We learned today that the top U.S. officials in Iraq are being replaced, including General Jay Garner.

Senior U.S. officials say they are unhappy with the pace of reconstruction in Iraq and the negative media attention that has been getting. By replacing the top tier of the U.S. civil authority in Iraq, as well as several other senior members of the civil administration team, the Bush administration hopes to speed up Iraq’s post-war recovery.

The installation of former State Department official Paul Bremer as chief of reconstruction efforts, supplanting retired General Jay Garner, is only the tip of an abrupt wider shakeup affecting many of the senior-most officials in the U.S. civil administration in Iraq.

While the reasons given above may well be the truth, this makes me wonder if something more was about to come to light.

Baker’s job with COLSA was to inspect the work being done on a major segment of the missile-defense program. “He would eventually discover a handful of contract arrangements that ‘smelled of shenanigans.’ Each of them involved work being performed by SY Technology, a California-based defense contractor. … ”

Another thing the arrangements had in common was that each involved a contract being negotiated on a sole-source basis, rather than through competitive bidding. And SY Technology had been taken over a few years back by retired three-star Gen. Jay Garner.

Baker says he was first alerted to the questionable contract arrangements in late December 2001.

That month, the Space and Missile Defense Command announced it intended to award SY Technology a five-year contract in the amount of $48 million. The defense command claimed the contract was being negotiated on a sole-source basis because SY Technology was uniquely qualified to do the work. Baker disputed the notion, saying dozens of other contractors were equally qualified.

Maybe there’s nothing to all of this, but I don’t like coincidences.