DAVID CORN SCOOP CONFIRMED

I noted before that David Corn of The Nation came across a draft of a U.S. Embassy report that concluded that corruption was rampant in Iraq and that matched the report of the DoD's Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction: "the endemic corruption in Iraq, which SIGIR views as a 'second insurgency.' "

Via ABC's The Blotter, I find that the Federation of American Scientists has come into possession of a version of that report and put it online here. Here are some of the lowlights provided by the FAS:

"Currently, Iraq is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," according to a confidential draft assessment prepared by the United States Embassy in Baghdad.

As a result, corruption has become "the norm in many [Iraqi government] ministries."

"All indications point to corruption as undermining the support of the population for Iraq's government."

"The Prime Minister's Office has demonstrated an open hostility to the concept of an independent agency to investigate or prosecute corruption cases."

"The Iraqi Government has been withholding basic support and resources" from the anticorruption Commission.

FAS also notes that this was also the conclusion of the Iraq Study Group in their report back in December, 2006:

"Corruption is rampant," according to the December 2006 Report of the Iraq Study Group (at page 20). "One senior Iraqi official estimated that official corruption costs Iraq $5 to 7 billion per year."

Just for review, we have 3 independent reports that government and NGO corruption in Iraq is a VERY serious problem: The Iraq Study Group report in December 2006, The July 2007 report of the DoD's Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction and this report from our own embassy covering the period January-July 2006.

The State Department retroactively classified the Embassy report, something we've come to expect from the most secretive Administration in our history.