“There’s not a single person among the 850 people in my class who joined for free,” he said.

His commanders, he added, also now collect the salaries of recruits who quit, a payout of more than $100,000 a month. “No one can stop it,” Abu Ali said. “Corruption runs from top to bottom.”

The details of Abu Ali’s story could not be independently verified, but they fit a pattern of bribes and payroll schemes found in nearly every nook of Iraq’s government, according to government workers, Iraqi lawmakers and some American officials.

Many Iraqis speak from personal experience.

Mr. Subihawi, the Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, said that when he recently tried to find a job for a young member of his tribe, he was told by local government officials that there was nothing available unless he was willing to pay.

Other Iraqis, in interviews, described similar encounters.

Cash is also often what leads to promotions — with the help of a fake college degree, purchased for about $40 — and theft is no less common. One government worker, who goes by the name Abu Muhammad, said a senior administrator at the ministry where he worked recently sold off computers, laser printers, office furniture and other supplies that appeared to have been paid for with American aid. The official was never caught or prosecuted, he said.

Haider Abu Laith, an engineer at the Ministry of Culture, said a close friend and fellow engineer at a government agricultural agency recently told him he was being pressured to inflate the cost of equipment purchased abroad so that senior officials could skim the surplus.

He said his friend quit, fearing that he would be killed if he refused.

And at the Ministry of Health’s main warehouse in Baghdad, American troops discovered this summer that two trucks full of medicines and medical equipment had disappeared while several guards on duty — young men in acid-washed jeans, with gel in their hair — said they saw nothing.

Even some Iraqi lawmakers admit that the free-for-all has become too extensive to stop easily. “The size of the corruption exceeds the imagination,” said Shatha Munthir Abdul Razzaq, a member of Parliament’s largest Sunni bloc. “Because there are no tough laws, no penalties for those who steal.”