In Iraq, corruption unabated

A recent press release from the U.S. embassy in Iraq described a visit to Baghdad by federal district court Judge Joseph Laplante and U.S. Attorney John Kacavas. These New Hampshire men participated in a program that led them to make extravagant claims about the commitment of Iraqi judges and law enforcement officers to the rule of law and the fight against government corruption. Unfortunately, the U.S. Embassy has used these two well-meaning New Hampshire officials to help deceive the American Dolce & Gabbana Handbags people into believing there is a semblance of justice in the government of Iraq, and that therefore the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq "has all been worth it."

I am a retired New Hampshire judge. Like Laplante and Kacavas I went to Iraq to try to help, and in the summer of 2007 I directed the short-lived U.S. Embassy Office of Accountability and Transparency.

OAT's mission included assisting and advising the three Iraqi ministries responsible for fighting corruption in Iraq. The OAT team worked with Judge Radhi al Radhi, the director of the Iraqi Commission for Public Integrity. My tour of duty was cut short, and the OAT program barely outlasted me. This is because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's corrupt government was in a fight to the death with Radhi and his investigators, who had uncovered evidence of the theft of

billions of dollars by Iraqi leaders allied with the prime minister. The CPI had evidence of the murder of hundreds of Sunnis through the operations of the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which was controlled by a close associate of al-Maliki who eventually became the "czar" of the al-Maliki anticorruption program. This is the same so-called anticorruption organization that Kacavas and Laplante visited.

The Iraqi judiciary is corrupt. This is not because any particular judge is dishonest but because an independent and impartial Iraqi judge making decisions against the leadership of Iraq is very likely to end up dead.

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As director of the CPI, Radhi spent more than two years trying to bring justice to the people. When Radhi refused to follow orders to stop investigating al-Maliki's allies, al-Maliki tried to have Radhi removed politically. When that failed, attempts on his life began. Radhi's home was rocketed twice. Within days of my arrival in the Green Zone, a group of American law enforcement officers told us that Radhi was a target and that his investigators were in peril: More than 30 CPI personnel had been murdered in the line of duty, as well as numerous family members who had been kidnapped and killed.

Abandoned

The State Department refused to help. Shoring up al-Maliki's credibility was a U.S. priority, and therefore Radhi and his investigators were abandoned. Ultimately, with his family in grave danger if he stayed in Iraq, Radhi sought U.S. asylum. The embassy ordered State Department and Department of Justice personnel not to assist in their quest for asylum. Some members of the OAT team and other State Department and Department of Justice officials helped Radhi and his lieutenants anyway. We were blacklisted by the embassy for doing so. Finally, members of Congress including Reps. Henry Waxman, Tom Lantos and Sen. Judd Gregg pressured Ambassador Ryan Crocker into assisting the CPI families in Baghdad, and these refugees were granted asylum.

Predictably, upon the departure of Radhi, the criminal cases pursued by the Commission for Public Integrity against officials at the highest levels of the Iraqi government were dropped. Evidence and witnesseReplica Watches
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