Breaking the Silence/Newsweek - Former Insider Speaks Out

[kpete]

Breaking the Silence
A prominent former insider is criticizing the administration’s handling of Iraq’s reconstruction. And there’s more to come.



Andrew Natsios finally speaks out. Having left the administration, Natsios now blasts the Iraq contracting process that he helped oversee: “The contractors they chose weren’t the best people. I heard lots of stories. The staff would come in and say a group of retired officers has set up a business and they got this contract, and they didn’t have any qualifications for it.” And Natsios said nothing until now. 4:26 pm |

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/23/andrew-natsios-speaks-out/

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

Updated: 7:40 p.m. ET March 22, 2006

March 22, 2006 - Andrew Natsios has taken a lot of flak over his role in Iraq. The longtime director of America's foreign-aid program has been pilloried for his April 2003 remark, in an ABC News interview, that the U.S. government would spend no more than $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq. In the ensuing three years, Natsios, a lifelong Republican, has played the loyal soldier for the administration. He regularly defended the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq even as he was lumped with other errant prognosticators like Paul Wolfowitz (That's “wildly off the mark") and Dick Cheney ("We will be greeted as liberators"). After Natsios resigned in January to take a teaching post at Georgetown University, he maintained his silence about Iraq.


But this week, for the first time, Natsios publicly gave vent to his long-suppressed frustrations over the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq occupation. In an interview with NEWSWEEK on Tuesday, he harshly criticized the Coalition Provisional Authority led by L. Paul Bremer III for botching the reconstruction effort and allowing ill-qualified or corrupt contractors to dominate it. "They didn't have systems set up. They were very dismissive of these processes," he said. His U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was marginalized despite its expertise, and the CPA "didn't hire the best people," he said. "We were just watching it unfold. They were constantly hitting at our people, screaming at them. They were abusive."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11965317/site/newsweek/

[MADem]

1. Whaddaya bet they try to trash the guy? They might have trouble, though

Jim Mitchell, the spokesman for the special Iraqi inspector general, says his office is currently looking at 57 possible cases of corruption and fraud, and he expects more arrests in coming days. But only four contractors and officials have been arrested so far. That's not a lot, considering the potential size of the Iraq corruption problem. Maybe it really is a free-fraud zone.

[Kansas Wyatt]

2. Could this be what Nick Berg discovered in Iraq

When he went there, and threatened to blow the fraud wide open in an election year?

[On the Road]

3. Oh, Well It's No Wonder Then

at least with Bechtel, you know they're capable of actually doing the work.