For months, Iraqi officials have been trying to find out exactly how broken their military was, as something was clearly wrong with them after being routed by ISIS this summer in Mosul.
Corruption has been a big problem for Iraq, and it’s even bigger than anyone imagined, as the probe of one of the major problems, “ghost soldiers” on the payroll who didn’t exist, uncovered at least 50,000 of them.
Iraqi Premier Hayder Abadi’s office confirmed that an official head-count was carried out to find out which of their soldiers exist. Officials sought to explain how 50,000 slipped through the cracks before.
Abadi’s spokesman said they come in two forms. Officers are assigned five bodyguards, and often will have only two, pocketing the pay for the other three. At a brigade level, this problem is even bigger, with brigadiers necessarily keeping dozens of fictional soldiers on their payroll.
In both cases, this can happen a few ways, as they keep dead soldiers on the payroll, or deserters, or simply make up names outright. Whichever way, the money flows to higher-ranking military officials.
Abadi spokesman Rafid Jaboori noted that in the case of brigadiers, they virtually have to keep these large numbers of fictional soldiers on the payroll simply so they can pay the bribes necessary to retain such a high rank.
That’s not so much an excuse as an indication that the enormous number of fictional troops are themselves a symptom of a much bigger problem for the Iraqi military, that rising through the ranks means paying bribes to the right people.
During saddam Hussein dictatorial regime the Iraqi army was a army, now it's based on anything but an army. Ahmad Chalabi sure have his cousins registered somewhere in the army and getting paud with dollars.
The expression is:
"They march only on paper"
Honest politicians = government funded elections = Honest politicians
Since the 1950’s it has been overwhelmingly clear that Iraq is irreversibly corrupt, and as the purpose of our invasion and decade of occupation was to guarantee that nationalizing of their oil fields would never again come to be, that such corruption we would always see, out of what magical kingdom do we expect full and perfect goodness to appear?
For the corruption in Iraq is identical to that in the U.S. Congress, as we will never have honest politicians until we have government funded election. And that will never happen until we have an honest rich nobility, as USA was created by the rich nobility of England to make perfectly legal the slavery of blacks and the genocide of the American Indians.
In short, organize a most painful Revolution or wallow in our stupor.
"…rising through the ranks means paying bribes to the right people."
No wonder Maliki didn't want to leave the government – and is still there as Vice President.
In the US, the corruption is only slightly better disguised. Rising through the ranks in the US means doing favors for the right people who pay bribes in the form of campaign contributions. We don't have ghost soldiers, we have trillions of dollars "missing" from Pentagon coffers, as announced by Donald Rumsfeld on 09/10/2001. When Randolph Bourne said "War is the health of the state" he should have added that corruption is the inevitable handmaiden of war.
is that like all the people named "sing" here on welfare?