Pentagon official is under investigation

[sabra]

Source: LA Times

Undersecretary Paul Brinkley, who heads efforts to boost business in Iraq, faces allegations of mismanagement.

WASHINGTON -- A Bush political appointee and former Silicon Valley executive who has faced opposition in his bid to bail out Iraq's struggling factories is under investigation by the Defense Department on mismanagement allegations.

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul A. Brinkley, who heads an economic task force in Baghdad, is accused of mismanaging government money and engaging in public drunkenness and sexual harassment, a Defense Department spokesman said last week.

The allegations stem from a 12-page memo filed this month by two former members of the task force. The charges are being investigated by the Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General.

Bob Love, director of operations for the task force, said he was shocked by the allegations, saying they were related to "personnel issues." He said the former task force members were dismissed before they filed their complaint.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-factories27aug27,0,1235171.story?coll=la-home-center

[panader0]

1. I can forgive the public drunkeness (just don't drive)

but "mismanaging government money"? What that usually means is that he's getting rich on our taxes.

[havocmom]

2. or he is the designated fall guy for the missing billions

And, wasn't Gonzo just over there in Iraq?

Havocdad said Gonzo would be resigning soon after that trip... (Picking up your severance pay-off, Gonzo?)

[seafan]

3. There's something deeper than *public drunkenness and sexual harassment* going on here, imho.

It http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-factories27aug27,0,1235171.story?coll=la-home-center">appears he's not towing the *privatization* line of the administration in Iraq.


By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
August 27, 2007

.....

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul A. Brinkley, who heads an economic task force in Baghdad, is accused of mismanaging government money and engaging in public drunkenness and sexual harassment, a Defense Department spokesman said last week.

.....

Although Brinkley has won support from military commanders for his campaign for taxpayer-funded investment in Iraqi factories, the plan is opposed by State Department officials here who believe the former state-run factories should be privatized.
Brinkley has argued that Iraqi factories need a jump-start to compete with the international companies now serving Iraq, importing everything from fruit to air conditioners.
"They're so worried about having socialism here," Brinkley said of his critics at the State Department. "The free market already won. A free market will take hold -- they just need a shot."

But critics note that despite Brinkley's efforts and millions spent on the factories, only nine of about 200 have been restarted, creating about 4,000 jobs -- fewer than the 11,000 Brinkley's task force projected in December.
Only one U.S. company has contracted with the factories. And the task force's "Buy Iraqi" campaign, which Brinkley launched this month at a news conference in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, has not yet convinced big retailers that Iraqi factories can deliver on orders, given the country's fragile infrastructure and poor security.

Brinkley is asking U.S. department stores to create "Buy Iraqi" sections in the holiday season to market leather coats and handbags from Baghdad, hand-woven carpets from Kirkuk and clothing with hip-hop motifs from Mosul.
Sami Araji, the deputy minister for industry and mining, said Iraqi goods could compete against low-cost imports from countries such as China, India and Thailand, and he hoped that American shoppers would see them as a way to help the Iraqi economy.
Only Memphis-based Shelmar Inc. has signed on so far, ordering 2,000 items from a youth clothing line for its Marty's apparel stores.

.....

Brinkley acknowledged that Iraq was still too risky an investment for many companies, and cited that as a reason why the government needed to rebuild existing facilities, rather than bank on attracting new ones. Many of the 600,000 furloughed state workers lack the skills for the service industry jobs the State Department hopes to attract.
"If you haven't created an economy, an industrial base, you can't grow," he said on a recent visit to an automobile factory in Iskandariya, just south of Baghdad, gesturing to workers assembling a bus. "This is industrialization. This is sustained employment. We could blow this country open with industrial activity."

In 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority deemed the factories obsolete, shuttered most of them and rewrote Iraqi law to bar further state investment. Four years later, unemployment is at 60%, with the average worker supporting eight dependents, twice the U.S. average, Brinkley said.

.....

The highlight of the visit was the factory floor, in a warehouse the size of an airport hangar. Visitors walked past scores of workers welding and painting metal bus chasses, across a floor strewn with painted panels, the air thick with the smell of paint and turpentine.
Brinkley first visited the factory a year ago, at the urging of military commanders who saw it as a strategic investment, straddling a fault line between Sunni and Shiite Muslim areas. At the time, the assembly line was all but idle. Today, despite sectarian tensions, the factory has not been looted or attacked, leaving necessary machinery intact.

The undersecretary believed that reopening the factories could defuse sectarian tensions by stimulating trade among neighborhoods and regions. Many military commanders agreed, and threw their support behind him.
"They recognize the value of getting as many unemployed young Iraqis off the streets and into productive employment," said Col. Steven A. Boylan, spokesman for Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq.

.....

[appleannie1]

7. I agree with you

He is trying to create an atmosphere where Iraqis will have jobs and gain the profit by exporting their products also. That is also a no no to this administration. Everything is supposed to be either privatized or imported.

[natrat]

4. sytematic widespread fraud and this what they come up with-nice

[PianoBlack]

5. I would say I can't believe this but...

this is just business as usual in todays administration. It is ridiculous to see how much has happened.

Missing money.
Missing guns.
Missing body armor.

I would love to say 'I really hope things would get better and I'm sure it is just another clerical error' but first I'd have to be delusional.

[CGowen]

6. Mismanaging government money, public drunkenness, sexual harassment; are they sure it's not Bush?

The real criminals are protected.....

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/25/national/main3203792.shtml