Everyone has waited for the smoke to clear, and viola, the rats–the Coalition Provisional Authority (C.P.A.) that is–have to do some explaining, and if possible some serious accounting. The tone varies from being argumentative and provoking. It has also galvanized someone else’s belief that indeed there is corruption and that the US government “cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur.” The level of discourse is already appropriate to young adults. The only problem it posed is the nature of the issue.
Although “Billions over Baghdad” is good to be read, the issue does not appeal well to the majority of the adolescents except to those interested in listening intrigues. The issue never went to center stage except for some congressional hearings and immediately after the series of hearings it all gone like nothing happened. Another setback is the quantity and quality of details. The authors, however, can’t be faulted in the lack of details because a controversy like this is so secretive that people inside refused to talk.
Now the hanging inquiries left by the authors dwell on the certainty of accounting the lost $9 billion out of the $12 billion shipped from Federal Reserve to Baghdad and how it vanished so quickly. It also made ourselves ask why the people in Department of Defense and C.P.A. are so unwilling to talk about the unaccounted $9 Billion. The claim of the author is that the people behind the C.P.A. and even the Department of Defense had allowed all the circumstances for the cesspool to propagate. Consequently, the Department of Defense hasn’t shown any determination to resolve the scandal.
The secretary of Defense is reluctant to clear the matter and C.P.A. administrator L. Paul Bremer III has also decided to let go of the contractors who profited. All the Department of Defense has done is to shrug it off. The author is correct in pointing out that the situation is indeed odd. With the way how the administration handled the scandal and its jaded effort to put the responsible behind bars, the C.P.A. mess might not be proven under court proceedings. Another claim rightfully pointed out by the author is the existence of widespread corruption.
They pointed out that opportunity of corruption exists everywhere from earning kickbacks, having ghost employees and bloating the charge even for daily meals. They also pointed out the widespread mismanagement and the failure to exercise command responsibility. It was very distressing when an army officer representing C.P.A. “had crossed out the original price and doubled it” after the hospital administrator signed the contract. Another was what Frank Willis has encountered during his stint as a senior adviser to the Iraqi transportation ministry.
“The neat bundles of cash looked almost like play money and the temptation to handle them was irresistible,” Willis said when he returned to his office to find “piles and piles of shrink-wrapped $100 bills stacked on a table” (vanityfair.com). Good enough that the Billions over Baghdad has included the NorthStar and the Custer Battles in the frame to magnify more the claim that there are corruption and mismanagement. It was a diligent effort by Steele to uncover the shrouded NorthStar; and his effort have made it clear to everyone that the C.P.A.
was never sincere in the way it discharged its duties and
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