U.S. Soldiers investigated over missing 125 billion in Iraq.
From The Independent (UK):
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.
“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in “pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills” to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.
In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defense Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud.
When we discuss the billions or trillions that our government will need to spend toward our financial crisis in the next few years, the outrage at those monies need to be measured by the lack of outrage at the billions lost during the Iraq war. Our government essentially handed bags of money to our military officials and civilian contractors with little to no oversight. Where exactly did all this money go? Well, we know now. Directly into the hands of the people you’d expect it to, and maybe a few you didn’t. Where there may be a few Colonel Anthony Bell’s, there are many, especially KBR, who were handed construction projects that never even began. You’d think, despite the fog of war, that some question might arise sooner about a fully financed project that never even starts.
In some cases, since this is the Bush administration, we’re looking at cronyism (of course).This one I found particularly interesting
The end of the Bush administration which launched the war may give fresh impetus to investigations into frauds in which tens of billions of dollars were spent on reconstruction with little being built that could be used. In the early days of the occupation, well-connected Republicans were awarded jobs in Iraq, regardless of experience. A 24-year-old from a Republican family was put in charge of the Baghdad stock exchange which had to close down because he allegedly forgot to renew the lease on its building.
Negligence and corruption are an attitude. If the heads of your “company” are doing it, it’s likely it will become part of the culture of that company. Rumsfeld let chaos ensue early on in this war, either out of indifference, incompetence or as a cover for other unseemly practices. I would hope the Obama administration and the media keep on top of this story. We’re spending an awful lot of time criticizing the new administration for oversight they haven’t even begun in this bailout and giving a free pass to the last one who found new meaning in the word “corruption.”
