CNN: US-occupied Iraq crippled by rampant corruption
In Congressional hearings on corruption in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faces an uphill battle. A newly leaked document by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad suggests how bad Iraqi government corruption might be.
In the hearings, an unhappy Chairman Waxman demanded answers from one State Dept. official: "Why can you talk about the positive things and not the negative things? Shouldn't we have the whole picture?" The official was not willing to discuss the negative aspects of Iraqi corruption in the hearing and under oath, saying that he would only answer those questions "in an appropriate setting."
CNN reports on an earlier draft of the corruption study, which says that the Iraqi government "is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anti-corruption laws." The report goes on to slam Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office, saying it has "demonstrated an open hostility to the concept of an independent agency to investigate or prosecute corruption cases."
The following video is from CNN's The Situation Room, broadcast on October 4, 2007:
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