Maine Owl

Maine U.S. Senator uses her little shovel to dig for waste, fraud, and abuse

With some fine spade work begun by Gerald at Turn Maine Blue, Senator Collins's reputation as Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is getting some well-deserved detailed scrutiny. Thanks to Gerald for the link-back to the piece I posted a few weeks ago on the double standard held by Collins concerning Iraq corruption in the U.S./CPA versus in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program.

Lately there has been enough noise from blue quarters (and I'd like to think places like Maine Owl) that the senator's staff has had to chime in, singing the praises of the boss: "The assertion that Collins has been anything but a leader on oversight issues related to Iraq and federal contracting is absolutely false. Collins' leadership in exposing waste, fraud and abuse in federal contracting and in asking tough questions is well known."

Here's what Gerald is doing:

About those other hearings: what Collins did investigate
by: Gerald - Wed Jan 30, 2008 at 11:45 AM EST

...what were some of these "dozens of hearings" that were held. And our government still being somewhat transparent (despite the efforts of Dick Cheney), I found myself at the website for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which has this handy page listing all of them.

He goes on to discuss investigations of SARS preparedness, vacant government property, and Pentagon travel. These are all areas where the taxpayer is being fleeced, to be sure. But by comparison to losses in Iraq clearly under Collins's less-than-watchful eye, an effort of power projection now approaching $1 trillion in cost to taxpayers (not to mention the human toll), they are pocket change.

I have many questions about the nature of this beast. Is it fair to conclude that Collins is a piker in a swamp of corruption that's been SOP in the Republican Congress? Makes me wonder, Is she is allowed to look at certain things, but not the elephants in the room? Is her role to be an operative in the radical system of what John Dean calls "conservatives without conscience," or is she merely being "managed" by those power brokers?

Bowen, Collins, and Allen appear on January 18 broadcast:


View 1/2-hour program (Maine Watch with Jenifer Rooks)

Collins and Bowen business breakfast show at Husson College, Bangor, January 3:


Listen to 1-hour audio-only program (Maine Public Radio, Speaking in Maine series)

Review
Oversight of post-invasion Iraq has become something of a Maine Public Broadcasting cause du jour. They easily were convinced to follow the lead of Senator Susan Collins during her PR tour earlier this month with the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen. I'll keep this fairly short today because I have a major post on the double standard of Senator Collins with respect to her silence on post-invasion U.S. corruption versus the hysterics of her Governmental Affairs Committee/ Investigations Subcommittee (led by Senator Norm Coleman) on comparatively smaller corruption in the old U.N. Oil-for-Food program. I refer readers to that for a lot more analysis.

No one in either the Maine Watch program or the radio broadcast mentions the Oil-for-Food investigations so the audience never gets the chance to evaluate the measures by which the politicians decide corruption is worthy of hysterics, or silence.

Fortunately, Representative Tom Allen (Maine, 1st District) was interviewed in the Maine Watch program. Otherwise, there would have been no mention of the fact that the Republican Congress dropped the oversight ball in the post-invasion period. And now, Collins acts like the savings of "$53 million" in taxpayer money through Bowen's efforts is some kind of feather in her cap. Tom Allen does mention the $9 billion of Iraq's money that simply went missing. Those numbers make Bowen look like a piker and Collins ridiculous--Bowen never really pursued the bigger sums. But there is no further analysis.

I do agree with Tom that for the most part, Bowen has done his job. It's Congress that has not. The investigations into Bowen's office are said to be the result of the typical "disgruntled former employee." Quite a bit of air time is spent discussing those charges, and the mysterious attempt by "unknown" House Republicans to ax Bowen a little over a year ago. This intrigue may make for good Post headlines, but it hardly helps us understand that the entire U.S. presence in Iraq has been run like a criminal enterprise.

One telling moment in the Bowen interview is where he describes how his Iraqi counterpart had to leave Iraq running for his life. The pre-invasion notion that Iraq was run by "bad men," as President Bush was fond of pointing out, seems to have been eclipsed by the wave of crime America swept in.

My criticism of Rooks is that she really had not done any homework that could have given her a fuller picture of how the U.S. acquired control of Iraq's finances in 2003 and how the U.S.-run CPA handled them, giving her a basis for some better questions. For example, she could have asked, "Senator Collins, why did the Bush Administration from the beginning of the occupation insist on 9- and 10-figure, no-bid, cost plus contracts for Halliburton and Bectel? Why did Congress fail to insist on accountability since 2003? Why was the international oversight committee that was to have been established by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483 blocked by the U.S.?"

I guess I can't blame her too much. There has been reporting on this in the New York Times and Washington Post, for example, but you would really have had to be paying attention in order to assemble the story. But isn't that what research is for?

Un-qualified Reagan genuflect


With the Reno Gazette editorial board on Monday January 14

Via Matt Stoller, here is a transcription:

Obama: I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

It's the notion of "excesses of the 1960s and 1970s" that is troubling. Obama evidently recognizes approvingly "change" that, for example, rolled back policies that ensured civil rights, prevented old people from dying because they couldn't pay the doctor bill, gave workers health and safety in the workplace, and protected the environment from unbridled corporate "dynamism." (All policies strengthened during the 60s and 70s but attacked during the Reagan era)

There is nary a peep from Obama critiquing Reaganaut policy--for example "excesses" of the national security state, Pentagon budget, nuclear industries, proxy wars, or financial shenanigans leading to the S & L crisis. This just speaks volumes to me that an Obama Administration would repudiate none of these "excesses"--which stubbornly have remained features of our country for three decades.

Perhaps the culinary workers will have some regrets about endorsing a guy who approves of Reagan--a president that made a career of union busting.

Post columnist on Collins/Bowen PR gig

Collins Watch picked up [ht] a very interesting short item in Washington Post political columnist Al Kamen's entry for Friday January 11:

Kamen: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr., whose own office is under investigation by the FBI and three other entities for waste and mismanagement, raised a few eyebrows last week when he showed up in Maine with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and told the state's leading paper she was the "most consistent and effective supporter of our oversight in Iraq." ...

First, I hadn't realized that Bowen's operation itself is under investigation. I located Robin Wright's Post story describing the probe from a month ago:

Was at Husson College January 3

Maine Public Radio will carry the speech that was referenced here, in the Maine Owl post concerning the double standard US Senator Susan Collins has displayed with respect to corruption in the UN-Iraq Oil-for-Food program versus that of the US occupation.

For Maine listeners (and for those connecting to their live stream), it'll be on at 1pm today.

Republican US Senator in tough re-election bid escorts Iraq reconstruction inspector on PR tour last week, including Bangor appearance; but her inaction on US corruption during 2003 to 2005 (with deadly consequences) while at the same time hammering at the old UN Oil-for-Food program reveals deep hypocrisy

I did see the notice in the newspaper for a talk featuring Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen that took place Thursday morning at Husson College in Bangor. Darn, wish I'd gone as I'd loved to have stirred up a show that gingerly outlined a few comparatively smallish incidents of theft of taxpayer and Iraqi resources by US contractors that properly were prosecuted.

The fine Maine progressive/Democratic websites Collins Watch and Turn Maine Blue have noted the Collins/Bowen tour and this event. Gerald at Turn Maine Blue correctly terms Collin's PR effort with Bowen--successfully placing fluff in the Portland Press Herald--as "hypocrisy":

The Hypocrisy: Susan Collins and SIG Stuart Bowen in Maine

...not only did Collins not look into the mismanagement and malfeasance that has characterized the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, she refused to do so even after her colleagues requested her to...

Collins Watch and Turn Maine Blue have done a fine job of noting the disinterest Senator Collins has displayed regarding the deep corruption of the Bush Administration with respect to its looting of Iraq, before which any troubles with the Oil-for-Food program during Saddam Hussein's time pale by comparison.

For example, a September 2003 letter from Senator Frank Lautenberg to Senator Collins requesting that she fulfill her oversight duties, then as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, regarding "Iraqi reconstruction contracts that were awarded through a closed or limited bidding process" fell on blind eyes. It's about time that someone points out this history and tries to get the mainstream media to respond with something other than fluff.

My opinion is that the history of this hypocrisy right up to the present day is much, much worse than even the pretty serious foregoing example suggests. Blame is not limited to Susan Collins and there is plenty of capitulation by Democrats, though some Democrats like Lautenberg, Sen. Byron Dorgan, and Rep. Henry Waxman are much, much better than any Republican with respect to Iraq corruption.

But Collins and her senate colleague, Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota, are especially culpable because they established a striking double standard for Iraq corruption when they became lead inquisitors in a high-profile media show involving supposed improprieties at the UN regarding the Iraq Oil-for-Food program. As Collins herself suggests in the statement reproduced below, Oil-for-Food saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who suffered under the brutal sanctions enforced by stringent Clinton Administration policy during the 1990s.

So what I want to do is take all this another step and remind readers about the hysterical media episodes of "investigation" into Oil-for-Food, beginning early in 2004. This started a year after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and months after indications of corruption by the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority and its contractors were buried by Senator Collins. By mid-2004 Claudia Rosett on the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Jonathan Hunt of Fox News were weaving the Oil-for-Food story. Suddenly Collins's eyes opened wide.