Iraqi gasoline is stolen from refineries or illegal taps on pipelines and resold within the country or smuggled abroad. Another $800 million worth of black market fuels is sold within Iraq, in places from Penjwin in the far north, to Abu al-Khasib in the south.

The U.S. military believes that the money from these operations funds insurgent operations, although evidence suggests that some also goes to straightforward petty corruption.

In mid-March 2007, the U.S. military launched "Operation Honest Hands" which brought the Beiji refinery under control of the 82nd Airborne Division. The U.S. government paid to install video cameras, digital weighing machines for the trucks, and "sophisticated data-sifting methods" to identify senior Iraqi officials with ties to black-market oil rings, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Two senior officials have been arrested so far: Ibrahim Muslit, who ran the Beiji refinery's oil-distribution operation and allegedly allowed 33 tankers in a single day to receive fuel without any paperwork. Ahmed Ibrahim Hamad, a senior transportation official at the refinery who allegedly tried to help smuggle out seven tankers of heavy fuel oil.

Petty corruption also can be read as "organized crime," and when the Saddam government collapsed, organized crime sprouted up overnight. Imports of cars, satellite dishes, and cellular telephones also funneled money into organized crime groups that trafficked in these items.

War is good for business, and in Iraq, business was booming from the minute that the common enemy--US occupation troops--were seen to be convenient targets to keep the graft and corruption under wraps. If the nascent Iraqi government was off-balance, and if the Americans were focused on keeping themselves alive, then organized crime could expand and grow. From 2003 until today, organized crime has been the most ignored aspect of Iraqi society. We have never paid enough attention to how endemic it is, how far into the Iraqi government ministries it reaches, and how it has used oil smuggling and other sources of income to pay people to attack the Iraqi government forces and US troops.

We do know this--when the US government tried to install meters to see how much oil was being stolen, the Iraqi government essentially resisted, then killed, the project. Attempts to restart the program, involving a US government company called Parsons, involved some questionable practices. Today, the smuggling of oil could be financing just about anything in Iraq and we would have no way of knowing how much is being stolen.

In mid-September 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry abruptly announced that it would pull the plug on the oil metering project, making future monitoring even less certain.

Asim Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman, told Al Hayat: "The American company had failed in keeping its promise to finish installing these meters; also, refusing to reveal the exact cost, except for saying that it is executing it within the American grant to Iraq and the sum of that grant is unknown to us too. This relieves the ministry from its obligation to it. Besides, many international companies presented good offers to implement the project in a record time due to its importance."

The oil ministry then invited British Petroleum and Shell to plan a comprehensive national metering project that would cover not only the oil terminals, but also the productions wells and the even the refineries.

A SIGIR team traveled to ABOT in November 2006 to check on progress. Its unpublished report suggests that the work was less than half complete.

Suddenly, in December 2006, a high-level U.S. team traveled out to ABOT to inspect the meters. In a little-noticed announcement issued on a Saturday just before Christmas, John Sickman, the resident oil expert at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the meters had been fixed and were working fine.

"The measurement using the existing turbine meters and displacement meters at the offshore terminal at ABOT is transparent and the measurement devices are more than adequate," Sickman was quoted in the press release. "Furthermore, the crude oil vessels have measurement and quality samplers."

Indeed this is how the Dutch company Saybolt measured oil export under the United Nations Oil for Food program. The problem even today, according to experts consulted by CorpWatch, is that the meters have yet to be calibrated, so the data are basically useless.

Even if the meters are working properly, smuggling could still occur. "It's easy to steal crude if you knew what you were doing," Don Deaver, a petroleum metering expert who worked for Exxon for 33 years, told CorpWatch. "If you measure too low or too high, someone will lose and some will one gain. It's why you need professionals who understand how the meters work to make sure that nothing is being lost or stolen."

U.S. government officials claim that little is being stolen. SGS (a British consultancy) "is providing independent third party loading certifications onsite for the customers. This, coupled with the recent installation of ultrasonic meter provides more than redundant measurement capability," said Sickman in December.

Days after the press release, in early January 2007, Parsons began work on the meters under a $57.8 million U.S. government-funded contract supervised by Major Dale Winger of the Joint Contracting Command in Basra. Almost as soon as work started, Winger was replaced by Lieutenant Commander Brian Schorn. When CorpWatch reached Schorn, he said he was not up to speed on what work had been done, and referred questions to his "front-office" in Baghdad at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Parsons Iraq Joint Venture spokesman Don Lassus also refused to comment to CorpWatch. The contract with the military does not permit the release of "any unclassified information," he said, without prior approval of the military.

Today [this article was written in early 2007] no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The latest report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT is scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed because of de-obligation requirements" that is to say that the funding could be cut.

Will we see another Basra offensive? The March, 2008 assault into the southern city of Basra exposed the weakness of the Iraqi government when it comes to battling oil smuggling.

In interviews, senior advisers to [Nouri al-] Maliki and [Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim insisted that the Basra offensive was intended to combat criminal gangs and oil smugglers. Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a senior Supreme Council official, said the government had not targeted Sadr.

I believe that this has been overlooked--Iraq has a serious problem with criminal activity, organized crime, and smuggling. When it is in the interest of these elements to attack Americans, destabilize the security situation, and expand their control of key areas, they can move largely unchecked.

Rove Sends Threatening Message to GOP Tech Guru

This story should be blasted everywhere--Brad Friedman owns this story because of his passion for exposing corruption and for fair voting rights. The man responsible for creating some of the Republican Party's sophisticated technical infrastructure is a witness in the King Lincoln Bronzwell v. Blackwell federal lawsuit that challenges that there were voting rights violations in the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio.

Karl Rove has threatened a GOP high-tech guru and his wife, if he does not "'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio," according to a letter sent this morning to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, by Ohio election attorney Cliff Arnebeck.

The email, posted in full below, details threats against Mike Connell of the Republican firm New Media Communications, which describes itself on its website as "a powerhouse in the field of Republican website development and Internet services" and having "played a strategic role in helping the GOP expand its technological supremacy."

Connell was described in a recent interview with the plaintiff's attorneys in Ohio as a "high IQ Forrest Gump" for his appearance "at the scene of every [GOP] crime" from Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 to the RNC email system to the installation of the currently-used Congressional computer network firewall.

The threats made by Rove against this tech guru and his wife are, according to Friedman, akin to the threats made against Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joe.

"Mr. Rove's e-mails from the White House to the Justice Department, the FBI, the Pentagon, Congress and various federal regulatory agencies are obviously relevant to the factual issues that we intend to address in this case," Arnebeck wrote last week to the Attorney General. "We are concerned about reports that Mr. Rove not only destroyed e-mails, but also took steps to destroy the hard drives from which they had been sent."

In his email to Mukasey today, Arnebeck writes: "We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to 'take the fall' for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations."

"This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform," the Ohio attorney writes, before going on to link to The BRAD BLOG's coverage of his press conference last week and requesting "protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness."

All I can say is, kudos to the Brad Blog. What's it going to take to get Rove? How is it that he's allowed to parade around like he's untouchable? Are we going to have to wait until the power of the pardon is no longer in the hands of a Republican before anything happens?

--WS

Arrests Made in Postville IA

We've been watching this story since the raids against the Postville meat processing plant happened--and now there are arrests and charges that a veritable fake documents ring was operating on the processing floor:

The arrest warrant was issued for Hosam Amara, 43. In interviews after the raid, several workers said Mr. Amara was a floor manager with more authority than line supervisors. They said he was a link between workers on the slaughterhouse floors and meatpacking lines and more senior management.

Agriprocessors, which before the raid was the country’s largest producer of kosher meat, is owned by Aaron Rubashkin. Two weeks after the raid, he removed his son Sholom as chief executive.

Most of the illegal immigrants arrested at the plant were from rural Guatemala. In expedited proceedings, 270 workers were sent to federal prison on criminal charges, most for presenting false documents when they were hired.

In a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday, federal authorities said Mr. [Juan Carlos]Guerrero was the supervisor of four departments in the Postville plant, including a slaughterhouse called Beef Kill. Workers cited anonymously in the complaint said Mr. Guerrero was running a business obtaining fraudulent immigration documents, known as green cards.

In the days before the raid, the workers said, according to the complaint, Mr. Guerrero told them in a meeting that “they needed new IDs and Social Security numbers to continue working at the company.” Mr. Guerrero collected $200 and a photograph from each worker, promising to provide new documents, the complaint says.

Obviously, we can't have something like that going on. Perhaps a comprehensive reform of the laws is in order. Oh, and a union would be one way to try and ensure that the workers aren't being taken advantage of by management--but you can't be pro-union in this country anymore, can you? Well, too bad--despite the wingnut fantasies about corrupt unions, they are needed now more than ever--especially when immigrants are being ripped off, handed phony documents by a manager, and working for next to nothing.

What no one in this country wants to talk about are the hundreds of thousands of people being worked to death in food processing plants for lousy pay with no benefits while the owners reap unprecedented profits and exploit vulnerable people. It's an outrage that we have a third world food processing plant system in this country.

--WS

Another Corrupt Army Officer Pleads Guilty

Are we ever going to get to the bottom of what went on in the early days of the Iraq war? How could our government funnel billions of dollars in cash into the country and not provide any basic oversight or control on what happened to the money?

An Army officer and his wife have pleaded guilty in a money laundering scheme involving contracts in Iraq, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

Maj. John Cockerham, 43, pleaded guilty to one count each of bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery and money laundering, the Justice Department said. His wife, Melissa, 41, pleaded guilty to a count of money laundering.

The pleas were taken on Jan. 31, but weren't unsealed until Tuesday, the Justice Department said.

John Cockerham admitted taking or being promised more than $9 million in bribes for awarding contracts while stationed in Kuwait, the Justice Department said. He was responsible for awarding contracts worth millions of dollars including those for bottled water.

Once he agreed to take the bribes, Cockerham told contractors to pay his wife, sister and others to hide the activity, the Justice Department said.

What's even worse is that, reportedly, two suicides in Kuwait can be linked to the investigation that caught Cockerham:

Although a Justice Department official said it was too early to know if the suspects in the corruption investigation operated independently or in a network, public records indicate that several served overlapping tours. At least two officers who worked at Camp Arifjan when Major Cockerham was there committed suicide after learning they would face bribery charges. One, Maj. Gloria D. Davis of Missouri, shot herself in December 2006, a day after admitting she took at least $225,000 in bribes, government officials said.

Here's how it all worked--allowing Cockerham to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars:

The camp, a $200 million logistics hub, stands like an island in the middle of the desert south of Kuwait City. Major Cockerham worked in a prefabricated two-story building with about 20 other military people and civilians, committing millions of dollars on the phone or with a few strokes on his computer in his cubicle.

Military officials said a major assigned to award such large contracts for the Army Contracting Agency should have at least 10 years of experience in “broad acquisition,” a minimum of four years of direct contracting experience and annual ethics training. But the procurement workload from the Iraq war grew so big so fast that the Pentagon was forced to rush people with virtually no training or experience into some of its most complicated contracting jobs, Army officials said.

“From what I understand, John didn’t get the courses he should have had for his assignment until his assignment was over,” said Mr. Parks, Major Cockerham’s lawyer.

Oversight was virtually nonexistent by design. There were no auditors at Camp Arifjan, and contracts worth more than $500,000 were the only ones requiring review in Washington. Most contracts were written for about $100,000. It was also common for contracting officers to use “blanket purchase agreements,” allowing them to open a line of credit with a company with little more than a promissory note, much like a customer at a small-town grocery store.

Ideally, Army officials said, the purchasing cycle would be divided among at least three contracting officers. One would take an order for supplies from a unit commander and seek bids from companies to fill the order. Another would award the contract, and a third would oversee delivery of the goods. That system, officials said, would allow each contracting officer to serve as a check on the others.

At Camp Arifjan, a single contracting officer handled all three parts of the process, giving the officers broad discretion and creating opportunities for unit commanders to join conspiracies by inflating their troops’ needs. What resulted, said Mr. Young, the Army Contracting Agency director, was “a web of deceit.”

The only thing that is shocking is that he got caught. Cockerham apparently kept ledgers of what he did in his home--a pretty clear indication that he knew what he was doing was wrong, he wanted to keep detailed records of what he was doing, and at the end of the day, proof positive that a person can be too smart for their own good.

Memo to all you wannabe criminal masterminds out there--don't keep a ledger of all of the the illegal things you do in your home.

Affirmative Action at The Justice Department

Here's the New York Times story on the issue of preferred hiring at the Department of Justice:

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

So it was affirmative action for the idiots who couldn't get into Harvard, Stanford, Yale or Duke, huh? Because, let's face it--the best and the brightest rise to the top no matter what. If you're a smart lawyer, no matter where you went to school, that will show--provided there isn't a biased old-boys network systematically fucking you over and denying you the opportunities you deserve. (Hence, the reason why affirmative action was, and is, and always will be a good idea.)

I thought the Republican Party and conservatives as a whole were against affirmative action. Did I miss the moment where they decided that they had to give the also-rans and the kids who weren't smart enough to get into a top tier law school that extra leg up, that extra little push to enter the legal profession through the programs offered at the Justice Department? Does anyone else smell the hypocrisy on these cheap-suit wearing fools?

As I said earlier today, they'd better get rid of every single one of those Liberty University Law School Jerry's Kids and issue a course correction here. You cannot leave any of those people in the ranks of the Justice Department. It would be like leaving Gomer Pyle in charge of a SEAL team.

--WS

The Agenda of the Next Attorney General

On Day One of the next Attorney General's tenure, provided they're a Democrat, of course, they need to do one thing. Fire everyone the Republicans hired, whether it is legal or not, and base it on the fact that since partisanship was used to evaluate candidates, they are ineligible to continue working for the Federal Government. Issue a signing statement if someone complains. Claim Executive Privilege or the War Powers Act or something like that.

High-ranking political appointees at the Justice Department labored to stock a prestigious hiring program with young conservatives in a five-year-long attempt to reshape the department's ranks, according to an inspector general's report to be released today.

The report will trace the effort to 2002, early in the Bush administration, when key advisers to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft moved to exert more control over the program to hire rookie lawyers and summer interns, according to two people familiar with the probe.

The honors program, which each year places about 150 law school graduates with top credentials in a rotation of Justice jobs, historically had operated under the control of senior career officials. Shifting control of the program to Ashcroft's advisers prompted charges of partisanship from law professors and former government lawyers who had worked under Democratic administrations.

[SNIP]

Critics in the department had argued that hundreds of high-quality applicants had been rejected because of their ties to left-leaning nonprofit groups or clerkships with Democratic judges and lawmakers, according to correspondence at the time. One Harvard Law School graduate said that when he applied for the honors program a few years ago he was warned by professors and fellow students to remove any liberal affiliations from his résumé.

If the newly-removed individuals want to re-apply, then let them re-apply and be considered just like everyone else.

You can't let this practice go unpunished. Fire every single unqualified person who was hired because of their affiliation to conservatives, and if they want to apply for their old jobs back, consider them based on their merits and hire them back if they are qualified.

There is no way--no way--the Republicans are going to allow a Democratic administration to function in this same way, so you might as well take the Liberty University hires and throw them out on day one before they can continue to infect the government like the viral strain of shitheadedness that they carry. Not unless we beat them down into a minority of 150 House members and 20 Senators. Even then, they'll still find a way to disrupt and obstruct in order to get their way.

--WS

Here's Why We Need a Truman Committee

I hate to write about something that's going to upset people so early in the morning, but how can anyone stomach the incompetence and the greed and the corruption of the political appointees of the Bush Administration?

A House investigative committee has learned that the American ambassador to Albania knew evidence of Chinese origins was being removed last year from an ammunition shipment before a U.S. contractor sent the material to Afghanistan, said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the panel.

This month, Maj. Larry Harrison, a Pentagon official at the U.S. Embassy in Albania, told staff members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Ambassador John L. Withers II held a late-night meeting with Albania's defense minister. After the Nov. 19 meeting, the order was given to Albanian officers "to remove all evidence of Chinese packaging" from the ammunition, Waxman said in a letter sent yesterday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In a June 9 appearance, Harrison told the committee that "the ambassador agreed that this would alleviate the suspicion of wrongdoing," Waxman wrote. Harrison also said "that he did not agree with the decision to remove the Chinese markings," Waxman said.

A federal grand jury on Friday indicted Efraim E. Diveroli, president of AEY Inc., the U.S. company involved, on 71 counts, including conspiracy to defraud the government on a $298 million U.S. Army contract to provide various types of ammunition to the government of Afghanistan.

Where do you start with something like that?

I hope Major Harrison's career doesn't come to an end because of this incident. Rarely does the person who speaks up and blows the whistle on the Bush Administration and their political appointees emerge unscathed from the act of thwarting their political goals and their rampant greed. Someone will likely take action against Harrison's career, and that's why we are seeing a military that is hollowed out, staffed with yes-men, and overrun by the God-boys who invite crazies to come to the Pentagon and give them briefings.

No matter how you look at this story, what emerges is a troubling incident of corruption and greed:

On March 27, The New York Times published an article that said Albanian documents showed that the Miami company had bought more than 100 million Chinese cartridges that were stored for decades in former cold war stockpiles.

Mr. Diveroli arranged to have them repacked in cardboard boxes, many of which split or decomposed after shipment to the war zones, according to the article. Different lots or types of ammunition were mixed. In some cases the ammunition was dirty, corroded or covered with a film.

The repackaging operation, carried out by an AEY subcontractor at the Rinas Airport in Tirana, has become the focus of the Congressional investigation.

According to the transcript excerpts released by the committee, Major Harrison told investigators that he did not agree with the decision to hide the boxes from the reporter, and said that he felt “very uncomfortable” during the meeting.

Major Harrison, who as the chief of the embassy’s office of defense cooperation was responsible for helping American efforts to train, equip and modernize Albania’s military, said that his suggestion to bar the reporter from visiting the Albania base was rejected.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the committee’s chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said Monday that there were signs that embassy officials in Tirana tried to cover up the November meeting once Mr. Waxman’s staff began an investigation into the arms company. The letter said the committee would seek to interview Mr. Withers and other embassy personnel.

This is the kind of thing that sets off warning bells. When Major Harrison realized what sort of ground he was standing on, he immediately took steps to protect himself--perhaps he already was savvy to how the Bush Administration treats people who get between them and their money:

After his hour-long interview, Harrison "expressed an interest in seeking advice of counsel" and a Pentagon attorney terminated the session, Waxman wrote. Three days later, Harrison's lawyer told the committee he needed at least two weeks to prepare for continuing the interview.

Waxman charged in his letter that "it appears" embassy officials kept from the committee information related to the ambassador's meeting in Albania. Harrison told the panel that he had "urged embassy officials to inform the committee," Waxman wrote, but embassy officials did not mention it in response to a prior request for information.

All this, so a few corrupt officials in Albania could dump Cold War-era ammunition into the hands of some Club-hopping trash from Florida, who could then make millions re-packaging it and sending it to the Middle East.

Perhaps the death penalty for war profiteers isn't harsh enough.

The Specifics of Mortgage Fraud

This is how it's done:

Federal prosecutors said Thursday that owners of the Metropolitan Money Store targeted homeowners who risked losing their homes and then used straw buyers, fraudulently obtained loans and inflated real estate appraisals to strip equity from more than 100 homes in the Washington area.

The homeowners seeking help ended up losing whatever money they had invested and their homes.

[SNIP]

Maryland investigators began to hear complaints from homeowners about Metropolitan in 2006. According to the indictment, Metropolitan lured in strapped owners through ads on television, radio and in print. The owners were told they didn't qualify for a refinancing of their mortgage, and in return were offered a "Foreclosure Reversal Program."

Under the program, they signed away their title to third parties, but were supposed to get help from Metropolitan to obtain a better mortgage that would allow them to repurchase the home.

Instead, Metropolitan allegedly used the straw buyers, who were paid $10,000 each, to take out big loans on the homes using inflated appraisals. They then stripped any equity out of the homes - allegedly $10 million - and allowed the homes to fall into foreclosure.

What would have stopped them? Simple, basic regulation and oversight. At the first sign of an inflated appraisal, at the first sign of a foreclosed property, at the first instance of a complaint from a borrower, something should have clicked. The investigators got wind of the problem in 2006, but weren't able to indict until now--a delay which cost millions. If they had been able to move against this scheme more quickly, it seems likely that the scheme itself would never have progressed as far as it did. Instead of a handful of properties, a hundred were done. Had there been a thousand, what would be the difference?

So what did all of the money fleeced out of these people buy?

The 25-count indictment unsealed Thursday names Lanham-based Metropolitan Money Store and its president, Joy Jackson, 40, who allegedly used some of the money to pay for a lavish wedding for herself and Kurt Fordham, one of the other seven indicted. The wedding reportedly cost $800,000 and included a designer gown with a 40 foot train and a concert by Grammy-award winning singer Patti LaBelle

WBAL-TV 11 News reports that Jackson was a former exotic dancer turned mortgage broker and is alleged to have been the ringleader of the scheme prosecutors say defrauded homeowners and lenders.

The charges include conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors also seek the return of $35 million in fraudulent loans that the group allegedly took out from lenders. Each count of the conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

Ah, the gilded age. Only in America can an ex-stripper steal millions, pay for a lavish wedding, and probably get away with it. They called it the "Metropolitan Money Store" and they lavished the proceeds all over themselves like cheap, tawdry people without morals usually do. Who was paying attention? After all, they were doing this publicly, out in plain sight, out in plain view. One would think someone, anyone would have asked a couple of questions. Like...I don't know. Patti LaBelle? At your wedding?

I say probably get away with it, but the reality is that this case will probably languish in the courts, some of the money will be returned, most of it will never be repaid, a few hundred people will probably lose their homes, and at the end of the day, another scheme to defraud people will work its way through a system that is simply not flexible enough to stop the crooks.

Remember when Reagan said "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"? It led to the kind of thinking that says that we can't have regulators and rules and bureaucrats watching over what goes on. It led to the kind of thinking that has brought us understaffed and overworked investigators and regulators all over the country. It has brought us to a point in our society when there's no one doing what is necessary to keep thieves from stealing millions by preying on desperate people who were already victims of a practice where people who weren't even indicted yesterday sold them homes they couldn't afford.

Reagan unleashed a predator society, an underclass of people who took the idea of anything goes and deregulation and, like virtually any good Republican usually does, he left us a hefty bill our grandchildren are going to have to pay off.

UPDATED--Former Petraeus Colleague Convicted of Accepting Bribes in Iraq

Sorry to do this, but the lede was buried. I am republishing this story with updated information and some observations--originally, I had planned to call Selph a "little fish in a big pond." It now appears there are some serious questions to be asked of some very senior leaders.

From the New York Times, August 27, 2007:

Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

[SNIP]

But now, American officials said, part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

Flash forward to today:

A retired U.S. Army colonel pleaded guilty Tuesday to awarding contracts in Iraq to a Kuwait-based firm in exchange for gifts.

Levonda Selph of Virginia admitted accepting $4,000 in cash and a $5,000 vacation to Thailand from the unidentified contractor, which was awarded $12 million in contracts to operate Defense Department warehouses in Iraq. [see below for Selph's link to Thailand]

She pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy. She was secretly indicted on those charges in October; the charges weren't disclosed until her court appearance Tuesday.

Under terms of a plea agreement, Selph could receive up to 33 months in jail. She promised to repay the government $9,000 and to cooperate in an ongoing investigation.

Prosecutors said Selph was a lieutenant colonel at Camp Victory in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 when she led a committee that awarded the warehouse contracts.

The Justice Department said she will be free until her sentencing October 14 but will not be allowed to leave the country.

MISSING from that story is the original link between Selph and Petraeus, of course. Missing is the fact that Colonel Ted Westhusing killed himself over these very issues, according to his suicide note, which mentioned Petraeus by name. Think we'll hear anything about that?

UPDATED 8:50 AM - WS:

Now we know why there was a link to Thailand:

In a phone interview from Bangkok, John Hess, who worked as the assistant director of operations for an American-owned company that helped manage supplies for Iraq, said payments to the companies that supplied arms to Iraq were often delayed because of missing DD-250s. He said he believed that the officers had the right motives but used dangerous methods.

“Once those weapons left normal channels,” Mr. Hess said, “none of us were ever sure where they were really going.”

Several co-workers complained about the unorthodox tactics of the two officers, including an accusation that Major Cox, 38, was stealing weapons, Major Isgrigg said. However, federal officials said the officers were not the targets of an investigation.

Even when they managed to get weapons to the Iraqi military, Major Isgrigg said, it was hard for him and Major Cox to feel triumphant. The Iraqi commanders could barely keep track of their troops, much less stocks of new weapons, he said. He estimated that 30 percent of the equipment he and Major Cox delivered went to Iraqi soldiers who showed up for duty one day, and disappeared the next.
“There were times we would issue a batch of weapons and within 10 days they would show up at the Enemy Weapons Purchase Program,” Major Cox, who is on his second tour in Baghdad, wrote by e-mail, referring to a military effort to buy guns from the streets.

“We didn’t always think we were going about things the right way,” said Major Isgrigg, who left Iraq in July. But he said he believed that his actions were necessary, saying of his commanders: “They rushed it. Their goal was to get those units standing as fast as possible, and then to get out of there. There was no planning for the long term.”

As the American military hurried to train and equip Iraqi security forces in the spring of 2004, the Pentagon turned to contractors to operate warehouses to store equipment and weapons.

Mr. Saffar managed an armory on the grounds of the Baghdad Police Academy, which along with a nearby warehouse was operated by an American-owned company based in Kuwait.

In July, the company, American Logistics Services, which later became Lee Dynamics International, was suspended by the Army from doing future business with the government amid accusations that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to military contracting officers. The company had won $11 million in contracts to manage five warehouses with arms and other equipment in Iraq.

The company’s armory, a long concrete building divided into two sections in the back, was a logistics hub for the new Iraqi police. Crates of AK-47s and Glock pistols purchased by the Pentagon were trucked to the armory by armed convoys from a large warehouse at Abu Ghraib, and Mr. Saffar issued them to cadets.

----------------
Yes, ALL of the crooks should be punished. But she gets prison while numerous others go free after building shit-encrusted buildings, a US Embassy complex that is an embarrassment to civilized society, setting up showers that electrocute troops, setting up water distribution facilities that distribute filthy water and shooting up Iraqis left and right?

We can send Colonel Selph to prison for pocketing a few grand but we can't even put Blackwater guards who have shot and killed human beings on trial because they have immunity? Is this a case where someone is going to point to her conviction and go, "see, we caught everyone who was stealing money, and we punished them, so the problem is now solved?" This is like claiming you saved America from terrorism by catching a bunch of guys who couldn't even buy combat boots.

Talk about a problem with your values system. Damn.

TPM Muckraker was ALL OVER this last year:

Commenter:
Nancy wrote on August 30, 2007 5:03 PM:
You are wrong about Joey Selph. You are getting half a story. I am assuming that you have never been in the military or have been some place like Iraq, during a war, with limited resources. If you knew Joey, you would know that she is an outstanding officer with superior morals. She would never and I repeat Never, do anything that was unlawful. She is the most patriotic person that I have ever met. I served underneath her and have only the utmost respect for her. When this is all said and done, you will find, that she did nothing wrong. Wait and see.......

As soon as Nancy, was done, some REAL commenting was done:

Jack the Bear wrote on November 11, 2007 2:14 PM:
LTC Selph is a nasty person. She lived in the ALS mansion in the Green Zone with the very contractor she was overseeing...drinking and carousing and having a big time corrupting good soldiers. Shame on you. Perhaps they will find out about the $5M in shipping containers you bought from Basil without authorization.

Jack the Bear wrote on November 12, 2007 9:42 AM:
Jon,
You must not have really worked for her. I too, worked with her. I predicted, sooner or later, she would pay a high price for her greed and avarice. She trampled and corrupted many a good soldier while she was downrange and now she is paying the piper. She laid up with her KBR/PWC boyfriend and crushed anyone in her way. LTC Davis, her cohort, was just as bad, but I didn't know him that well. Just that they were working hard to ensure ALS had all the warehouse business in theatre locked up. Now I know why they were so keen to back a broken company who couldn't execute. Anytime there is an irrational exuberation about any one contractor for no reason, there is something bad going on. She is no hero, just a skanky zero.

The Truth wrote on November 13, 2007 6:04 AM:
The shame of it all is that General Patreaus' good name is ruined by this "skanky zero". LTC Selph worked for COL Hinton and when ever he tried to control her she would go to her CENTCOM buddies and then to Patreaus spewing things like they are hindering the distrobution of weapons. She would obtain and distribute alcoholic beverages to E-5s and below she also had a co-conspirator in CW3 McPheron who left country under the guise of heart trouble only to return back to Iraq within a month working for Basil who was supposed to provide 20 trucks per day but rarely had more than five but was always paid the full amount. When complaints were made again she would run to her CENTCOM buddies. LTC Patreaus did and is keeping his eyes on the big picture and trusted that officer's would do the right thing.

Jack the Bear wrote on November 13, 2007 9:51 AM:
Truth,
You are correct. GEN Petraeus was busy focusing on the big picture and the "Scarecrow" LTC Selph was busy enriching herself and her cronies. There are other names not mentioned and I can't wait to see the next shoe drop. The KO who signed those sweetheart contracts forcing all incoming equipment into the ALS system had to be government. The stinky Taos weapons buys also had to be awarded by a govie. There will be much more uncovered before this is put to bed. Anyone who tried to manage the Scarecrow got stomped. Too bad for Gen Petraeus and COL Hinton. Two great soldiers whose reputations will be sullied by LTC Selph.

So who's going to ask General Petraeus to comment? Anyone?

Think we'll ever hear back?

This was in my original post, but it has been overtaken by events:
It is a good thing that she was caught, tried, and convicted when the evidence against her was weighed. You can't have crooks running around in Iraq if we're going to be there for a hundred years, obviously. And we can't have crooks who aren't smart enough to actually get paid--I mean, come on. You can save nine grand in a year if you ride the bus and use the generic toilet paper. I'm sorry, but nine grand is chump change for a O-5 deployed to a combat zone for a year.

Let's say she was at 18 years time in service, paid as an O-5, and we'll use the current numbers. Her monthly pay is, TAX FREE, $7,212.00. On top of that, she gets 12 months of imminent danger pay ($225 a month) and 12 months of family separation pay ($250 a month) if she has a family. Her income for one year of service in Iraq, just based on those figures, is approximately $92,200--and I'm not counting housing allowances or anything else. That's just her base pay, imminent danger pay and family separation pay. And she took a bribe on top of that for a measly $9,000? And risked her entire career, her retirement, everything for what amounts to a little more than a month of pay?

I don't know if it's better that we caught a crook or that we got one of Jerry's Kids out of uniform.

I'm not saying that she should have been given a free ride because she, quite clearly, did not hold sway over a whole lot of purchasing power while she was at Camp Victory in 2004-05. It looks to me like she was a very small fish in a much larger pond--full of people who were handling vast sums of money--so much so they needed forklifts to move it--and it looks to me like she was involved in some petty crimes.

Alphonso Jackson: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Over at Talking Points Memo, they've got the goods on Alphonso Jackson, the delusional HUD secretary who was forced to quit recently:

...the Washington Post reports on three minority HUD contractors who in very short spans went from few, if any, HUD contracts to many millions of dollar's worth. The common denominator for all three firms was that they were well-connected in GOP circles or with HUD officials.

Now that may be a scandal in itself, but so is what happened to the career HUD staffers who raised questions.

The contract specialist who flagged concerns about one of the companies was asked to return to her previous job within HUD, the Post reports. "At that point, the top procurement people -- Jo Baylor and Annette Hancock -- decided my services would no longer be needed because I was a pain in their neck," said Gloria Freeman, the specialist, who has since retired.

Another contracting specialist, also since retired, was reassigned to a different HUD job within weeks of finding that one of the companies had submitted an exaggerated claim under the contract and instead owed HUD money.

The Post doesn't link these three contractors directly to Jackson; rather, their rapid rise despite performance issues is symptomatic of HUD during the Jackson era. This isn't the first time retaliation has been alleged. The Philadelphia public housing director is suing for retaliation, alleging that his refusal to help out a Jackson buddy led HUD to take enforcement action against the housing authority as punishment. Emails previously published by the Washington Post suggest a warped management climate within HUD, with one HUD official asking another, "Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?"

The Washington Post goes on to detail the work of Gloria Freeman, who, like Bunnatine Greenhouse, stood up against the onslaught of incompetence and corruption and paid the price for it:

During a few weeks in 2004, the three-employee company, Harrington, Moran and Barksdale Inc. (HMBI), went from no government work to landing $71 million in contracts with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to oversee the upkeep and sale of defaulted homes. It had previously managed a handful of apartment buildings and development projects.

The company's meteoric rise -- and HUD's willingness to bend the rules to accommodate it -- surprised veteran agency contracting specialist Gloria Freeman.

"After you've been in the business awhile, you get to know the signs -- 'This is a friend; let's help him out,' " she said in an interview. Not long after Freeman complained to her supervisors, she was asked to return to her previous policy job.

[SNIP]

HMBI, of Fort Worth, was led by Republicans with significant HUD experience. Chief executive Maurice Barksdale was an assistant secretary to Reagan-era HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr. and became a minor figure in a 1980s political favoritism scandal. Its vice president, Albert Moran, also worked at the agency during the Reagan years.

Listed as having three employees in 2004 when it won its first contract, HMBI has accumulated $282 million in HUD work, all but $18.8 million of it in small-business awards. Former and current contract officials said staff members questioned HMBI's qualifications.

Contract specialist Freeman said she first ran into trouble when she insisted that the company follow procedures and post a required bond. She said her supervisor proposed waiving the requirement. Freeman prevailed, and HMBI posted the money.

Tensions mounted again when Freeman objected to a fifth contract award that HMBI was seeking. She and others at HUD feared that the company could not handle more work. Her bosses did not want HMBI to fail or to trigger a Small Business Administration review of the company's abilities, she said. Freeman opposed her bosses' rule-bending efforts to try to avoid that review. Later, she said, she and another official persuaded Barksdale to withdraw the bid.

"At that point, the top procurement people -- Jo Baylor and Annette Hancock -- decided my services would no longer be needed because I was a pain in their neck," she said. After moving back to the policy job, she retired in 2005.

The whole sordid tale of Alphonso Jackson is a microcosm of this administration--cheap, tawdry behavior, the fox guarding the henhouse, the hand in the cookie jar, whatever you want to call it--and it is a sad and troubling example of what happens when cronyism rules the day.

International Aid Used For Bribes in Myanmar

What little aid is reaching the victims in Myanmar is being used by the ruling military junta to consolidate power:

Myanmar's military rulers held elections aimed at solidifying their hold on power, while brazenly turning cyclone relief efforts into a propaganda campaign. In some cases, generals' names were scribbled onto boxes of foreign aid before being distributed.

Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims in going ahead with Saturday's referendum, which seeks public approval of a new constitution. Critics describe it as a sham.

[SNIP]

Though international aid has started to trickle in — with two more planes organized by the U.N. World Food Program landing at Yangon's airport Saturday — almost all foreign relief workers have been barred entry into the isolated nation.

The junta said it wants to hand out all donated supplies on its own.

But with roads blocked and bridges submerged, reaching isolated areas in the hard hit delta has been made all but impossible. The military has only a few dozen helicopters, most small and old. It also has about 15 transport planes, few of which are able to carry massive amounts of supplies.

Other reports indicate there is little that the international community can do for the citizens affected by the cyclone in Myanmar:

As aid groups struggled to distribute supplies to cyclone victims despite government obstacles, Myanmar TV was broadcasting messages urging people to vote "yes" in a referendum that critics say would strengthen the military rule.

Activists demonstrate over the Myanmar referendum at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok on Friday.

The New York Times said it appeared that some resources for cyclone victims was diverted to the vote campaign. In some cases, generals' names were scribbled onto boxes of foreign aid before being distributed, according to the Associated Press.

A resident of Yangon said refugees seeking shelter in schools were evicted so the buildings could be used as polling places, the newspaper reported.

Is it time to consider a military invasion of Myanmar?

That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea — "I can't imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday — but it's not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

A coercive humanitarian intervention would be complicated and costly. During the 2004 tsunami, some 24 U.S. ships and 16,000 troops were deployed in countries across the region; the mission cost the U.S. $5 million a day. Ultimately, the U.S. pledged nearly $900 million to tsunami relief. (By contrast, it has offered just $3.25 million to Burma.) But the risks would be greater this time: the Burmese government's xenophobia and insecurity make them prone to view U.S. troops — or worse, foreign relief workers — as hostile forces. (Remember Black Hawk Down?) Even if the U.S. and its allies made clear that their actions were strictly for humanitarian purposes, it's unlikely the junta would believe them. "You have to think it through — do you want to secure an area of the country by military force? What kinds of potential security risks would that create?" says Egelend. "I can't imagine any humanitarian organization wanting to shoot their way in with food."

So what other options exist? Retired General William Nash of the Council on Foreign Relations says the U.S. should first pressure China to use its influence over the junta to get them to open up and then supply support to the Thai and Indonesian militaries to carry out relief missions. "We can pay for it — we can provide repair parts to the Indonesians so they can get their Air Force up. We can lend the them two C-130s and let them paint the Indonesian flag on them," Nash says. "We have to get the stuff to people who can deliver it and who the Burmese government will accept, even if takes an extra day or two and even if it's not as efficient as the good old U.S. military." Egeland advocates that the U.N. Security Council take punitive steps short of war, such as freezing the regime's assets and issuing warrants for the arrest of individual junta members if they were to leave the country. Similar measures succeeded in getting the government of Ivory Coast to let in foreign relief teams in 2002, Egelend says.

Another Lobbyist Tied to McCain Forced to Quit

A lobbyist with ties to the ruling military junta of Myanmar resigned today:

The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar.

Doug Goodyear resigned as convention coordinator and issued a two sentence statement:

"Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign."

Goodyear, chief executive of lobbying firm DCI Group, resigned a few hours after Newsweek posted a story posted online that the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 and 2003 to represent Myanmar's junta.

"We respect Mr. Goodyear's decision, and look forward to the convention in September," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.

The McCain campaign is sensitive to the timing and the revelation of the announcement, given that the situation in Myanmar has been extremely difficult:

Cyclone Nargis left more than 60,000 people dead or missing, and the U.N. estimates that at least 1.5 million people have been severely affected. Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims and blocking foreign donations of relief supplies.

This is not the first time that prominent, big money lobbyists have been identified as being with Senator McCain.

His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.

Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O' Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae.

McCain's relationship with lobbyists became an issue this week [the article is dated February 22, 2008] after it was reported that his aides asked Vicki Iseman, a telecom lobbyist, to distance herself from his 2000 presidential campaign because it would threaten McCain's reputation for independence. An angry and defiant McCain denounced the stories yesterday, declaring: "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust."

Even before McCain finished his news conference, uber-lobbyist Black made the rounds of television networks to defend McCain against charges that he has been tainted by his relationship with a lobbyist. Black's current clients include General Motors, United Technologies, JPMorgan and AT&T.

Black said he is still being paid by his firm and does work for clients in his "spare time," recusing himself from lobbying McCain: "I not only do not lobby him [McCain], but if an issue comes up that I have a client on, I will tell him that and stay out of the discussion."

The exodus of many prominent members of Congress to enter the lobbying world has been in the news as of late.

Ex-members of Congress can double their earnings as lobbyists, paid by special interests to directly influence their former colleagues.

And guess what those former members of Congress can take with them to their big lobby jobs: their leftover campaign funds, unspent money given by donors during their election.

Ethics rules prohibit spending it for personal use... but you won't believe what ex-members of Congress are allowed to do with their campaign money: donate it as lobbyists to their former colleagues.

Lott had a whopping $1.3 million left in his reelection fund when he quit the Senate and opened his lobby firm. One of the first big clients to jump aboard was Northrop Grumman, which is lobbying to keep a $35 billion air force contract for plane re-fuelers.

Lott has dipped into his campaign chest to donate money to former colleagues, who could influence the Northrop Grumman deal, including Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Roger Wicker, who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He's also contributed to the Senate's top Republican Mitch McConnell.

What Goodyear's firm did for Myanmar

Justice Department records covering agents of foreign agents that are required to register with the U.S. government show DCI signed a contract to work to "improve relations between the United States and Myanmar" and to act as the junta's public relations agent in Washington.

Newsweek said the firm drafted news releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing claims by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.

"It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," Newsweek quoted Goodyear as saying. The magazine said Goodyear added that the junta's record in the current cyclone crisis is "reprehensible."

The Newsweek article also reported that some of Goodyear's allies worry that worry the choice of Goodyear could fuel perceptions that McCain is surrounded by lobbyists. DCI Group earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients, the report said.

Myanmar's human rights abuses have been well documented:

Amnesty International's key concerns include:

-The continued detention of some 700 political prisoners including at least 15 individuals sentenced to prison terms of up to nine and a half years;
An official policy of taking family members and friends as "hostages" to force others to turn themselves in;

-Deaths in detention due to severe beatings and other forms of torture;
Appalling detention conditions including the denial of adequate food, water and sanitary facilities as well as the keeping of detainees in "dog cells";

-Enforced disappearances since the crackdown, including at least 72 individuals whose whereabouts the authorities have failed to account for;
Failure by the Myanmar authorities to account for the number of people killed during the crackdown;

-Evidence of marksmen atop military trucks and bridges using live ammunition to target individual demonstrators during the crackdown resulting in the death of at least two students and the serious wounding of others;

-Ambulances being denied access to victims on the streets during September's demonstrations and private medial clinics ordered not to treat the injured.

The 2008 Republican National Convention will be held in St. Paul, Minnesota in September.

John McCain Takes Care of Another Patron

Arizona developer Steven A. Betts claims he never discussed a deal with Senator John McCain that turned 35,000 acres into a development project for an estimated 12,000 new homes to be built by his firm.

[Senator] John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest [in Prescott, AZ] for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

Steve Benen picks up the rest of the thread, and highlights some of McCain's other dealings with big money donors:

When considering John McCain’s history of unethical behavior, the list usually starts (and ends) with the Keating Five scandal in the 1980s, for which McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for having shown, at a minimum, poor judgment. While McCain took on the role of a “reformer” in the scandal’s aftermath, his ethical lapses have hardly disappeared.

The NYT noted a few weeks ago, for example, that McCain went to considerable lengths in 1999 to help one of his top campaign fundraisers buy the land at an Army base that was being closed. McCain helped his benefactor get the land — and special water rights — for just $250,000, which the donor then sold two years later for $30 million. (The donor, Donald Diamond, was rather candid about buying influence with politicians: “I want my money back, for Christ’s sake. Do you know how many cocktail parties I have to go to?”) It’s the kind of obvious influence peddling McCain swears he never gets involved with.

Today, the WaPo has a front-page item highlighting yet another real-estate controversy in which McCain helped out one of his most generous supporters.

When asked by the Washington Post about the timing of the land deals and of the campaign contributions that were made by the interested parties, the McCain Campaign issued a denial:

Question from the Washington Post: On several occasions, Sen. McCain worked on land exchange legislation that involved property in which campaign donors had a financial stake. Among them: A 1994 swap in the Las Vegas area involving the land Developer Del Webb Corp and its lobbyist; legislation in 1991 and 1994 regarding land swaps involving Donald R. Diamond; a trade proposed in 1997 involving the preservation of 2,250 acres of Sonoran desert that allowed for development in the Tonto National Forest, including land owned in part by Great American Life Insurance, the company run by Carl Lindner. How does Mr. McCain explain the close timing of campaign contributions to his efforts on those land exchange deals?

[McCain Campaign] RESPONSE: Rather than offer a single explanation describing the events leading up to Senator McCain’s legislative involvement in all the land deals to which you refer, we are willing to try to answer specific questions you may have on each. What can be said about all of them, without further specific questions, is that Senator McCain did absolutely nothing to help, improperly or inappropriately, any campaign donor on any land deal.

Regular readers will recall the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and note that, in certain circles, trading campaign contributions for favors is considered an indictable offense:

...Siegelman emerged as one of the few Democratic stars, winning the Governor's race in 1998. He lost the seat in a close and contested race in 2002, but polls in 2003 showed that he had a good chance of recapturing the governorship. Then came the first indictment from the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, charging Siegelman with using his position to rig a state bidding process. A judge dismissed the case in 2004 for lack of evidence. Just as Siegelman was preparing to run for Governor again, a second round of charges was brought in 2005 by the U.S. Attorney's office in Montgomery. His trial in 2006 overlapped with Alabama's Democratic primary, in which Siegelman had initially been a heavy favorite.

The investigation into Siegelman began as an inquiry into a contract held by [Clayton Lamar (Lanny)] Young [Jr.] to build a state warehouse in Alabama. Young was a well-liked figure in Montgomery who, by his own account, was in the habit of handing out cash, checks, rides on his private airplane and other goodies to members of both political parties. In return, he apparently hoped to receive favorable treatment for his garbage dumps and other lucrative state-related business.

Young testified that he had furnished Siegelman with an all-terrain vehicle and a motorcycle, lavishing money on the Governor and his aides. But he was an equal-opportunity influence monger. Early in the investigation, in November 2001, Young announced that five years earlier, he "personally provided Sessions with cash campaign contributions," according to an FBI memo of the interview. Prosecutors didn't follow up that surprising statement with questions, but Young volunteered more. The memo adds that "on one occasion he [Young] provided Session [sic] with $5,000 to $7,000 using two intermediaries," one of whom held a senior position with Sessions' campaign. On another occasion, the FBI records show, Young talked about providing "$10,000 to $15,000 to Session [sic]. Young had his secretaries and friends write checks to the Sessions campaign and Young reimbursed the secretaries and friends for their contributions."

Further updates as necessary.

More Perspective On Why The Iraqi Army Sucks

One of the things that I have consistently said is that it is unconscionable that 4 million military-age and military-eligible Iraqi males have decided to sit on the fence while 25,000 insurgents run circles around 500,000 Iraqi police and security forces troops despite the best efforts of our 140,000-troop military and our 100,000+ contractors to stem the violence. This is why nation building will ultimately fail in a society like Iraq. They are numb from decades of oppression and dictatorship. They have no social infrastructure to build a "democracy" around--that is, functioning courts, judicial process, somewhat honest police, redress of grievances, and representation of a meaningful kind.

The rot of corruption was always there, but without a dictator, the corruption has ruined Iraqi society in a way that it will take decades of hard work to reverse. Organized crime has taken a firm hold, creating an almost insurmountable problem for a society that doesn't have the means to fight back against it. The Iraqis have been handed a country, but they're playing hot potato--no one wants to hold it. There's too much that's broken, too much that needs to be fixed. And they have to do this hard work--it has to come from people who are inside of that system to do it. US troops who go there for a year and leave cannot do it for them. Here's how bad the corruption really is:

The captain, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he intended to extend the break to five days, maybe longer. He had not been paid in two months and was overwhelmed by the problems of commanding his company, part of the 1st Brigade, 11th Iraqi Army Division. He was considering not going back to the fight in Sadr City.

Desertion by Iraqi soldiers has been a problem during the recent battles in Basra and Sadr City. The government dismissed 1,300 soldiers and police officers who deserted last month during fighting in Basra. On Tuesday, another company walked away from a crucial part of the front line in Sadr City, contending that they did not have adequate support.

Five years into the American effort to build a self-sustaining Iraqi Army, these failures to stand and fight have proven an embarrassing setback to American and Iraqi officials.

The captain who left his men on Tuesday said that even away from the battle, he was not able to escape his army burdens. He said his phone rang incessantly. His men had called from the front line saying that, once again, they had run out of ammunition and they pleaded for help. He called another unit in Sadr City and arranged for ammunition to be transferred.

Then his phone had rung again, he said. It was the Mahdi Army militia, the group his men were fighting, on the line.

“We know where you live,” they had told him.

“If they come to my house, they can kill my whole family,” he said.

On the phone they had read a roster of names of the men in his battalion. “I don’t even have access to that,” he said. “They could only have gotten it from my senior commanders.

“Our senior officials, they are thieves,” he said.

He was walking around with a bullet in the chamber of his pistol, ready to be attacked at any moment.

Even the world's biggest wingnut, full of delusions and chickenhawk fantasies of military dominance and battle-space oriented tactical innovations, could not come up with a solution for THAT kind of a problem. Killing people won't fix it, nor will continued occupation.

An Iraqi revolution is what comes next, if at all. Will the US accept whatever revolution transforms the broken Iraqi society?

h/t to reader opit for the NYTimes story...

It can always get worse

You only think the American procurement process is screwed up. Wait until you learn about the Iraqi procurement process!

From todays New York Times:

BAGHDAD — An $833 million Iraqi arms deal secretly negotiated with Serbia has underscored Iraq’s continuing problems equipping its armed forces, a process that has long been plagued by corruption and inefficiency.

The deal was struck in September without competitive bidding and it sidestepped anticorruption safeguards, including the approval of senior uniformed Iraqi Army officers and an Iraqi contract approval committee. Instead, it was negotiated by a delegation of 22 high-ranking Iraqi officials, without the knowledge of American commanders or many senior Iraqi leaders.

The deal drew enough criticism that Iraqi officials later limited the purchase to $236 million. And much of that equipment, American commanders said, turned out to be either shoddy or inappropriate for the military’s mission.

An anatomy of the purchase highlights how the Iraqi Army’s administrative abilities — already hampered by sectarian rifts and corruption — are woefully underdeveloped, hindering it in procuring weapons and other essentials in a systematic way. It also shows how an American procurement process set up to help foreign countries navigate the complexity of buying weapons was too slow and unwieldy for wartime needs like Iraq’s, prompting the Iraqis to strike out on their own.

Such weaknesses mean that five years after the American invasion, the 170,000-strong Iraqi military remains under-equipped, spottily supplied and largely reliant on the United States for such basics as communications equipment, weapons and ammunition, raising fresh questions about the Iraqi military’s ability to stand on its own.

Iraq's defense minister, Abdul Qadir, defended the deal, insisting that Prime Minister al-Maliki had been kept abreast of the deal every step of the way; as if corruption ceases to be corruption if it is sanctioned at a high enough level.

The Serbian arms deal faced serious criticism from Iraqi and American officials alike, even though scrutiny of the procurement process has been a touchy subject, following specious arms deals that saw cash paid for shoddy equipment in the early days of post Saddam Iraq. (Remember, David Petraeus, before he was the top general, was an administrative officer who lost track of a pallet of cash - a billion dollars! Missing! Specious arms deals brought down the Allawi government and the previous defense minister, Hazam Shalan.

Shalan is now a fugitive from justice, wanted on charges stemming from the heady days of duffel bags full of hundreds ferried around the country by middle men and sweetheart deals that padded pockets but delivered nothing in return.

People who remember the earlier deal are nervous about the Serbian deal, even though no specific charges have been leveled. After all, a lack of oversight and transparency never turns out well.

The deal with Serbia calls for purchasing large numbers of planes, helicopters, personnel transports, and heavy arms, as well as light arms, body armor, uniforms and other equipment. The deal was negotiated by Mr. Qadir and an aide. After attention began to be cast toward the arrangement, Mr. Qadir "froze" the number of planes and choppers, reducing the dollar value of the deal from $833 million to $236 million dollars. “We just want to have a mix of procedures for contracts so we can expedite our acquisition,” Mr. Qadir said, adding that “American timelines for delivery were too far away.”

Read the whole thing. You'll be shaking your head in amazement...

No Love for Corrupt ex-Congressman JD Hayworth

Poor JD Hayworth. When last we saw him, he was getting swept out of office for being too corrupt for the people of Arizona to tolerate. Now he's begging for cash:

In my case, I firmly believe Justice Department lawyers started preliminary inquiries AFTER the stories appeared. In other words, DOJ attorneys read the papers like everyone else, and the false allegations appearing in the press and on the internet attracted their attention.

At any rate, I had to retain legal counsel in Washington , D.C. to communicate with the Justice Department and co-ordinate compliance with the DOJ’s requests for documents. Whatever remained in the campaign treasury went to cover those fees–and they did not cover them completely.

As a result, I still have outstanding legal bills that total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That’s why “The Freedom in Truth Trust” has been established. Its name comes from holy scripture (”You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”–John 8:32), and its acronym (FIT) is accurate, since this entire episode has given us fits!

The trust was set up by local legal counsel and is administered by a California accounting firm.

Because this is not a political campaign account, IRS gift rules govern personal contributions. Individuals can give a total of $12,000 (twelve thousand dollars) annually; married couples can contribute a total of $24,000 (twenty four thousand dollars).

Ha Ha! Yeah, you read that right. Married couples can pony up 24K. What? The economy isn't THAT bad, right?

"Justice Department" lawyers went after you? The same group that couldn't find corruption in the Republican Party if it hit them in the head? You've gotta be a blatantly corrupt member to get chased after by a Republican controlled DOJ, dude. As in, stupid enough to make a bribe menu. Stupid enough to write shit down in E-mails and stupid enough to think you would never get caught.

Hey--if DOJ couldn't make a case against you, well, all the better. It's a rule of law thing, and if they couldn't nail you, they couldn't nail you. Ain't freedom sweet? Sounds like someone's bitching because they got to keep their freedom. Is that really the American way?

I left my "donation" at his site:

Pale Rider Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

March 28th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
What happened to the boasting loudmouth who used to go on Imus and run Democrats down?

Suck on it, Hayworth, you miserable clown. You oughta be wearing an orange jumpsuit and picking up trash along the freeway.

You know, some of my best work NEVER sees the light of day. Wingnuts moderate their stuff so tight you'd think the words a, an and the were intended to separate them from their mortal coil.

Hey, JD? Has Russert called lately?

Procurement: 300 Million Dollars for Club-Hopping Trash

You can't make this stuff up. You just can't. It's sad, it's pathetic, and it's just another outrage. And this is just another post about it. But there's no way we're ever going to stop talking about this stuff and there's no way we're ever going to give up fighting against it.

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Here's an original posting about the award from 2007 in Defense Industry Daily:

Small business qualifier AEY Inc. in Miami Beach, FL received a delivery order amount of $48.7 million as part of a $298 million firm-fixed-price contract for various ammunition for the Afghanistan Security Forces. AEY, Inc. was established in 1999; unsurprisingly, Craigslist says they’re hiring.

Work will be performed in Miami, FL and is expected to be complete by Dec. 30, 2008. Bids were solicited via the World Wide Web on July 28, 2007, and 10 bids were received by the U.S. Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, IL (W52P1J-07-D-0004).

Ammunition and weapon shortages been an reported issue in Afghanistan, where police and other security forces trainees have been forced to use fake wooden rifles at times.

So they got the contract by lowballing it, obviously. I mean, who were the other 9 people that bid?

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

China? As in, manufactured in China recently? No.

But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.

Yes--that's cultural revolution era China, right there. What happened when people tried to backtrack and figure this out?

In January, American officers in Kabul, concerned about munitions from AEY, had contacted the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, in Illinois, and raised the possibility of terminating the contract. And officials at the Army Sustainment Command, the contracting authority at the arsenal, after meeting with AEY in late February, said they were tightening the packaging standards for munitions shipped to the war.

And yet after that meeting, AEY sent another shipment of nearly one million cartridges to Afghanistan that the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan regarded as substandard. Lt. Col. David G. Johnson, the command spokesman, said that while there were no reports of ammunition misfiring, some of it was in such poor condition that the military had decided not to issue it. “Our honest answer is that the ammunition is of a quality that is less than desirable; the munitions do not appear to meet the standards that many of us are used to,” Colonel Johnson said. “We are not pleased with the way it was delivered.”

Several officials said the problems would have been avoided if the Army had written contracts and examined bidders more carefully.

In the rush to throw billions of taxpayer dollars at people who weren't interested in doing a good job, an extremely young and inexperienced Diveroli suddenly found himself doing business well above his paygrade. As in, well above his educational level and his experience level.

By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY’s president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment — weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines — for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere.

It was also providing supplies to the American military in Iraq, where its business included a $5.7 million contract for rifles for Iraqi forces.

Two federal officials involved in contracting in Baghdad said AEY quickly developed a bad reputation. “They weren’t reliable, or if they did come through, they did after many excuses,” said one of them, who asked that his name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.

Seeing as how most of those armaments probably went to the insurgents anyway, it's probably a good thing that this guy was selling them weapons that were probably outdated and procured from the old Eastern bloc.

What kind of person is Diveroli? Is he the sort of person who should be getting millions of dollars from the US Government?

As AEY’s bid for its largest government contract was being considered, Mr. Diveroli’s personal difficulties continued. On Nov. 26, 2006, the Miami Beach police were called to his condominium during an argument between him and another girlfriend. According to the police report, he had thrown her “clothes out in the hallway and told her to get out.”

A witness told the police Mr. Diveroli had dragged her back into the apartment. The police found the woman crying; she said she had not been dragged. Mr. Diveroli was not charged.

On Dec. 21, 2006, the police were called back to the condominium. Mr. Diveroli and AEY’s vice president, David M. Packouz, had just been in a fight with the valet parking attendant.

The fight began, the police said, after the attendant refused to give Mr. Diveroli his keys and Mr. Diveroli entered the garage to get them himself. A witness said Mr. Diveroli and Mr. Packouz both beat the man; police photographs showed bruises and scrapes on his face and back.

When the police searched Mr. Diveroli, they found he had a forged driver’s license that added four years to his age and made him appear old enough to buy alcohol as a minor. His birthday had been the day before.

“I don’t even need that any more,” he told the police, the report said. “I’m 21 years old.”

Mr. Diveroli was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor, and felony possession of a stolen or forged document.

The second charge placed his business in jeopardy. Mr. Diveroli had a federal firearms license, which was required for his work. With a felony conviction, the license would be nullified.

Here's the kicker--someone inside of the DoD reviewed Diveroli's company and looked at everything that had gone on. And what decision did they make? They simple threw more money at the guy:

To be accepted, the company had to be, in Army parlance, “a responsible contractor,” which required an examination of its financial soundness, transport capabilities, past performance and compliance with the law and government contracting regulations.

The week after a relative paid his bail, the Banc of America Investment Services in Miami provided Mr. Diveroli a letter certifying that his company had cash on hand to begin buying munitions on a large scale. It said AEY had $5,469,668.95 in an account.

AEY was awarded the contract in January 2007. Asked why it chose AEY, the Army Sustainment Command answered in writing: “AEY’s proposal represented the best value to the government.”

Club-hopping trash that can't stop beating and threatening women now gets millions from our government to buy up outdated ammunition and resell it? How does that keep America safe from anyone or anything?