Congress Surprises Itself by Abolishing Iraq Special Inspector General

It wasn’t in the House version of the military spending bill. Nor was it in the Senate’s version. But thanks to staffers in Congressman Duncan Hunter’s office, the conference committee version carried it. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction is going to shut down on October 1, 2007. That means Halliburton, Parsons and the others who have turned a megabuck or two by trying and failing to rebuild Iraq may continue to do so without worrying about getting caught.

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Bush-appointed Republican lawyer, is the SIGIR, and he has a staff of 55 auditors and inspectors in Mesopotamia. They have issued about 300 reports since starting work in January 2004. Initial worries that he would lead a GOP whitewash were misplaced. That appears to be the problem for Congressman Hunter, who has announced he’s running for the presidency in 2008. Any GOP nominee is going to have the corruption charge to deal with so long as anyone is shining a light on all the money that has been mis-spent in Iraq. And it’s easier to turn off the light rather than fix the situation.

What is most interesting is the surprise from other Republican legislators about the inclusion of this bit in the final bill. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), who is chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, told James Glanz of the New York Times, “It's truly a mystery to me. I looked at what I thought was the final version of the conference report and that provision was not in at that time. The one thing I can confirm is that this was a last-minute insertion.”

Nor was this a case of Senator Collins missing a meeting or failing to read her e-mails. Senator John W. Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement saying Mr. Bowen was “making a valuable contribution to the Congressional and public understanding of this very complex and ever-changing situation in Iraq. Given that his office has performed important work and that much remains to be done. I intend to join Senator Collins in consulting with our colleagues to extend his charter.”

Josh Holly, who works for Congressman Hunter, explained that the idea is to return to a non-wartime footing of having the IGs at State and the Pentagon review US programs overseas – which would be great but the White House says the country’s at war (actually, the military is at war; the country’s at the mall). Rather than have on independent IG with a staff capable of leaping bureaucratic hurdles, responsibility will be divided and no one will ultimately be responsible. Therefore, the incompetence will go uninvestigated, and incompetents will go on well-paid. Apparently, there’s more money in wrecking Iraq than in fixing it, and if there’s no SIGIR, it won’t come back to haunt any CEO involved.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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