A federal report released Tuesday says the Army Corps of Engineers charged the government hundreds of millions of dollars for supervising projects in Iraq that have been identified as having failed or fallen behind schedule specifically because oversight was lax or nonexistent.
Although the corps' practice of charging such fees is not limited to its work in Iraq, the report points out that its rates were on average more than twice as high as those charged by an Air Force office that has also been active in Iraq reconstruction. But the Air Force projects have come under much less criticism than their Army Corps counterparts for shoddy workmanship and delays.
In all, the Army Corps and the Air Force charged more than half a billion dollars in fees to oversee the $10.3 billion in Iraq reconstruction projects examined in the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent federal office.
The above is from James Glanz' "U.S. Failed to Oversee Corps on Iraq Work, Agency Say" in this morning's New York Times which both follows up Glanz' report yesterday and indicates that the paper's shift to a smaller size and to shorter articles does serious damage when the topic is comples. Glanz gets a little more space than yesterday but still not enough to explore the topic seriously.
Reuters reports three Baghdad roadside bombings today that have claimed 1 life and left fifteen people wounded and "The beheaded bodies of two brothers were found in the town of Tuz Khurmato . . . They had been kidnapped by gunmen a week ago."
Florida held primaries yesterday. We have a number of members in Florida including Gina, Krista and Wally. Because Little Media will either ignore it (as they did with Michigan) or lie about it (as they already were doing about Florida), we'll note the Democratic aspect. Hillary Clinton won Florida. CNN reports she did so "with solid support among women, seniors and Latino voters" and:
Clinton led strongly among women, who made up nearly 60 percent of turnout. Exit polls estimated her share of the vote at 55 percent, compared to 29 percent for Obama and 13 percent for Edwards.
Clinton also led among men in general, but by a much narrower margin -- 43 percent to 38 percent for Obama. She also led strongly among Latino voters, who made up 12 percent of Tuesday's voters.
Marcia notes Melissa Mansfield and Glenn Thrush's "Clinton wins 50 percent of Florida votes" (Newsday via Kansas City Star):
Barack Obama dismissed Tuesday's Florida primary as a "beauty contest" but Hillary Rodham Clinton's landslide victory provided ugly omens for his quest to build a broad, multiracial coalition to defeat her on Feb. 5.
Clinton won 50 percent to Obama's 33 percent, and John Edwards garnered 14 percent, with 76 percent of the votes counted.
Little Media has repeatedly embarrassed itself (and demonstrated they are top-down and elitist) by refusing to stand up for Michigan and Florida. Late to the party people save your lously little e-mails, we have made this a topic since last year. It's not about who won, it's about the Democrats in Michigan and Florida who have no support from independent media.
Hillary's speech (text and video) can be found here.
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the new york times
james glanz
