meet the new boss, same as the old boss

mother jones has an excellent write-up on bush's nominee to replace outgoing secretary of defense donald rumsfeld. i guess it was to be expected that robert gates would be cut from the same cloth as everyone else W. has kept counsel with these last six years. hopefully the democrats will put a stop to this, but i doubt they will want to spend the political capital.

earlier this month reports surfaced that the republican-controlled government had made into law a provision which would shut down the office of the special inspector general for iraq reconstruction. as an independent government agency charged with charting the progress of the united states' rebuilding efforts in iraq as well as exposing inefficiency and corruption, it has (obviously) not always painted the rosiest of pictures. the attempt to end this particularly important form of oversight while reconstruction contracts are still in effect stinks of corruption. what is that... do i hear the sound of someone covering their ass? thankfully democrats don't plan on letting that happen.

oh, and for all you halliburton fans (from the same article):

Mr. Bowen’s investigations of Halliburton have uncovered tens of millions of dollars of charges for work that achieved little in the way of results, but apparently met the letter of the company’s contract with the United States to repair oil facilities. Mr. Bowen has also found that Halliburton has been using federal loopholes to impede investigations of its work by declaring nearly all information about company activities in Iraq to be proprietary, or sensitive because it could aid the company’s competitors.

one last thing. i like this guy a lot. he was thinking of running a long-shot bid for president in 2008. now he's not. bummer.