corruption in Iraq

Bush Asleep While Iraqi Fraud Funnels Millions To al-Qaeda

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 Iraqis

More 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.

Why i'm exhausted and am falling behind in my philosophy work...

Seeing this in a local paper was just a reminder...Government losing sense of reality

The American public is getting hit hard by the high price of oil, raising the prices of everything else. The two main reasons for that are the worldwide demand for oil has been increasing faster than the supply, creating a shortage; and the U.S. has alienated many oil-producing nations which now put the boots to us whenever they can.

The problem has grown urgent, because America's prosperity is based squarely upon the use of huge quantities of low-priced oil. The obvious solution would be -- as Congressman Lynn Westmoreland proposed recently -- to drill for oil wherever it is available in or near American territory.

The obvious solution is drill for oil? Where do you start? How do you start? Someone smarter than I is going to need to take that one. This is why i'm exhausted... its as if people were making these things up. But bless their souls they really aren't.