When Bush cut the funding to pay for upgrading the levees in New Orleans, Carl Strock was his point man for defending the move. When a whistleblower, Connie Greenhouse, reported inappropriate contracts with Halliburton, Strock demoted her.
So, what would you expect Bush to do with a superb shill willing to lie and cover up for Bush's failures and bad judgments?
Put him in charge of the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. What the heck. He's already covered up and protected Haliburton.
Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers is the very same man who demoted Connie Greenleaf, the former Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official-turned whistle-blower, after shining light on questionable Haliburton contracts.
Brian Friel, in a govexec.com article writes, and quotes Strock,
The Corps of Engineers is a projects agency. It designs and builds dams, floodwalls, levees and locks, dredges harbors, restores beaches and protects wetlands. Under a 1986 law, the Corps puts up some of the money to complete a project but gets some of the money from local agencies, or "cost-sharing partners." Because of that cost-sharing arrangement, the Corps has tended to approach each project individually rather than as part of a larger system, such as a watershed.
"We . . . have not done as good a job as we should be doing on understanding the interaction of that project and other projects and other dynamics in a watershed," Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Corps, explained to reporters this summer. "So, for the last couple of years, we have been adding that as a component to our planning process, to think outside and understand the cumulative impacts of the projects on the watershed."
In the New Orleans area, the Corps has an extensive flood control network, composed of various floodgates, canals, levees and floodwalls. The network is the system, while the gates, levees and canals are the projects. Strock said one of the lessons the Corps learned from the failure of that system during Hurricane Katrina is that the agency tended to treat each component as an individual project, rather than as an integrated whole.
"What we did not do is each time we made another decision, we didn't revisit -- go back to the root of the problem -- and say, if you add Risk A with Risk B with Risk C with Risk D, which would have accumulated over the years, that's the total risk we're talking about, not the risk associated with the specific changes we might be making today," Strock said. "I think if we had these processes in place earlier . . . that each time we made a decision about not to do barriers or not to do gates or whatever, to go with I-walls instead of T-walls, we would have [had] a much better appreciation for the cumulative risks we faced."
Isn't this one of the main problems with the whole administration? They do a project-- get rid of Saddam-- without thinking about what effects it will produce. They attack Afghanistan with a few thousand troops and beat the Taliban, but leave the country undefended. They Save some money on one aspect of the levee system, maybe even protect another section adequately, but that upsets the balance and leads to massive flooding of the poorest neighborhoods.
Short-sighted, no vision, bad planning. Here it is. But golly gee whiz. Our Genius president's guy in charge of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan is learning on the job, four years after we went into Afghanistan, finally understanding systems planning-- that one action at one part of a system affects another part of the system-- or that there even IS a system.
And let's talk about Afghanistan.
MSNBC reports that Dem minority leader Nancy Pelosi said, "President Bush's failure to finish the job against terrorism in Afghanistan before launching his ill-advised invasion of Iraq has made the lives of the Afghan people more difficult and the American people less safe."
The article also discusses a warning by British Gen. David Richards, NATO commander in Afghanistan, that Afghans could turn their allegiance to a resurgent Taliban if they don't see better progress in security, rebuilding and governance in the next six months.
Now, we can't blame Strock for the failed funding. We can't blame Strock for even being there. It's Bush's and his rubber-stamping Republican congress who we have to blame. But Strock IS there, well, at least he stops by every few months, and we know what a botcher of jobs and cover-up apologist he is. Having him in Afghanistan and Iraq, is another "brownie" style disaster. We're seeing the result each day as our troops are killed, as Iraqis suffer without electricity most of the hours of the day... Imagine multiple Katrinas, routinely inflicted upon the people of Iraq.
While we are calling for firing Bush incompetent losers, lets put Carl Strock nearer the top of the list, along with Rumsfeld and Rice. General Tommy Franks, one of the military scumbags who supported the Bush lie that no more troops were needed, as we now know, from multiple retired Generals, is already retired. General Casey is still telling lies for Bush.
The list could be much longer. But of course, we have to remember who's at the top-- Bush, then Cheney. These war criminal, traitors deserve prosecution, sentencing and incarceration. Maybe strock deserves the same, maybe just firing for incompetence. Only investigations will tell. They won't happen unless the Republican choke on congression inquiry is removed, hopefully next week.
