Throwing good money after bad

Lisa Myers and Aram Roston had this report on Friday,9/7/2007:

U.S. officials say the battle to clean up Iraq's government has suffered a "serious blow" with the resignation of the nation's top corruption fighter. The former watchdog, Judge Radhi Al Radhi, tells NBC News that Iraq's current government, headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is riddled with so much corruption that the U.S. must stop supporting it. Rahdi is now in the United States, and his departure from the Iraqi government comes just as the U.S. prepares for a key report from Gen. David Petraeus about the military "surge" in Iraq.
Until last week, Rahdi headed the Iraqi government department responsible for rooting out graft and fraud in Iraq's young government. It is called the Commission on Public Integrity, or CPI. It refers its investigations into corrupt officials to Iraqi courts for prosecution.
But Rahdi recently resigned, and he says that was because of numerous threats on his life by corrupt Iraqi officials. "They have militias," he says, "and they attacked my neighborhood with missiles and these missiles fell very close to my house." If he returns to Iraq under current circumstances he believes he'll be killed….

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, has worked with Judge Radhi and says he thinks highly of him. "Judge Radhi by my judgment was an honorable man and an effective crime fighter in Iraq, and it’s a loss for Iraq that he is no longer there," Bowen told NBC in an interview.
"This is a very serious blow to the corruption-fighting effort in Iraq," Bowen said. Bowen's office monitors how U.S. funds are spent in Iraq and investigates crimes involving U.S. projects in Iraq.
Rahdi clearly despairs for his country and says there is no longer any hope of progress under the current Iraqi government. He says of America, "When they realize that that they're paying money and lives without results, they will stop the support." Asked if the U.S. should drop support of the al-Maliki administration because of corruption, he answers "yes."
U.S. officials say they expect Rahdi to seek political asylum here, escaping threats from the very government America is supporting.
The al-Maliki government already has named his replacement at the Commission on Public Integrity, a man U.S. officials say was previously accused of corruption.

The content of this story is, sadly, not surprising to most of us here in the reality-based community. Yet there is something about the timing of the piece that really does surprise me. Some elements in the mainstream media seems prepared to do at least a little more than simply regurgitate the Cheney/Bush administration talking points of the day. While the "surge is working" propaganda blitz of the Bushies will flood massively into our homes over the next few days, there may at least be a few nuggets of real information from Iraq thrown into the mix. We can only hope...