Hypocrisy alert – First US case against Iraq contractor

Despite all the rapes allegedly being committed by KBR employees in Iraq, despite it becoming ever-more clear of the criminality of Blackwater’s porn-like shootings of Iraqi civilians, the U.S. has CHOSEN — there’s no other word for it — to arrest an Iraq, Alaa Mohammad Ali, as the first civilian contractor in Iraq to be charged under Iraqi military law.

This is stupid on so many counts.

Beyond the hypocrisy mentioned above, to practice the colonialism of arresting an Iraqi while Basra is aflame and our boy in Baghdad, Nouri al-Maliki, is hanging by his fingernails, illustrates once again the cluelessness of a large part of our footprint in Iraq.

And, tying the two together, to announce this indictment in the same week that the State Department extended Blackwater’s contract by another year goes beyond mere cluelessness and hypocrisy to the level of clusterfuck squared.

No wonder Pentagon sees no Iraq fraud

It’s happening on the inside:

Richard T. Race, the Pentagon inspector general's chief investigator of procurement fraud and official misconduct, quit his job and pleaded guilty last month to violating U.S. banking laws.

The previously unpublicized case was filed Feb. 26 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to court papers. Race, 61, admitted he made cash deposits at the Pentagon's credit union on three straight days in March 2007 that were designed to evade laws that track large currency transactions. The government seized the total of $20,000 in deposits as part of the plea deal.

It appears Race was trying to avoid some IRS reporting, as well.

So, he’s the perfect person to oversee Halliburton and its dodging, filching and mismanagement on government contracts, all while surely taking IRS write-offs for all of this mismanagement, or even possible downright fraud.

KBR finally in the legal dock

Four KBR contractors have been indicted for graft in Iraq.