In the Twilight Zone of Bush administration priorities, those who fail get rewarded, while those who succeed get fired. The fate of Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction [tag]Stuart Bowen[/tag] is one of the more disheartening examples.
Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.
And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.
The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.
It’s an almost perfect example of how the GOP approaches the war and legislating. Identify the one guy who’s been doing his job perfectly, fire him, but keep it secret because of how utterly shameful the decision truly is.
It’s pretty easy to see who wins and who loses here. For those keeping score at home, it’s fraud, corruption, waste, and abuse 912, taxpayers and effective government 0.
Regular readers may recall that I’ve mentioned this before, but the background on who Bowen is and why he’s getting fired is important.
The president chose [tag]Bowen[/tag] to lead the office of the Special Inspector General for [tag]Iraq[/tag] [tag]Reconstruction[/tag] in January 2004. At the time, it seemed like a typical set-up job for the [tag]Bush[/tag] gang: the president needed to respond to criticism about corruption and mismanagement, but instead of asking an independent voice to begin serious oversight, Bush chose Bowen, a loyal friend, senior member of Bush’s gubernatorial campaign team in 1994, a Bush attorney during the Florida recount debacle in 2000, and an associate counsel in Bush’s White House. For Dems hoping for a strong, independent voice to exercise real oversight of Iraqi reconstruction, Bowen’s resume offered little encouragement.
But Bowen surprised everyone — including, presumably, the White House. Bowen has not only taken his job as inspector general seriously, he’s been the leading figure in exposing fraud and corruption in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Bowen “has become one of the most prominent and credible critics of how the administration has handled the occupation of Iraq,” and considering his record, it’s a more-than-fair description. The guy even took on Halliburton.
Quietly, Republicans in Congress and the White House started to try and undermine Bowen, putting new Iraq spending where Bowen wouldn’t be able to see it or check for corruption.
By law, Mr. Bowen can oversee only relief and reconstruction funds. Because the new money technically comes from a different source, Mr. Bowen, who has 55 auditors on the ground in Iraq, will be barred from overseeing how the new money is spent. Instead, the funds will be overseen by the State Department’s inspector general office, which has a much smaller staff in Iraq and warned in testimony to Congress in the fall that it lacked the resources to continue oversight activities in Iraq.
When the secret change that allows more corruption came to light, everyone naturally asked how and why this measure was included in the Pentagon spending bill. In fact, the WSJ reported that a group of senators, upon learning about the provision that would circumvent Bowen, offered an amendment that would have kept his oversight duties in place. For reasons that are not altogether clear, sponsors of the amendment were denied the chance to bring their measure to the floor for a vote.
So, who wanted the change? Who else? “Republican Appropriations Committee aides say legislators shifted the Iraq money to the foreign operations accounts at the request of the White House,” the WSJ reported.
As Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) put it at the time, “This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to shut down the only effective oversight of this massive reconstruction program which has been plagued by mismanagement and fraud.”
And now those same Republicans are finishing the job, quietly inserting a provision that will get Bowen out of Iraq (and Halliburton’s hair) once and for all.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into the bill. “It’s truly a mystery to me,” Collins said. “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.”
In other words, when no one’s looking, Republicans quietly fired the only guy who’s standing up for accountability and oversight in Iraq. Typical.