FASCINATING ASSERTIONS: Made by a former US State Department advisor to the Iraqi Interior Ministry and reconstruction team, Marshall Adame:
1) With the exception of the British, Italians, Japanese and very few others, the US picked up the tab on other coalition forces. KBR/Halliburton has provided much of the logistics support, food and camps maintenance for these contingents. “Isn’t that sort of like ‘paying’ them to be with us?” Adame asks. “If we did not offer to pay, would they have been there at all? Somebody needs to ask who paid for the salaries, transportation, housing, food, offices, and other amenities for most of the ‘Coalition’ members in Iraq.”
2) A couple of hundred Iraqis work at the United States Embassy in Iraq. They are badged and vetted. Yet, the US military is prohibited from employing Iraqi citizens (with a few exceptions). Iraqis who are employed by the US military in Iraq are accompanied by a US soldier every minute they are at work.
3) Many of ‘elected’ Iraqi Government officials still on the government payroll have left Iraq and are living in neighboring Arab countries, France and England. Most are connected to rivaling militias
4) From 2003 until late 2006, the US-controlled Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office determined all determine civil planning priorities and civil “rule of law” plans for Iraq. Iraqi civil servants and elected officials had no input (with the exception of Provincial councils submitting preferences for reconstruction). “On many occasions we built things the Iraqis did not even want and told us so prior to construction.”
5) The State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) exist all over Iraq to establish rule of law, city planning, reconstruction, etc., but do not have a single professional Iraqi citizen on the teams.
6) About 8,000 brand new SUVs and Pickup trucks were delivered to the Iraqi Police under a program called “Project Daytona.” Because the pace was not fast enough for the US Military Commander ( Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who ran the military’s police training program until last September), the Army began a hasty issue of the SUVs and pickup trucks with almost no accountability, no spare parts and no maintenance plan. In late 2006, almost none could be accounted for, but SUVs and Pickups just like the ones paid for by the United States are all over Baghdad and the Iraqi finance Minister, who used to control the Iraqi police, now has dozens at his disposal.
7) The costs for US Army Corps of Engineer controlled projects through the PCO in Iraq are more than double that of other US Government sanctioned contracting units such as the Air Force Contracting group in Iraq known as AFCEE.
8) Many of the US-built military base facilities for the Iraqi Military were looted and stripped of anything of value, i.e., air conditioning, copper wire, bathroom fixtures, furniture, etc., very shortly after being formally turned over to the Iraqi Military.
For Adame’s full list of allegations and observations, see BlueNC.