The New York Times’ Julia Preston reports on the Iowa Labor Commission’s finding that 57 underage workers were employed at Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in tiny Postville, Iowa. The investigation comes after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in May, which detained 389 undocumented immigrants working at the plant. That raid had discovered 24 under-age workers, some as young as 13, working as many as 17 hours a day.

Immigration reform critics have denounced the mega-raid for targeting vulnerable, mostly Guatemalan immigrants instead of their employers. But the labor commission’s finding moves the spotlight to another federal agency: the Dept. of Labor.

Regardless of the politics de jour of immigration law enforcement, shouldn’t Labor be making sure meatpacking plants are safer than those described in The Jungle? It shouldn’t take the Iowa labor commission to lay out these postmortem findings. Federal inspectors need to be on the scene.-MB

So, so bad reports the New York Times’ James Glanz and Campbell Robertson. A new GAO report said that thanks to oil revenues Iraq will have a multibillion dollar budget surplus. Sounds great– since Iraq desperately needs to pour money into improving its infrastructure and security.

Except only one percent of that money is going to projects like installing electrical systems and giving weapons to security personnel. Ninety percent of the government’s budget is for "operating expenses" which seems to mainly include the salary of govt. officials.

So why is this is a story about U.S. federal agencies? Because the Pentagon and State Dept. have spent $23.2 billion in infrastructure and security reconstruction since the Iraq invasion. Yet the Iraqis themselves have spent $3.9 billion during this time.

The scathing audit can probably be wielded to support a range of policy agendas. But one take away is pretty clear: the Iraqi people are being rooked.-MB

Yikes. Ron Suskind’s new book "The Way of the World" says that in Sep. 2003 CIA officials forged a letter to make it look like Mohamed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, was trained in Iraq. To give the letter legitimacy, White House officials had  Tahir Jalil Habbush, Iraq’s former top intelligence official, sign it. 

Moreover, Suskind reveals that the Bush administration paid Habbush $5 million for his consultation in the lead-up and invasion to Iraq. Yet they totally ignored what he said, which was that Saddam Hussein had suspended a nuclear weapons program in 1991 and a biological one in 1996.

The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick reports that the Bush administration has quickly denied Suskind’s account calling it "gutter journalism" (they don’t deny Habbush’s consultation role). More importantly, the two CIA officials Suskind quotes also issued denials over email. The denial’s language is evasive ("I have no knowledge of the origins of the letter," one read). But enough doubts have been raised to throw Suskind’s account into question. Let’s see how he responds.-MB