a scandal in the making...

[bishop]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/...dit/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday. An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds. "Severe inefficiencies and poor management" by the Coalition Provisional Authority has left auditors with no guarantee the money was properly used," the report said. "The CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractual controls to ensure that [Development Fund for Iraq] funds were used in a transparent manner," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., director of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The $8.8 billion was reported to have been spent on salaries, operating and capital expenditures, and reconstruction projects between October 2003 and June 2004, Bowen's report concluded. The money came from revenues from the United Nations' former oil-for-food program, oil sales and seized assets -- all Iraqi money. The audit did not examine the use of U.S. funds appropriated for reconstruction.

i wouldn't be surprised to see that we've stolen money from the oil-for-food program. given all the criminal actions we've seen from the administration these past couple years, anything's possible. it would be ironic, though, that the bushistas spent so much time talking about the oil-for-food scandal when their people were feeding at the trough.

[RickSp]

$9 Billion is hard to sweep under the rug. Makes the $300 million apparently loaded into a plane (to purchased arms and equipment) by the Defense Ministry and then never seen again seem like small falafel.

I wonder if the Bush administration will figure out how to either blame it on the French or Kofi Annan.

[MerlinsByte]

Bishop writes ; i wouldn't be surprised to see that we've stolen money from the oil-for-food program. given all the criminal actions we've seen from the administration these past couple years, anything's possible. it would be ironic, though, that the bushistas spent so much time talking about the oil-for-food scandal when their people were feeding at the trough

Merlin writes; I agree and the quote "The LOVE of money is the root of most evil," is true and wise.

MB

[Rainbow]

No trace of $9 billion ?
I wish I had 1% of that :-)))

[RickSp]

To be fair I think the allegations are that the $9 billion was never properly accounted for. No doubt most was spent for reasonable expenses. Of course a few hundred million here and there, well who knows?

[giuliano]

Quote by: RickSp No doubt most was spent for reasonable expenses.

can the US prove it?

[Scribbler1]

I think it's time to impress on some people that this is not THEIR money they are playing with. Maybe a good way to do that is to have some of the top people responsible for this gross mismanagement (and likely fraud) work for a decade or so for nothing.

[bishop]

heh.. maybe we can try to amend the constitution and elect bush for a 3rd term - since the country is in the business of rewarding incompetence.

i just find it interesting that the same group who were using the oil-for-food scandal as a tool to bolster their pro-war arguments were feeding from the same trough as everyone else. personally, i don't believe that you can simply improperly account for $9 billion. imo, when some sum as large as that is "missing" something happened beyond a basic accounting error.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: RickSp No doubt most was spent for reasonable expenses.

Sure, like those Dept. of Homeland Security meetings on the beach in Hawaii?

[RickSp]

Quote by: Scribbler1 I think it's time to impress on some people that this is not THEIR money they are playing with. Maybe a good way to do that is to have some of the top people responsible for this gross mismanagement (and likely fraud) work for a decade or so for nothing.

I do admire your optimism, but consider who you are talking about. These are people who consider it not only their right but their duty to invade someone elses' country; who think nothing of using lies to justify doing so and in the case of Iraq, sponsored Chalabi as their great new Iraqi leader, a man who was convicted of embezzlement and bank fraud in Jordan.

Somehow I don't think this is the group that will be too likely to worry about whether they are paying attention to the Federal Acquistion Regulations.

[Scribbler1]

Quote by: RickSp I do admire your optimism

Don't.
If you have been around long enough to read the swill I keep pumping out, you would note that while I come up with a lot of these "we oughta's", I NEVER ONCE said I thought these things would actually happen!

But it's OK to admire my total and complete pessimism.

[tivodan1116]

The only thing that surprises me about this affair is that anyone has made a big deal out of it at all. When our government spends almost $9 billion per day anyway, it's no surprise some goes missing. Think about what your daily wage is and then think if you could come up with a day's worth of wages that you can't account for. For my wife and I, it's about $150, which if someone looked into our records I'm sure more then $150 would be unaccounted for.

The root problem is that the government simply spends far too much money. At a 2.8 trillion dollar budget, that's roughly $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Did I get $10K worth of safety and help from the feds last year? Certainly not.

There is no reason in a civilized nation for the combined spending of federal state and local governments to be 30% of GDP as it is in the United States. Especially when before 1920 total government spending in the United States was less then 5% of GDP.

In 2004 our GDP was about $11.8 trillion. Is there anyone who can honestly tell me why we need more then 5% - about $590 billion - of our GDP to run the governments of this country???

[PatrickHenry]

Fraud by the US authority in Iraq and its contractors?
I am SHOCKED!
SHOCKED!
How could the good guys ever stoop so low?

For premonitions read Bushwhacked by Uri Dowbenko
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Books__...03conover.html

Bushwhacked is a collection of articles written by Uri Dowbenko, the best of which shine a light on long-standing government corruption, the Bush family and the New World Order, in addition to some esoteric ones that might better have been left out of this particular book. Dowbenko has several excellent chapters on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) fraud, including the Harvard connection and the lies the government told the courts in its efforts to destroy Hamilton Securities, "an innovative software company" that saved the government an estimated $2.2 billion in lost revenue through successful auctions of defaulted HUD properties. Ironically, Hamilton's president, Catherine Austin Fitts, had served as assistant secretary for housing-federal housing commissioner in the Bush administration from 1989 to 1990. Considered a Wall Street revolutionary who made millions for Dillon, Read and Co., Fitts, through Hamilton's contract for disposing of HUD properties, was upsetting the carefully constructed applecart of the criminals in HUD, the Department of Justice and the private sector who had been benefiting from buying up defaulted HUD properties for pennies on the dollar. Another irony is that it wasn't the Bush administration that wanted Hamilton destroyed, but the Clinton administration, which again proves political party labels are worthless. Then there is the Bush family, or the Bush Crime Family, as Dowbenko calls it. Name a criminal enterprise and, according to Dowbenko and the people he has interviewed, you will find a Bush connection

[giuliano]

i wouldn't call it fraud, more emptying money over iraq and hoping it lands in the right place. your money, that is :)

[bishop]

kind of like laying seige on baghdad by catapaulting balls of enflamed dollars at them. nothing can topple your opponent like fiery money raining down from above.