Friday, November 03, 2006

Party of Good Government

Remember when Republicans portrayed themselves as the party of government run along efficient, business-like lines?

How times have changed. The New York Times reports that House Republicans slipped a provision into a military authorization bill shutting down the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq. This is the office--headed by Republican lawyer Stuart Bowen--that has exposed incompetence and corruption by such administration friends as Bechtel and Halliburton, and revealed the military's failure to keep track of several hundred thousand weapons turned over to the Iraqis. According to The Times, "The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation."

Businesslike government? Or just business as usual?

(P.S. when I ran a spell-check on this post, the checker suggesed replacing "Halliburton" with "half-hearted." Who says computers have no sense of humor?)

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