Ahh ... the irony. Schadenfreude, too. The organization that Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) holds up as a shining example of oversight is as dirty and corrupt as everything else the Bush Administration touchs. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is corrupt. This is the second instance of rank corruption at SIGIR. SIGIR is just another arm of the Bush Administration propaganda machine.

Today, the Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing on the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq and corruption in the Iraqi government. Two former State Department employees testified, including Judge Arthur Brennan, the former director of the Office of Accountability and Transparency (OAT) in Iraq. He said that his office’s work “was ignored and demeaned by the Department of State, the Department of Justice, and the government of Iraq.”

He also revealed the State Department completely altered a report he sent to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) that criticized an Iraqi watchdog agency as being a “disaster”:

MCCASKILL: And your testimony — I want to make sure that you have said the Department of State has negligently, recklessly and intentionally misled Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq. And you stand by that testimony, Judge?

BRENNAN: I stand by that testimony.

MCCASKILL: And so, what we’re learning today is that SIGIR, the information we’re getting from SIGIR is not, in fact, always factual, that sometimes it is being spun by Ambassador Crocker and that it is your testimony today that Ambassador Crocker knows the level of corruption in the Iraqi government and has failed to be honest with the American people about it.

BRENNAN: If he doesn’t know, then he’s negligent. If he does know, then he’s intentionally misleading Congress and the American public.
(Think Progress)

Norm has repeatedly held up SIGIR as his lone example of pushing for oversight in Iraq. Norm has only been able to point to the drops in the bucket that SIGIR has saved compared to the $2.2 billion per week we spend over there. Two examples of corruption will surely prevent Norm from citing SIGIR as the kind of oversight he believes in, right?

[James] Mattil, who worked with Brennan, made similar allegations. Specifically, he said the U.S. "remained silent in the face of an unrelenting campaign" by senior Iraqi officials to subvert Baghdad's Commission on Public Integrity, which had been led by al-Radhi. Then, the U.S. turned its back on Iraqis who fled to the United States after being threatened for pursuing anti-corruption cases, he said.

"Since we have done so little (to undercut corruption), it's easy to see why the government of Iraq has not done more," said Mattil, who left the accountability office last October after having served for a year as its chief of staff. "We have demanded no better."
(NPR)