former Iraqi officials revealed that more than $18 billion intended to rebuild Iraq may have been lost to local fraud and that millions have been funneled to al-Qaeda by corrupt IraqisMore from Think Progress:
Rice: No ‘American Money’ In Iraq Was Lost To Corruption
Throughout the U.S. occupation of Iraq, billions in tax dollars have been lost due to corruption and incompetence. Some of the most egregious losses have been via “American programs”:
– The Coalition Provisional Authority delivered 363 tons of cash on an airplane, totaling $12 billion, to Iraq “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for.”
– The State Dept spent $36.4 million dollars on weapons and equipment that could not be accounted for because “invoices were vague and there was no backup documentation“.
– Top contractor KBR came under fire last year from government investigators for overpricing its contract by $2 billion, which, for example, included overstating labor costs by 51 percent.
– State Dept. employees testified in May 2008 that the U.S. “allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government,” resulting in the loss of billions in U.S. tax dollars.
The use of private contractors, a major source of the corruption, has skyrocketed under Bush. The government has spent $85 billion on contracts in Iraq and other countries in the first four years of the war. “Taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars,” observed Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who has spearheaded investigations into waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq.
Thus far, some $50 billion in taxpayer dollars have been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, which anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International listed as the third-most corrupt nation in the world.
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