Iraq in the News

Via Steve Benen, two stories…

The first, from TPM, indicates that Blackwater is up and running in Iraq again. Apparently the Iraqi government doesn’t want them there and they’re not subject to Iraqi laws. Maliki may be a corrupt thug, and certainly no Imre Nagy or Alexander Dubček, but I bet most Iraqis can guess what it must have felt like to be a Hungarian in 1956 or a Czechoslovakian in the tail end of August 1968.

Then there’s this story in the NY Times:

Military officials said Thursday that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan — including food, water and shelter — were under review by criminal investigators, double the amount the Pentagon had previously disclosed.

In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and matériel for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities, the officials said.

Between providing arms to the enemy, incompetence, and corruption on a massive scale, its a wonder this war is being prosecuted as inexpensively as it is. I gotta give GW props for that.