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You are here: Home / The Most Important Job in The Bush Administration

The Most Important Job in The Bush Administration

by | 29 Comments

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As always, the departmental Inspectors General.

If the allegations in it are true, the State Department’s IG, whose entire function in life is to ferret out waste, fraud, and corruption, has instead been covering not just for the very things he’s supposedly in charge of finding, but slavery. This, no doubt, is just one more example of the Bush administration’s desire to bring freedom to the Middle East.

Oversight makes it hard to contravene the law.

Reader Interactions

29Comments

  1. 1.

    pharniel

    “slavery” is sooooo 1800s
    they were FLU’s, and we were just kicking up our FLU useage slider on the old imperial screen.
    nothing to see here..

  2. 2.

    Punchy

    Only he had a peculiar method, according to Waxman’s investigation. First, he insisted on doing the report entirely by himself and shut out his staff. And instead of seeking out the source of the allegations, he allowed the contractor to choose the employees that he’d interview. He ultimately interviewed six employees.

    Sometimes it’s really, really hard to remember that these are grown, adult, mature men….and not 4th graders on a playground.

    To think that an educated, professional man could do all this and NOT think that others would find it quasi-criminal is simply mind-blowing in its hubris and stupidity.

    Of course, surely this man will skate, so stupid, yes, but with consequences?….no chance

  3. 3.

    Zifnab

    the State Department’s IG, whose entire function in life is to ferret out waste, fraud, and corruption, has instead been covering not just for the very things he’s supposedly in charge of finding, but slavery.

    9/11 changed everything?

  5. 5.

    Ugh

    To think that an educated, professional man could do all this and NOT think that others would find it quasi-criminal is simply mind-blowing in its hubris and stupidity.

    Hubris and stupidity are good words for him.

  8. 8.

    whippoowill

    OK. you should have the guts to tell me i”m being banned and why. I guess i was wrong bout you. bye

  9. 9.

    Ugh

    If anyone wants to see State’s IG’s prior testimony in front of Waxman’s committee, it should be the first link in the list here. His prepared remarkst start at about 2:24 and questioning follows soon thereafter.

  10. 10.

    Wilfred

    Iraq and Afghanistan are American colonies, something that every educated Arab and Afghani understands in actual and historical terms but for Americans means nothing. Colonial administrators are there to run the colony as effectively as possible, not worry about the rights of surplus labor.

    This, no doubt, is just one more example of the Bush administration’s desire to bring freedom to the Middle East.

    Correct, so what? Colonialism was always about finding new markets for capitalism, nothing else. And the only political factor needed for capitalism is freedom – free markets, free transfer of goods and services, etc. It most certainly does not need democracy (witness Chile under the junta). Bush delivered exactly what he promised – the social conditions of 1840’s Manchester.

    So we’re to be shocked at labor conditions in Iraq/Af? Conditions there mimic the perfect storm of capitalism that prevailed in mid-19th century England – total freedom, no oversight and vile exploitation of the wretched of the earth.

  11. 11.

    Third Eye Open

    PFFFT!

    Damn you guys are dense…what is that, one, maybe two or three US Embassies built on the backs of forced labor…and we have over 150 of them in the world…what about all those other ones that weren’t build by slaves, HUH! Did’ja think about that?

    BTW–Happy Int’l Talk Like a Pirate Day, ARRRRRGH!!!!1!1!!!

  12. 12.

    John Cole

    OK. you should have the guts to tell me i’‘m being banned and why. I guess i was wrong bout you. bye

    You were not banned. The only persons I have banned in the last year were thymezone and JWW, and both of them are back. And I didn’t even ban Thymezone, I gave him a 3-4 day time out. JWW appears to be like herpes, and comes back no matter what you do.

    My guess:

    At some point in the past 12 hours you posted a comment that had multiple url’s. That got sucked into the spam filter. I woke up this morning, saw 364 comments in moderation (mostly selling erectile dysfunction crap), and marked them all as spam and deleted them. You got caught up in the mess.

    Now you are free to post as you wish.

  14. 14.

    whippoorwill

    Sorry John for my remark you quoted in your post, I tend to overreact when funny things happen with the computer which I don’t understand [which is almost everything]. I’m slowly learning, though.

  16. 16.

    Evinfuilt

    Dubai, Greenzone in Baghdad, whatever… I mean its a job right. right? See, we’re giving people who wouldn’t have work a nice cushy job, see. We’re being super nice. They may have thought they were going to work somewhere else (safe) but … damn it, I can’t be sarcastic about this.

  17. 17.

    ThymeZone

    Oversight is for pussies. People who can shoot other people in the face, and go home and have dinner, don’t need no stinking oversight.

    And I didn’t even ban Thymezone, I gave him a 3-4 day time out.

    I prefer “sabbatical.”

  19. 19.

    ThymeZone

    how’s the job market in AZ, Phoenix specifically for IT, if ya know?

    Anecdotally, the job market in general here is in boom mode, unemployment is low and demand is high.

    Recent data for June showed Arizona was ranked as the 2 nd fastest job growth state in the nation, with three states showing job losses.

    In IT, I would say it is healthy, but not in boom mode. However IT is a very niche-prone job market. If you have the right set of skills you can choose your situation. If you don’t, you might have be less choosy. You know how that goes.

  21. 21.

    ThymeZone

    looking at maybe moving there sometime in the next 8 months…

    Let me know when you get out here, I will be glad to give you the “I grew up in this town” tour. This includes the Summer Survival Tips and Mastering The Most Important Skill for Living in Phoenix — Always Parking In Shade.

    Plus, you know, beer and where the good mexican food is.

  22. 22.

    montysano

    All: harumph,harumph,harumph
    Governor: I didnt hear a harumph out of that guy!
    Lamar: Give the governor a harumph!!
    HARUMPH!
    Governor LePetomaine: Watch your ass!

  23. 23.

    Dreggas

    ThymeZone Says:

    Let me know when you get out here, I will be glad to give you the “I grew up in this town” tour. This includes the Summer Survival Tips and Mastering The Most Important Skill for Living in Phoenix—Always Parking In Shade.

    Plus, you know, beer and where the good mexican food is.

    Will do, just waiting for the lease to be done with here and the divorce to be finalized. Not much reason really to stay in So-Cal and have a friend in Phoenix.

  25. 25.

    TenguPhule

    People who can shoot other people in the face, and go home and have dinner, don’t need no stinking oversight.

    What they do need is not fit for print.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. […] Facing a contracting embarrassment of abu Ghraib proportions, the State Department needs a credible oversight team now more than ever. Too bad for them the current Inspector General, Howard J. Krongard, already pulled up the drawbridge against accusations of fraud, corruption, mismanagement and (not kidding) slavery. An article in today’s WaPo covers that ground again, but in a shocking twist the reporters uncovered at least one case that IG Krongard does seems to care about: […]

  2. […] Answer: anybody who noticed that the State Dept. Inspector General cares a lot more about litigating his own family than doing his damn job. […]

  3. […] What finally drove “cookie” Krongard to quit? Under normal circumstances being credibly accused of actively covering up departmental abuses that range from ordinary contracting fraud to slavery would do it. If that somehow didn’t work his, how shall we say, innovative personnel policies would finish the job. […]