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:
Inspector General for Iraq Under Investigation
FBI, Congress Among Those Probing Allegations of Overspending, Mismanagement
By Robin Wright - Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 14, 2007; Page A01
Over the past four years, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen Jr. and his staff have probed allegations of waste and fraud in the $22 billion U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq. Their work has led to arrests, indictments and millions of dollars in fines. And it has earned Bowen, who had been a legal adviser to President Bush, many admirers among both parties on Capitol Hill for his efforts to identify overspending and mismanagement.Hmmm. It's not that I have ever trusted explicitly the SIG. After all, this is the Bush Administration. However, the work of this office has been quite illuminating, especially that initial report of three years ago showing $9 billion of Iraq's own money missing.
But Bowen's office has also been roiled by allegations of its own overspending and mismanagement. Current and former employees have complained about overtime policies that allowed 10 staff members to earn more than $250,000 each last year. They have questioned the oversight of a $3.5 million book project about Iraq's reconstruction modeled after the 9/11 Commission report. And they have alleged that Bowen and his deputy have improperly snooped into their staff's e-mail messages.
On the other had, I don't see any effort to pursue L. Paul Bremer or any of the other Coalition Provisional Authority figures responsible for the looting. In fact, Bremer was allowed to genuflect before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform on February 6, 2007 and weave a tale of how well they represented the interests of the Iraqi people. He basically told them anything wrong with Iraq was all Saddam Hussein's fault, that things were terrible when the CPA began and they did nothing but try to quickly "get money into the hands of the Iraqi people," and that no report shows anything was stolen.
It would have been nice if Susan Collins's committee had been on the job accumulating a verifiable documentary record when it mattered during 2003-2005 in order to evaluate the truth of Bremer's claims. But, as I pointed out last week, she was too busy supporting a media spectacular about the Oil-for-Food program at that time to even notice something was very rotten in Iraq.
It's so clear that the Republican administration simply did not want the truth about what they were doing in Iraq to breath any air. They still don't. And as Collins Watch points out, Susan Collins continues to carry this water through the PR show with Bowen because she "still desperately craves the Bush administration's seal of approval."
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