Leila Fadel, McClatchy's lead Iraq correspondent, reports that the ports surrounding Basra are now almost totally free of corruption and are able to work for the good of the country. This is due to the government's taking over of the ports in March. (This, by the way, is the Maliki government we are talking about.) There is more trade flowing through it which means more revenue and most of the corruption seems to have been exterminated; the British estimate that revenue and activity has doubled, productivity has increased and corruption dramatically fallen.
On the same day Fadel's article was published the Pentagon appeared before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform to tell us that their auditors - not those of the Special Inspector General - had found some irregularities. In the words of the Pentagon's Deputy Inspector General, "we were giving or providing a payment without any basis for the payment." What we were giving was $8.2 billion of our money.
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