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Our failure to promote accountability has hurt us. If we fail to fire corrupt ministers, we promote an air of unaccountability. Bremer’s less than subtle threats have aggravated the situation. Whenever Bremer repeats that he has the power to veto what he does not like, he gives a green light for Governing Council members to pursue their most populist demands, knowing they can build constituency without ever having to face the consequences.

Iraqis politicians, ordinary Iraqis, and U.S. contractors have the sense that Bremer’s goal is to leave Iraq with his reputation intact. He therefore hesitates to take tough but necessary decisions, instead hoping to foist them onto his successor or international organizations. Success should not be seen as the state of Iraqi on June 30, but rather the state of Iraq on July 31, September 30, or November 30. It is essential we transfer sovereignty to an Iraq built upon the strongest possible template. We need to use our prerogative as occupying power to signal that corruption will not be tolerated. We have the authority to remove ministers. To take action against men like [REDACTED] would win us applause on the street, even if their GC sponsors would go through the motions of complaint. The alleged kickbacks that [REDACTED] is accepting should be especially serious for us, since he was one of two ministers who met the President and has his picture taken with him. If such information gets buried on the desks of middle-level officials who do not want to make waves, then short- term gain will be replaced by long-term ill.

We so share culpability in the eyes of ordinary Iraqis. After all, we appointed the Governing Council members. Their corruption is our corruption. When [REDACTED] work to exclude followers of other trends of Shi’a political thought from minister and deputy minister positions, Iraqis blame Bremer, especially because the Governance Group had assured Iraqis that their exclusion from the Governing Council did not mean an exclusion from the process. As it turned out, we lied. People from Kut, for example, see that they have no representation on the Governing Council, and many predict civil war since they doubt that the Governing Council will really allow elections.

In retrospect, both for political and organizational reasons, the decision to allow the Governing Council to pick 25 ministers did the greatest damage. Not only did we endorse nepotism, with men choosing their sons or brothers-in-law; but we also failed to use our prerogative to shape a system that would work. It is true that several Governing Council members have real constituencies, for example, [REDACTED], but what we ignore is  that these constituencies are not based on ideology, but rather on the muscle of their respective personal militias and the patronage which we allow them to bestow. We have bestowed approximately $600 million upon the Kurdish leadership, in addition to the salaries we pay, in addition to the USAID projects, in addition to the taxes we have allowed them to collect illegally. I spent the night of March 3 and morning of March 4 watching The Godfather trilogy on DVD with an Iraqi Kurdish contact who had ridiculed me for never having before seen any of the films. The entire evening was spent discussing which Iraqi Kurdish politicians represented which character. It is telling that it’s remarkably easy to do — it was even easy to identify [REDACTED] in the film.

Patronage and oligarchy are the same the world over. Abdul Aziz Hakim receives support from the Iranian government, which long was his host. The ironic thing is that, with proper funding of Iraqi liberals, we could have helped advance them much farther than we did. It is a lesson the Supreme Leader understands in Tehran, Shaykh Zayid understands in Abu Dhabi, and Crown Prince Abdullah understands in Saudi Arabia.

It would be a very grave mistake to transfer authority to the United Nations. Kofi Annan once said that " Saddam Hussein is a man I can do business with. " Not only can we expect such a tape to be aired often on Iraqi television, but also we can expect further revelations that Kofi Annan was speaking literally and, not just figuratively. I spent a great deal of time with Claude Hankes-Drielsma, chairman of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, when he was in Baghdad earlier this week. Many of you may remember him from his service with the 1985 South African debt commission, and as an investigator who exposed the Nobel Foundation scandal several years back. He is currently serving as advisor to the Finance Committee of the Governing Council, in which capacity he is organizing the audit of the UN oil-for-food system. Already, the audit has uncovered serious wrongdoing in banks, and discrepancies of billions of dollars. Anger is rising at just how little Iraq got for its money under UN auspices, when the UN oversaw contracts that inflated prices and delivered substandard if not useless goods. While the Western press has focused on officials like Benon Sevan who, according to documents, received discounted oil, the real scandal appears to be in some of the trading companies which would convert such oil shares to cash. For example, Sevan cashed his oil share with a Panamanian trading company, which, it turns out, was controlled by Boutros-Boutros Ghali. This scandal is going to run deep, and will likely erupt prior to the U.S. presidential election. Senior UN officials know that an independent audit is being conducted, and are not cooperating. It would be a shame if it turns out we knew about this, and yet did nothing to ensure that key UN and bank documents were not shredded. Regardless, to allow the United Nations to again loot Iraq will be problematic at best.

A real problem remains the lack of security over Iraq’s borders. I do not believe those up high fully understand the problem. When I first returned to the Defense Department in November, the first assignment I had was to answer a snowflake about how we are securing Iraq’s borders. It came less than two weeks after I was stopped by an illegal PKK checkpoint about 20 kilometers from the Iranian border. I answered the snowflake honestly, but was told to elaborate on the procedures in place. The problem was that no one was following procedures. That CPA had a Border Enforcement policy is completely irrelevant. It is too easy to say the borders are indefensible. After all, while sanctions smuggling did occur, it is undeniable that a crumbling Baathist regime did better than have we. There are military roads along the frontiers, even in mountainous terrain. Infiltrators may not have nefarious purposes for entering the country — some may simply want to go on pilgrimage while avoiding the excessive tax and license fees which the Iranian regime charges. However, if we want to truly secure the border, we need to deploy far greater numbers than we have now, jail anyone caught taking bribes, and imprison any infiltrators for more than a year to send the signal to neighboring countries that such behavior will no longer be tolerated. [REDACTED] might be politely told that his job is as much to reform the foreign ministry and set it back on its feet instead of just seeing how much he can east at a succession of state banquets.

Lastly, before I sign off, our diplomats fear using leverage. It is much nicer to sleep at the resort [REDACTED] appropriated for his own personal use when you don’t have to listen to him harp and complain. Likewise, it is better to keep [REDACTED] a happy drunk rather than an angry drunk. If our diplomats and CPA officials feel uncomfortable being bad cop, it is essential that people in Washington play the role. [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], for example, are much more compliant when their checks are " delayed " or fail to appear. The same is true with other Governing Council members. The key is subtlety. They will figure out the connection on their own; they need not have it pointed out by Bremer or Greenstock in a way that will cause them to dig in their heels.

If anything significant occurs in my final week in Iraq, I will send it along, but otherwise, thanks for putting up with my diatribes and large attachments.