The Iraq Coverups Are Starting to Unravel

The coverup is usually more important than the crime, and that's certainly the case in this unfortunate friendly fire incident which is just now coming to light. And I don't think it's the only one we don't know about, either.

A cockpit recording of a US pilot opening fire on UK forces in Iraq was leaked today, exposing the errors that led to the death of a British soldier.

In the recording, the pilot of one of two US A-10 Thunderbolt jets involved in the attack says, after they realise their mistake: "We're in jail dude".

The other pilot, who opened fire, weeps, saying: "God dammit."

The Sun newspaper today published the transcript after obtaining a tape of the recording of the moment that one of the jets launched two devastating attacks on a British armoured convoy, killing Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull.

The Ministry of Defence initially told L/Cpl Hull's family the recording did not exist, but it found its way into the hands of Oxford coroner Andrew Walker, who is hearing the inquest into the soldier's death.

US authorities would not release the tape for use in the inquest, but they got out anyway. Friendly fire incidents are unfortunate but a fact of war. What's not acceptable is the downplaying of them or outright lying about them, as we see here.

Here's another cover-up, and while military intelligence is spinning this as something they just discovered, I'm highly dubious. After all, the guy's using the same name!

A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki's government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence."

They're using the Iranian red herring to obfuscate the fact that, in their Purple Finger haste, they pushed through a set of elections where candidates couldn't even disclose their names for fear of being assassinated, and where ethnic identity was the only thing that mattered. Ordinary Iraqis didn't know who they were voting for. So this is a consequence of the US putting all its faith in the Purple Finger and forgetting about the consequences, and then covering this up (surely it was known as soon as they saw the guy's name) when they desperately needed evidence to justify an attack on Iran.

The final coverup concerns the loss of $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the subject of four days of hearings by new cop on the beat Henry Waxman and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The ideologues and incompetents responsible for this theft from the public treasury have never had to answer for this, which has enabled the corruption. And now that they're being asked questions, they're showing the arrogance you'd expect:

What happened to billions in Iraqi funds that were overseen by the Coalition Provisional Authority? That's not "important," according to David Oliver, the former Director of Management and Budget of the agency.

A recording of the unfortunately candid remarks, previously made by Oliver to the BBC, were played during this morning's oversight hearing by Rep. Diane Watson (D-CA). The hearing has focused on the CPA's administration of nearly $9 billion in Iraqi funds in 2003 and 2004 -- money that Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has said was inadequately accounted for.

"I have no idea, I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't - nor do I actually think it is important," Oliver says on the tape . "Billions of dollars of their money disappeared, yes I understand, I'm saying what difference does it make?"

Via Digby, The Financial Times of London is reporting that $5 billion in funds were just handed out in huge bricks from the backs of pickup trucks. In fact, I've seen this alleged before, but now the source is a Democratic lawmaker. This, in fact, is a symptom of turning over the functions of government to private contractors who aren't as interested in foreign policy or winning hearts and minds as they are making profits for their shareholders.

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

This is why residents of the Gulf Coast can't figure out where there money is at, because there's no incentive for it to get to them in a timely manner. Iraq under the CPA was handled in much the same way, and there are now investigators in Congress who aren't happy with how cavalierly their money has been spent.

Iraq was a lab experiment for conservative ideas, and an opportunity for the venal and the dishonest, as well as a war zone where tragedy was happening on a daily basis. You cannot sweep all of this under the rug, and some of the strands of evidence are slowly coming to light.