More to consider …
In prepared remarks <$NoAd$>praising the new nominee last week, President Bush ranged across the whole of Kerik’s career, from his days as a beat cop in Times Square, to his hands-on work at Ground Zero on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
Yet the President was oddly â and utterly â silent on Kerik’s work in Baghdad, and perhaps for good reason. Though Kerik presided over the hiring of thousands of recruits for the reconstituted Iraqi police force, most were hired without background checks, and many turned out to be hardened criminals. As a result, some 30,000 of them, or roughly 25 percent of the entire force, are now reportedly being let go, with the U.S. footing the bill for $60 million in severance payments.
There’s also Kerik’s never-fully explained role in the 1990s as head of a New York City Corrections Department foundation that was secretly funded with roughly $1 million of tobacco company rebates from departmental purchases of cigarettes using city funds. Kerik’s hand-picked treasurer for the foundation, Frederick Patrick, is now serving a one-year prison sentence after admitting in court that he pilfered nearly $140,000 of the foundation’s money to pay for collect-call phone sex from inmates.
And heck, that’s from the New York Post …
