Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Incompetence breeds incompetence
Today's LA Times has a piece about John A. "Jack" Shaw, who apparently conducted unauthorized investigations of Iraq reconstruction efforts and used their results to push for lucrative contracts for friends and their business clients.
The truely interesting part about this story was pointed out to me by Kevin:
In December, Shaw flew to Kuwait to inspect the port. The military refused to allow him into the facility, however, because of the danger involved, Pentagon sources said.
Shaw and several staffers then went to the port dressed like employees of KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary that has a contract to supply the military with food and other items.
In a KBR hat, Shaw and his staff spent less than an hour at the port, taking pictures and talking with soldiers, current and former Pentagon sources said. The group documented well-known problems there, including the presence of unexploded mines.
So the Undersecretary for Defense for the US government can't get access to a port but an employee of Kellogg, Brown and Root can? I guess that makes it clear who writes the rules in Iraq.
When coalition officials learned that Shaw was at the port, they made a frantic effort to locate him, but didn't reach him until after his return to Kuwait.
"I get this call from [the U.S. military command in Iraq] that said: 'We have an undersecretary of Defense roaming the countryside. We need to locate and secure him,' " recalled a former CPA official. "He's in the country illegally, but we can't arrest him, so we let him finish the tour."
How is it that the guy is illegally roaming in places where he's not supposed to and he can't be arrested? Does this mean that other US government officials can engage in illegal activity in Iraq and not be arrested too?
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The truely interesting part about this story was pointed out to me by Kevin:
In December, Shaw flew to Kuwait to inspect the port. The military refused to allow him into the facility, however, because of the danger involved, Pentagon sources said.
Shaw and several staffers then went to the port dressed like employees of KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary that has a contract to supply the military with food and other items.
In a KBR hat, Shaw and his staff spent less than an hour at the port, taking pictures and talking with soldiers, current and former Pentagon sources said. The group documented well-known problems there, including the presence of unexploded mines.
So the Undersecretary for Defense for the US government can't get access to a port but an employee of Kellogg, Brown and Root can? I guess that makes it clear who writes the rules in Iraq.
When coalition officials learned that Shaw was at the port, they made a frantic effort to locate him, but didn't reach him until after his return to Kuwait.
"I get this call from [the U.S. military command in Iraq] that said: 'We have an undersecretary of Defense roaming the countryside. We need to locate and secure him,' " recalled a former CPA official. "He's in the country illegally, but we can't arrest him, so we let him finish the tour."
How is it that the guy is illegally roaming in places where he's not supposed to and he can't be arrested? Does this mean that other US government officials can engage in illegal activity in Iraq and not be arrested too?
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